Is it finally the end for tape backup?

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Tape recording technology dates to the late 1800s with the first use in computing in the 1950s. For most people tapes are associated with VHS films that had to be rewound to the beginning after use, and audio cassettes that had a nasty of habit of getting into a horrible tangled mess.

Tape has always been a cost-effective way of storing data and as a backup medium has been extensively used for primary and secondary backups. But almost all my IT professional peers have not so fond memories of having to physically change the tapes on a weekly or even daily basis and arduous restores of hundreds of GBs of data to restore a single lost word document.

It’s primary benefits however are unique…

  • It is stored completely offline, safe from ransomware and disgruntled employees.

  • Data can be taken offsite with zero bandwidth requirements

  • Increasing the storage pool is as simple as buying additional tapes.

IT Technicians may hate tape, but it’s easy to see why IT Managers love it.

Over the last few years tape has been in steady decline due to the emergence of cloud technologies such as the offerings from iLand that provide off site and easily scalable solutions that allow you to ditch tape for good.

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iland’s BAAS – Backup as a Service, Secure Cloud Backup with Veeam Cloud Connect is an easy and cost effective solution for your offsite backup and archiving needs, Setup is as simple as configuring a service provider in your Veeam console and creating a backup copy job to the new repository. iLand says it can be completed in less than a minute and of course can all be done remotely.

It includes Insider Protection that protects from internal and external threats by retaining deleted backup files in an air-gapped directory that is not visible to the customer or public routing. They are retained there for 7 days and can be restored back to the customer if required.

A 5TB 30 Day Free Trial is available here!

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iland also offers Secure Cloud Object Storage for the cost-efficient long-term storage of unstructured, cold, archive and long-term backup data. It is supported with the leading vendors using any S3-compliant interface.

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Both solutions remove the need for cumbersome and unreliable tape backups and replaces it with a solution that both technicians and managers will love.

All of that said, we still have customers that are continuing to use tape backup for the simple reason, “if it aint broke don’t fix it” and I can understand this. Backup is not something you want to change lightly and there are concerns about seeding large amounts of data to the cloud. There are also concerns about security and cost and just because everyone else is doing something isn’t justification alone to adopt a new technology.

But there’s a new challenge for tape, a challenge that’s affecting the entire world right now, forcing companies to temporarily close its doors and furlough its workers or to operate entire in the digital space from spare bedrooms and kitchen tables around the country. Covid-19 is causing the biggest disruption to every-day life in peacetime and crucially for tape backup, making it very difficult to physically change the tapes. Even customers with autoloaders that need the tapes changing far less frequently are now starting to realise this challenge and all the while none of that data is leaving the primary location. Breaking the valuable 3.2.1 rule.

At ComputerWorld we predict that this pandemic will accelerate the adoption of cloud technologies far faster than before so that companies can better deal better with remote working. Cloud backup is an excellent first step into the world of cloud technologies with iLand, who also offer Infrastructure as a Service that allows you to run your entire virtual environment on their flexible, self-service cloud infrastructure, but that’s a topic for another blog…