When I graduated from high school, I was all about new
technology. So when I took the modest pile of cash I received as a
graduation gift and spent it on a new stereo system for my car, I just
had to have the latest and greatest 8-track player! Ah, the wonderful
year of 1976. Though the 8-track player was the hottest new technology,
it was outdated before it was even installed. During that time, tape was
being used in numerous capacities from the 8-track player in my car to
the huge data backs of inches-wide tape media reels in data centers, all
churning away with no awareness that their usefulness was soon to be
challenged. Before long, the memory chip revolution started the downward
spiral of tape media, because the inherent disadvantages of digital
tape drives and media became more pointed and cause for concern in the
overall effort to maintain data security and reliable archiving. Some of
the biggest reasons that tape was being replaced by digital backup
options was due to degradation of the media, misplacement or theft of
the tapes, costs for maintenance and replacement, long backup and
restore times, and less reliable performance.
The first big
problem is data degradation. Over time, both magnetic and even optical
media begin to lose their ability to record error-free data. Many
vendors who sell tape advertise average lifetimes of years and hundreds
of rewrites. Unfortunately, the actual lifetimes of these media are
often less than a year. Here are a couple of important facts as to why
that's true.
1. Tapes and external hard drives are vulnerable to
environmental damage such as heat, sunlight, humidity, liquid, and dust
as well as the potential for human mishandling like scratching, bending,
and dropping.
2. Magnetic backup media can also be damaged by
electromagnetic fields emitted by televisions, monitors, speakers, or
other electronic devices.
A second consideration is the potential
for loss or theft of tape media. In my years of experience, I have seen
some business practices that would leave you horrified! I've seen
secretaries store the backup tapes next to their phone at the front
desk, managers place tapes in the trunk of their car, and shipping
services misplace whole loads of tapes (i.e. the 2005 Citigroup/UPS tape
loss). It's way too easy for something so small to be misplaced or
worse tucked into someone's laptop case and absconded.
The third
point to consider is the cost to maintain and or replace tapes. A smart
organization rotates several tapes throughout a planned cycle. However,
the safe usage life of digital data tape media is only about 6-9 months.
Thus, there has to be a budget in place for the purchase of the same
number of tapes as are currently in the arsenal and more if you are
taking some out for archiving and long-term storage. With the cost of a
1.5 TB LTO-5 being around $50, you have to think about the number of
tapes you need to perform satisfactory backups, both full and
incremental. If you complete a full backup once a week and incremental
backups on other days, most SMBs probably should have 8-10 tapes on hand
as well as a few spares. That equates to $400-$500 per year and is
doubled considering replacement of old worn out media. Remember, that
cost is for a business with a small data footprint. What if the
organization is facing hundreds of terabytes? With EMR requirements for
the medical community, or large graphics and CAD files in engineering,
architecture, and manufacturing that reality is not far-fetched.
With
a good grasp of the actual cost of tape backup, the next concern is the
lengthy times it takes to actually perform he backup. With many
companies, the throughput from the network stores to the tape media is
inexorably slow. Some of my conversations with SMB organizations have
uncovered situations where a single backup has taken upwards of 17+
hours to complete! Do you want to sit and babysit your backup on a
weekly basis to make sure it's failure free? Relatedly, what about the
likelihood that when you absolutely need the backup to be restored that
it will actually work? Unreliable performance and corruption is,
unfortunately, synonymous with tape backups. I remember one customer I
worked with that bemoaned a recent tape restore failure. When they
desperately needed the data from a daily backup tape, upon insertion,
they found that the tape head cleaner cartridge had inadvertently been
inserted into the backup rotation instead of a blank tape. Murphy's law,
right? Not to mention I have seen statistics that point to a 30% to 50%
chance that any tape backup (on regular media) will not remount or
restore properly. This brightly illuminates the need for a periodic test
restore from backups to assure their viability.
In today's
digital age, data loss and corruption is a worry to not only businesses
but also to the customers who do business with them. The Online Trust
Alliance speaks about the erosion of customer loyalty and the damage to
your reputation as a result of data loss or corruption on their website.
