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Use tape backup at your peril

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 11 Dec 2014
Tape backup is a manual process dependent on human intervention, says Anton Jacobsz, managing director at Networks Unlimited.
Tape backup is a manual process dependent on human intervention, says Anton Jacobsz, managing director at Networks Unlimited.

Companies still using tape backups should prepare themselves for possible data loss.

So says Anton Jacobsz, managing director of distributor Networks Unlimited, who points out, with a failure rate of up to 65% and the fact that these backups are generally archived off site in a warehouse requiring manual processes to search for data, tape backups are a risky way of storing business-critical data.

A few technologies that play a part in modern backup solutions include cloud storage, off site backup, storage area network and backup appliances, says Jacobsz.

"In the event of a disaster, when recovery time is essential for business survival, enterprises need technologies that give them virtually instant access to their most critical information and applications to get up and running again," says Jacobsz.

He argues that tape backup is entirely a manual process, is dependent on human intervention in most cases to change the tapes on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, depending on the frequency of the backup.

"This can be a huge problem at the branch office level where there is often no IT-skilled staff on site and the responsibility of this task could be delegated to administration staff who are more likely to make a mistake changing tapes."

According to Jacobsz, recovering from a tape backup can take a considerably longer time than other newer technologies, and tapes also lack visibility "as you only know what version of the file/files reside on the tape until you have backed up from the tape. You need to read the entire tape backup before you can select the file that you would like recovered. This can be slow and inefficient."

A frighteningly large number of companies still rely on outdated, unreliable manual processes to back up and store their data, says Jacobsz, adding with new legislation like the Protection of Personal Information Act and the exponential growth of data that must be stored and managed, recovery from traditional back-up technologies becomes massively problematic - even more so if a crucial data tape has been sitting there for five years.

"These technologies might have enjoyed a better reputation if they had gone out along with vinyl records."

He notes in an era where data is the lifeblood of the competitive enterprise, businesses need to know how quickly they can recover their critical data in the event of a disaster. Historically, he explains, full disaster recovery could take days or even weeks, but times have changed.

"Now, enterprises have become so reliant on technology to automate all processes that they can virtually not trade without it. In the event of a disaster, they not only lose revenue and suffer reputational damage; they can also lose data that is important from an auditing perspective, and risk losing legal documents, causing non-compliance."

He believes an effective data recovery plan begins with an understanding of the interdependencies between systems.

"You need a pane of glass view of which applications are going to which servers, how the traffic moves. You must know which systems you need to protect to meet your recovery point objectives, and which systems need to be recovered and made operational to meet your recovery time objectives.

"By automating the process of mapping transactions to their underlying infrastructure, accurate application definitions and interdependencies are determined, allowing you to better plan and prioritise your disaster recovery and business continuity practices."

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