Evaluating Tape Backup

A Backup Article Contributed by Melissa Larose

Evaluating Tape Backup

Tape backup systems need to be evaluated from time to time just like anything else in life. We all stop to contemplate the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. That one seems to unavoidable. Birthdays, well a lot of us have figured out ways to avoid that and if we just don't look in the mirror well we can avoid the whole aging process all together. But critical data requires a bit more care if you want to continue working in the IT field.

Evaluating Tape Backup Systems

It is not only the tape backup system that you need to evaluate. The company as a whole must be evaluated in order to get the best picture possible of the data needs. If you do not consider the entirety of your company you may miss the boat on the subject of data and may not plan to provide the right tape backup system and storage for growth. And there is nothing worse than finding out your growth far exceeds your capacity to hold it and facilitate it.

Take a trip in the time machine and evaluate your data growth over the last ten years. Compare this growth to other factors within the spectrum of business. Compare data growth to customer growth, for every 100 new customers how much more data do you accumulate? Compare data growth to the growth in orders (if you are a manufacturer or rep) or compare it to the growth in services offered. All of this research also needs to include the growth of employees as compared to data growth. How much data does a new employee generate?

Tape Backup Growth

The evaluation of your data has everything to do with the capacity of your storage and the ability of your system. As data grows so does storage needs and so does the wear and tear on your tapes and hardware. The most difficult item to predict is future capacity needs. If a merger or an acquisition is in the works your tape backup needs are going to change quickly.

The merging company may not have been as routine about their backup processes as you or they may have been light years ahead of you. Either way you will be faced with merging systems, including hardware and software. And not only will it be the backup that needs merging but the recovery process as well. The merging hardware may not be backward compatible with yours or vice versa.

Staying on Top of Tape Backup

There are some alternatives to data growth and tape storage that you might want to consider.

Does all of the data stored on the network really need to be there? Consider sharing the tape system with data that is not access very often or is an archive. The more of this data that gets removed from a main data source the less that has to be backed up. Re-evaluate your data and see what you find. You could save some time and money in the process of tape backup.