According to the OTA, "In the past 5 years, it is estimated over 543
million records containing sensitive personal information have been
compromised due to breaches." (Online Trust Alliance, 2012) This sounds
like a staggering number, though with the magnitude of personal and
business information inputted online, it may be only less than one
percent of all data records in cyberspace. OTA also states, "According
to the 2010 Cost of Data Breach Report published by the Ponemon
Institute, data breach incidents cost U.S. companies $318 per
compromised customer record with an average cost per-incident of $7.2
million." (Online Trust Alliance, 2012) Not quite convinced? In 2003
David M. Smith, an economics professor at California's Pepperdine
University, calculated the "annual data losses to PCs cost US businesses
$18.2 billion." (Smith, 2003) This figure was determined almost 10
years ago, so imagine what the numbers actually look like today with the
explosion of various devices and storage media.
So now that I
have the tape community ready to string me up in effigy, let me add more
fuel to the fire. The technology for electronic backup methods has so
far outpaced that of tape, and the options for deployment of an
electronic backup scheme will fit almost any scenario. All of the
negatives a tape-based backup plan can suffer from is addressed and
enhanced by electronic backups.
A relatively new feature in the
electronic backup world is deduplication, and by definition it's a
method for compressing data by storing only changes to the original
data. For example, when a document is created it's stored as a regular
complete file. When changes are made deduplication stores only the data
that has been modified in a subsequent file with indexes to the
original. For files, a single copy of a file is backed up even though it
may be pointed to by many different documents. An easy example is
having the same document attached to several different email messages.
With deduplication, all subsequent messages after the first are changed
to link to the original attachment rather than duplicating it each time.
Another benefit of electronic backups is encryption. In most instances,
tape scenarios don't include encryption which exposes a greater risk
for loss should tapes end up in less than trustworthy hands. Encryption
should occur at every step during the backup process.
That being
said, what kind of electronic backup solutions are available? There are
several ways to operate an electronic backup plan; on-site, off-site, or
a hybrid of both. The ideal configuration all depends on the
preferences of the individual entity deploying it. An organization that
would prefer to have everything on-site so they can keep an eye on it
would deploy an on-site appliance that backs up data at network speeds
much faster than tape. Going the on-site only route leaves out an
important facet of the backup plan; having off-site storage in case of a
disaster. In those instances where the requirement exists for there to
be an appliance on-site for quicker recovery, some have opted for a
redundant backup of data off-site over a secure Internet connection to a
second facility and appliance, or a third-party cloud storage provider.
In extreme cases, I have seen hybrid solutions that include on-site,
off-site to an owned facility appliance or private cloud, and off-site
to a third-party provider. This hybrid approach gives the best of both
worlds for most organizations with varying tolerance for risk. Still
other entities may opt for a purely cloud-based backup scenario. As with
the hybrid deployment, the remote repository can be a
company-controlled facility with an appliance functioning in this remote
data center. It could also be totally third-party with no appliance or
server needed to build, deploy, or maintain. This is a really good
option for very small businesses that don't need to maintain a server
room or data center, and choose to consume as needed. Some of these
organizations have migrated all of their IT assets to providers such as
Microsoft with Office 365 that have a storage/DR option built in. Others
rely on trusted third-party providers like Mozy or Carbonite, or
contracting with local IT service providers who are steadily adding
hosted applications like electronic backup options.
There are
plenty of options for hardware and software to accomplish this.
Manufacturers like SonicWALL, Barracuda Networks, EMC, Dell, HP, Zmanda,
Drobo and dozens of others are in this space. Several of these
companies, especially Barracuda and SonicWALL, have an off-site backup
option for added protection. There are other companies that are purely
in the cloud backup space, such as Mozy, Carbonite, NovaStor, and
IDrive. It's really just a matter of due diligence and choosing the
option that makes the best financial sense for your organization as well
as feeling secure.
The funny thing is there are still thousands
of organizations worldwide that are relying on the stability and
viability of this outdated technology. In doing so, they are putting
their critical data and their reputation at risk. Even using tape as
only a partial component in the backing up or disaster recovery process
or as an archival measure like disk-to-disk-to-tape can introduce
potential hazards.
It's time tape drives and old media to rest.
They have served you well, just like that old Sony Walkman you used to
jog with, but it's time to get with the program, enter the new
millennium, and make digital electronic backups the standard by which
you protect your critical assets. In the process, you just might find it
saves you time and money as well, and how many of us would walk away
from those?
Works Cited
Online Trust Alliance. (2012,
January 25). Privacy & Data Loss Incident Readiness Planning Guide.
Retrieved September 25, 2012, from Online Trust Alliance:
https://www.otalliance.org/resources/Incident.html
Smith, P. D. (2003). The Cost of Data Loss. Retrieved October 2, 2012, from Graziadio Business Review:
http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/the-cost-of-lost-data/
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