"Homer Simpson" wrote in message
...
Why do you need whitepapers on the efficacy of tape backups? Isn't it
obvious that having an off-site tape backup is better than having no
off-site backup?

Don't try to imply that offsite and tape are the same thing. They are NOT!

Here's my advice:

First, I'm the IT director for a company of about 1000 people. We have
approx 20 backups at any given time. My strategy is having an on-site
backup server located as far as possible from the server room (much like
your RAID 5 system in the basement) that keeps a full backup of everything
every day of the week (i.e. 7 full copies), plus weekly copies going back
6
weeks (6 more full copies). All of the daily backups are also copied to
tape and taken off-site (my house, actually).

Not a professional location for a 1000 person company.

The backup server is great for fast, random-access restores, but obviously
won't be useful if the building is destroyed. The tape backups are
periodically restored to an off-site server to (1) verify the tapes are
still working, and (2) provide off-site random-access to the data (albeit
an older copy) just in case.

Sure, tapes are not the most reliable backup medium ever invented, but
they're certainly not worthless. When disaster strikes, every little bit
helps, and it would be prudent to have a variety of choices to restore
from. Maybe your boss can see the logic in that? Keep the RAID 5 server
in the basement, but also keep off-site tapes or removable drives, etc...

Do a real cost analysis and the a cost-risk-benefit analysis and very likely
you'll find that all that is mostly wasted effort and clearly old think.