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TAPE STILL CRITICAL IN ANYDATA ARCHIVINGSTRATEGY

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

he rumors of tape’s demise are greatly exaggerated and have been ever since disk companies started predicting the end of tape  (which hasn’t happened yet, and is

unlikely to anytime soon). Read this e-guide to understand if Tape Backup is the right data protection strategy for your IT environment.

T

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

TAPE STILL CRITICAL IN ANY DATA ARCHIVING STRATEGY

A recent Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research report found that tape is still in use in 56% of organizations. In general, the larger the overall IT envi-ronment, the more likely the organization is to embrace tape as part of its data management and data archiving strategy. Here's why:

1. As the sheer scale of data grows, the impetus to find ways to store data (primary production data, as well as secondary copies) efficiently be-comes increasingly important. When allOpex and Capex are netted out, well-managed tape products are still economically compelling.

2. As the organization grows, it will inevitably find itself under greater pressure (operationally and due to external regulations) to store data for longer periods of time. And for trulylong-term retention, tape is still a preferable  medium for data retention  and should continue to be so moving forward.

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

So, while modern data management is a mandate, that does not imply a particular storage medium or software offering, as those have evolved dramati-cally for the modern data center.

LTO IS NOT YOUR DADDY'S TAPE

Unfortunately, tape has somehow become a four-letter word that is misper-ceived to be synonymous with archaic instead of archive. While tape's reputa-tion from 20 years ago was earned, nothing else in IT is the same as decades ago. However, there is a lack of awareness of modern tape's capabilities among users, and today's disk manufacturers take advantage of a number of miscon-ceptions about tape. In the past:

�� Tape was deemed slow, but today's LTO-6 drives can transfer data at 160 MBps.�� Tape was deemed small, but today's LTO-6 cartridges can hold 2.5 TB uncompressed and up to 6.25 TB compressed (2.5:1 ratio) per cartridge.�� Tape suffered upgrade challenges over time. Today's LTO drives can read LTO-6, LTO-5 and so on for backward compatibility. That is a key value point of the LTO standard: enabling performance and feature innovation

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

within a single form factor that boasts backward compatibility and sup-port for LTO drives from multiple hardware manufacturers.

But innovations in tape, and in LTO in particular, do not stop with continu-ally increasing speeds, capacity and compatibilities. Today's tape also offers ad-ditional capabilities, includingWORM support, encryption and most notably, the Linear Tape File System (LTFS). Easily one of the most dramatic evolu-tions or revolutions in tape for data archiving or other data management tasks is LTFS, which enables tape cartridges to be directly mounted and accessed as easily as a USB flash drive; a multi-terabyte mountable cartridge that is durable, portable and designed for a long shelf life. Upon mounting, a file system of fold-ers and files gives a fresh use case for tape.

That innovation continues with LTFS Library Edition, whereby each car-tridge's file system is logically presented with an overarching file system that is presented by the library. Upon navigating through the virtual file system, the library's robotics mounts the proper cartridge. This process is completely transparent to users.

Two decades ago, disk was made to look like tape through virtual tape li-braries, because backup software and usage patterns only knew how to utilize

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

tape. Today, our usage scenarios and most backup/archive/data management software knows how to use disk; so today's tape uses LTFS to look like disk. LTO's performance enhancements, data management/access features and increased durability make it an ideal medium for archiving data.

THE CONVERGENCE OF ARCHIVE AND BACKUP STRATEGIES

Historically, the terms backup and archive have been misused and often incor-rectly interchanged. It is incorrect to consider "backups go to disk, while tapes are archives."

Simply put, a backup is a point-in-time copy of a container or dataset for the purposes of restoring to a previous version, while an archive is meant to preserve data for regulatory or operational retention requirements. The confu-sion comes when IT takes its point-in-time backups and tries to retain them for long periods (as archives) without the catalog, metadata or other software capabilities that enable the real preservation of data.

A few years ago, vendors and IT organizations began to realize that data backups and archives were not synonymous, but instead were separate, yet complementary, means of managing data retention. With this strategy came the separation of software tools, administrators and data management policies.

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

The result was two completely separate silos of secondary data.Today, we are seeing a genuine convergence of archive and backup; not

as mislabeled offerings but in data management mechanisms that accurately achieve both business purposes by combining features. In a recent ESG sur-vey, a combined 83% of organizations use the archiving features within their backup products as part of (or their only) strategy toward archiving data.

PRODUCTS THAT OFFER A CONVERGENCE OF ARCHIVE AND BACKUP INCLUDE

��CommVault Simpana OnePass��Symantec NetBackup��Symantec Backup Exec��Symantec Enterprise Vault��EMC Avamar��EMC Networker

* EMC Avamar and NetWorker include its SourceOne archival product

Examples of the genuine convergence include  CommVault Simpana's One-Pass functionality, with a single client-agent that first ensures the backup and

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

then (courtesy of a single checkbox) facilitates archival grooming. Symantec has two backup products (NetBackup and Backup Exec), as well as Enterprise Vault for archiving; with some capabilities being accessed through the backup products for those that don't need the full feature set. Meanwhile, EMC offers a complete suite of data protection technologies (Avamar, NetWorker and so on) that include itsSourceOne archival product.

In other words, even the largest of traditional backup vendors understands the need for a comprehensive approach to delivering backups plus archives, and are offering that functionality through a variety of software models and various levels of integration. Even data protection hardware products from companies like EMC/Data Domain and NetApp have extended retention mechanisms to better facilitate archival business cases in an integrated way.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW?

If you archive (groom/preserve) the subset of data that is necessary for long-term data retention, you will almost assuredly back up less data. Your overall Capex and Opex will go down, production storage will gain efficiencies, and your backup product will perform more optimally.

