I have long been a proponent of removing tape as a primary backup medium, with the exception of long term offsite archival storage, and this week has clearly reminded me why I no longer recommend tape backups for my clients.
The scenario that has reminded me why is as follows:
13 DLT-IV tapes that are an archive of the source for an old software release. These sources are required again as they are going to be scrubbed and brought up to the current standard of all the newer animations. The drive, a 7 tape DLT autoloader connected via SCSI. Begin the restore, 58 hours later, the restore is still processing.
I can only imagine what this process would be like if this was mission critical data, and it had to be back up and running right now. Thankfully, this is a legacy system and this particular archive was the only portion that had never been transferred to the new LTO-3 archival system.
This whole situation reminds me of why I sell all my clients on our remote backup solution, as the flexibility, speed and simple fact that it is completely automated with never a tape to change, have continuously proven to me that it is simply superior to tape. And with today’s ever increasing bandwidth availability, it becomes more effective by the day.
Personally, I’m very curious how many MSPs and Service Providers still recommend tape as a primary means of backup to their clients, and why they feel the need to continue to push what I feel is a technology that has become relegated to an archival solution.