|
 As
far as disaster recovery is concerned, tape is a dead technology.
Not so, says Imation…
Introduction
How can a robust storage architecture integrate disparate elements
including high availability, backup and restore, total cost of ownership,
reliability and disaster recovery? The answer is tape. Tape technologies
have been meeting customer demands for backup, restoration and archiving
for over 50 years. Despite alternative technologies being introduced,
tape continues to be extremely popular with businesses and data
centres both large and small, evolving alongside the ever-increasing
demand for storage. Semar Majid, technical marketing executive
at Imation, discusses the importance of innovative tape technology
and why this media still remains today, an essential aspect of storing
business critical data.
The importance of tape
Tape media and cartridges have changed dramatically over the years
as improvements continue to be made across virtually every physical
parameter. This includes the thickness of substrate and magnetic
layers, size and density of magnetic particles, the track width
and number of data tracks, as well as the actual length of tape
within a cartridge - all continually increasing capacity on a single
cartridge. Over a one-year period the data spends over 8,000 hours
in the tape cartridge so it is vital for the media to safely store
and protect data over many recurring lifecycles. Precise data reading/writing
is critical and prevention of debris entering the cartridge, tape
layer slippage and protection of servo and data tracks is therefore
essential. Previous reports announcing the 'death of tape storage'
have been greatly exaggerated. While some pundits have for years,
been predicting the demise of tape as a viable storage medium, it
remains the most cost-effective, flexible and scalable medium for
high-capacity, long-term and backup data storage. Indeed, tape is
being used far beyond the traditional batch processing and backup/restore
functions such as data mining, e-commerce, legislation and globalisation.
It is becoming an increasingly integral, mission critical, interactive,
near-online storage medium. Data stored on tape is often defined
as a value-added proprietary corporate asset. Today tape technology
offers capacity and performance that, a decade ago, was inconceivable.
In terms of performance, the new technology translates to faster
access times and tape storage drives and media are generally less
expensive on a per gigabyte basis than disk or optical storage.
Storage area networking (SAN) is one of the
fastest growing trends in storage today. SAN allows users with open
systems environments to pool their storage instead of dedicating
storage for each server or application. By putting tape drives on
the storage network, any server can utilise tape resources on the
SAN allowing backup of more servers with fewer tape drives. Tape
virtualisation technology involves the use of a disk cache partitioned
into logical tape as a target for tape operation and is common practice
in many data centres today. Virtualisation allows for faster read/write
access, more efficient tape management, higher access and availability
and multi-user access to files. This technology also has the potential
to free up an enormous amount of resources including hardware, people
and floor space.
Effective tape management clearly requires
understanding the importance, the value and strategic role of tape
storage - it is vital to both to the overall operations and long-term
health of a business. The data handled by tape is the lifeblood
of the company and not just historically. In addition, tape is easily
transportable, ideal for off-site archiving and a critical part
of any corporation's disaster recovery strategy.
Half-inch tape technologies continue to be
the most cost-effective solutions for storing and backing up data
as tape cartridges continue to increase in capacity, transfer rates
and compression. Due to a substantial cost advantage over disk-based
storage, the industry has also started using tape for primary storage
of large databases, near-line record retrieval in customer service
environments and temporary database expansions. Without doubt, the
'death of tape storage' is a myth, and is set to continue to play
a pivotal role in the growing requirements for data storage, back-up
and archiving for years to come.
About Imation
Imation Corp. is a leading developer, manufacturer and supplier
of magnetic and optical removable data storage media. http://www.imation.com/
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•Date:
27th August 2004 •Region: Worldwide •Type:
Article •Topic: IT
continuity
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