Don't ignore tape as part of your modern data retention scheme. Modern

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

tape has dramatically increased in speed, capacity, durability and features.You may not need a dedicated archival product that requires yet another

data infrastructure. Modern backup applications include the archival features necessary for environments that are not highly regulated or requiring special-ized vertical retention features.

A data archiving strategy does not have to be complicated or expensive, and (if done correctly) should save money for organizations of all sizes, as long as you assess your archival needs and explore archival methods with an open mind.

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

GMAIL OUTAGE ILLUSTRATES THE IMPORTANCE OF TAPE BACKUPS

Recently, while preparing a TechTarget seminar for presentation in London on my favorite topic -- disaster recovery in the era of software-defined every-thing -- I happened upon a link to a video another fellow's session I had the pleasure of attending at the Fujifilm Global IT Executive Summit in New York City late last year. That session, which I had found to be particularly illuminat-ing and entertaining, featured Raymond Blum, Google's  staff site reliability engineer. I encourage everyone to go and watch it.

No, this isn't just another plug for Google or cloud backup or some related trope. With the start of a new hurricane season on the East Coast upon us, I find myself contemplating the serious business of data protection and disaster recovery. These business continuity functions require the implementation and rehearsal of processes, infrastructure and command-and-control structures in advance of any interruption event. There are no shortcuts.

Blum says all of this in a very interesting and entertaining way, recounting lessons learned from a disaster in 2011, when Google had "misplaced the email

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

of over 130 million users" and needed to recover it -- fast! He observes that re-dundancy, the currently preferred approach of the software-defined storage/virtual SAN crowd, is woefully inadequate as a disaster recoverystrategy that must guarantee data integrity or durability. Organizations need a "chief data integrity officer" who acknowledges the simple reality that replication and mir-roring do not deliver disaster recovery: you need backups. Preferably several of them. Preferably on tape. Yes, you need tape backups.

"Redundancy doesn't do what people think," Blum said. "If you make five copies of data on disk mirrors, you've got five bad copies… [The 2011 Gmail outage] showed that redundancy is not a recovery strategy." In the case of a zero-day attack, according to Blum, "integrity may be jeopardized everywhere that data is replicated."

He is basically underscoring what I hope will become a well-understood point -- redundancy provides great protection  against low-level component failures. But to guarantee recovery from a disaster, you need a backup -- prefer-ably on tape -- that has been tested and found to be restorable.

Restorability is key to the strategy implemented by Google in its  tape strategy. Blum spends time describing how his company spreads data across five tapes in a way that enables four of the tapes to restore the contents of the

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

fifth tape should it fail. This is a hedge against media failures, which "happen to hundreds of tapes per year," he notes, quickly adding that that number is a tiny fraction of the number of tapes used by Google annually.

More interesting perhaps is the methodology he has implemented for do-ing backup and restore of large volumes of data in a highly distributed server infrastructure. "It takes something like 112 years to backup an exabyte of data," he notes. But, by divvying up the backup job among many servers using MapRe-duce, Google is able to backup an exabyte in seven days. His is a fascinating, if unintended, use of a technology actually aimed at Hadoop big data analytics or high-performance cluster computing.

He concedes that no one likes to do backups, particularly tape backups. Still worse, no one wants to get the call that a disaster has occurred and a data restore is required. He recounts the process by which Google recovered from its email outage, noting that, at one point, one of the company's many tape libraries had a glitch in one of its robots, which picked a tape for use in restore, but kept placing it back on the shelf. Blum says he had to call a technician to go into the Oregon data center and resolve the problem. The technician initially refused to shut down power to the tape library, pull the tape from the robotic claw and manually insert it into the maw of the tape drive for fear that it might break the

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

library. Blum's response was classic: "On my personal authority as Captain of the Enterprise, I order you to neutralize the hostile robot."

In the final analysis, nobody likes to do a backup, particularly a tape backup, or to spend time verifying the restorability of the data. However, it is the only way to be certain that the data you are stewarding has durability and integrity and that the applications and systems that are generating, processing, sharing, storing and networking the data are adequately protected by your strategy.

Was that a raindrop I just felt?

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

HOW ARE MAJOR CLOUD PROVIDERS USING TAPE STORAGE TODAY?

There's been a huge move among the major cloud providers to  embrace tape. Amazon Web Services articulated Glacier, which has a strong tape com-ponent. Google now has embraced tape as a disaster recovery modality because when Gmail went down for three days, the only way they rescued it was from a tape backup. Before, Google was all about just disk and proprietary disk appli-ances. Now, they're getting specialty tape libraries manufactured just for them.

There are only three major players in the cloud market: Google, Amazon and Microsoft. I don't know what Microsoft is doing about tape yet, but I know the other two leaders are there.

Then you have specialty providers like Dternity, which caters to companies that are archiving data. They put it all on tape. Why is this important? Remem-ber when Nirvanix went belly-up? They were the No. 3 cloud storage provider in the market. What was it -- 96 petabytes of data stored in its cloud? They gave people 10 days to retrieve their data. The only way you could do it was across a wire. They ended up having to pull disk drives out of their storage, ship them

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

back to their customers and let them figure out how to retrieve the data off the drives because there was no way to get the data back to them in time.

With tape, you always have the exit strategy: You can have the cloud pro-vider put the cartridges in a shipping container and ship them back, just like you would from Iron Mountain. The fastest way to move a lot of data over a long distance is by putting it on an airplane.

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Tape still critical in any data archiving strategy

Gmail outage illus-trates the importance of tape backups

How are major cloud providers using tape storage today?

TAPE IS NOT DEAD: HOW TO BUILD A TAPE BACKUP STRATEGY FOR YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT

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