Tape is dead. Almost.

I recently came across an article that advocated tape based backup and I felt the need to respond to the blog post with one of my own. To be quite honest, I was surprised while reading this. Tape is dying, and it’s not just me saying so. Heck, most data stored on tapes can’t even be recovered in the event of a disaster, and don’t even get me started on the security risk that tapes pose to businesses. In fact, Gartner recently reported in one of its articles that 71% of tape backups tend to fail when it comes down to restore. In my opinion, backing up to tape is no longer an acceptable risk for organizations to take.

Would you want your medical records backed up to tape only to find that after a disaster and subsequent restoration, only 29% was recoverable?  I think not. 

The mistake businesses make is that they only care about backup. Who cares about backup if you can’t restore your data?  Backup is only done so that in the event that you end up losing data (if it hasn’t happened yet, it will), you can restore with confidence and get your business back on track as quickly as possible.  All tape is, is a cheap way to get a cute little checkmark in your DR Plan. 

Once upon a time, VHS movies, horse drawn wagons, and carrier pigeons were all considered trendy. Today its more about blue ray discs, hybrid/electric cars and “tweets”. Just something to ruminate about.

Thanks for reading. If you like what you’ve read, please leave me a comment. If you disagree, send your message via carrier pigeon ;-)