Tape Backups are NEVER Reliable - EVER

Okay Folks:



Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any dumber.



Yes, I am cross posting here but the recommendations for such are only in
the case where the subject matter concerns a bunch of groups. I think this
qualifies as such.



I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable". This director had a
"consultant" come in to back up his assertion, a consultant who asked to
check his email via his "AOL" account (indeed, his email address is
something like ).



Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".



So we now we have a huge, Raid 5 server that has a pretty decent amount of
capacity and are using a company's software to that backups are quick and
slick. Cool, my life is so much easier. But thats it. . . we do NOT have
an offsite backup, we do NOT have another inhouse SDLT tape backup drive and
the entire compliment of our backup resides ONLY on this single Network
Attached Raid 5 server. Sure, its housed in a closet somewhere, but what if
we had a catastrophic failure, how about a huge fire, or a plane hitting us.



See, this "consultant" has "clients" in Manhattan who have their offices on
the 89th floor, but their Tapeless Backup servers in the basement. Errr, is
it me or do basements and the safes that may be contained therein get buried
under rubble, or are there some group of IT specialists out there who
specialize in nothing but digging out backup servers from the rubble.



As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible, reliable
sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or otherwise.
This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a bottomless pit, but
the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the "director" who, along with
their "consultant" has them believing that the system we currently have in
place is relable.



Normally I would just shut my face since my life is a lot easier in terms of
backup, hell, set it and forget it is the name of the game. However, I know
full well that if we ever got hit with a major disaster the "director" would
be off on his vacation while the rest of us poor slobs had to restore data
from God knows where. Oh, and if we were to get hit by a brand new,
spanking virus because the "director's" kid came in and did so, well, our
Network Attached Storage pig would also suffer.



In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type of
white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape backup
drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving are not "unreliable"
, they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of the person who is
responsible for them.



Oh, and for the record, dear friends of mine swear by SDLT tape drives and
the like, but I cannot bring an IT manager from CitiCorp into this
discussion because, since he is a friend of mine, his opinion is not
"neutral".



Please help



Roger.

In article ,
Jolly Student wrote:
Okay Folks:



Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any dumber.



Yes, I am cross posting here but the recommendations for such are only in
the case where the subject matter concerns a bunch of groups. I think this
qualifies as such.



I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable". This director had a
"consultant" come in to back up his assertion, a consultant who asked to
check his email via his "AOL" account (indeed, his email address is
something like ).



Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".



So we now we have a huge, Raid 5 server that has a pretty decent amount of
capacity and are using a company's software to that backups are quick and
slick. Cool, my life is so much easier. But thats it. . . we do NOT have
an offsite backup, we do NOT have another inhouse SDLT tape backup drive and
the entire compliment of our backup resides ONLY on this single Network
Attached Raid 5 server. Sure, its housed in a closet somewhere, but what if
we had a catastrophic failure, how about a huge fire, or a plane hitting us.



See, this "consultant" has "clients" in Manhattan who have their offices on
the 89th floor, but their Tapeless Backup servers in the basement. Errr, is
it me or do basements and the safes that may be contained therein get buried
under rubble, or are there some group of IT specialists out there who
specialize in nothing but digging out backup servers from the rubble.



As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible, reliable
sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or otherwise.
This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a bottomless pit, but
the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the "director" who, along with
their "consultant" has them believing that the system we currently have in
place is relable.



Normally I would just shut my face since my life is a lot easier in terms of
backup, hell, set it and forget it is the name of the game. However, I know
full well that if we ever got hit with a major disaster the "director" would
be off on his vacation while the rest of us poor slobs had to restore data
from God knows where. Oh, and if we were to get hit by a brand new,
spanking virus because the "director's" kid came in and did so, well, our
Network Attached Storage pig would also suffer.



In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type of
white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape backup
drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving are not "unreliable"
, they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of the person who is
responsible for them.



Oh, and for the record, dear friends of mine swear by SDLT tape drives and
the like, but I cannot bring an IT manager from CitiCorp into this
discussion because, since he is a friend of mine, his opinion is not
"neutral".



Please help


My take on this is _nothing_ is reliable (as in never screws up).
(cite: Rules, by Murphy)

Backup and contingency plans need to assume that two or three things
can go bad, in the worst possible way, and the the decision as to how
much (or little) risk to accept is to be made by senior management,
based on cost/risk tradeoffs made by staff for him..

Good tape equipment, properly maintained and used, is great but the
dog could eat your only good backup cartridge.




--
Al Dykes
-----------
adykes at p a n i x . c o m

Dear Al:

Your wisdom is appreciated and its obvious that you and I have chewed on
some of the same dirt and may have even had MRE's in the same foxhole
(Desert Storm?)

Yes, putting all of your eggs in one basket, etc., is foolish. My problem
here is not to pull a bunch of citations from learned colleagues like
yourself, but to have white papers and the like lined up so that the most
obvious can be pointed out.

Basically, I am dealing with somebody who believes that they are the only
one who is ever right, and yet when something fails because of his fault, he
is suddenly not available or has to go off to a kids recital, or has a dr's
appointment, or otherwise has some other excuse while the rest of the IT
foot soldiers have to make up for his errors.

Regards,

Roger

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 20:39:45 GMT, "Jolly Student"
wrote:

Dear Al:

Your wisdom is appreciated and its obvious that you and I have chewed on
some of the same dirt and may have even had MRE's in the same foxhole
(Desert Storm?)

Yes, putting all of your eggs in one basket, etc., is foolish. My problem
here is not to pull a bunch of citations from learned colleagues like
yourself, but to have white papers and the like lined up so that the most
obvious can be pointed out.

Basically, I am dealing with somebody who believes that they are the only
one who is ever right, and yet when something fails because of his fault, he
is suddenly not available or has to go off to a kids recital, or has a dr's
appointment, or otherwise has some other excuse while the rest of the IT
foot soldiers have to make up for his errors.

Regards,

Roger


Start looking for another job and soak up the sun while you can.
These guys are going to eat it sooner or later and if you're still
around you will take the blame, somehow someway.
Even if you have a dated e-mail showing your recommendations and how
this course of action will lead to the company going under.

Sell any stock you have and get the hell out.

But to address your question:
I don't know of any white papers that are written for someone so
idiotic. All I've seen assume you actually want to recover from a
disaster. And most of those assume you some semblance of
understanding when it comes to reliability and recoverability.

If "the director" looks at you like a bug when you try to explain what
will happen in the event of a plane/earthquake/virus then you've
already lost. Unless you can get the ear of someone further up you're
screwed.

Good luck on that, I'd be interested to hear how it pans out.

~F

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Clinging to sanity, Jolly Student mumbled in his beard:

I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable".

I guess if he wants hold to that opinion, then let him. Don't try to argue
on that. Instead, argue on the number of failures it takes to shut the IT
down.

Like, no offsite backup -- fire at the place and we're out.
Backup server's filesystem is online -- bug/virus eats filesystem and we^re
out

etc.

Convince him that (using tape, RAID, whatever) he doesn't want a system
where one single failure can take the company out. If he wants to do
offsite backup with RAID storage over network, fine. Tape or disk or
whatever doesn't matter, number of failures to kill the IT infrastructure
is the thing that matters here.

(sorry, I know this won't really be ammo for you as it's not in a pdf with a
good logo on top, but it's the best I can do)

cheers
- -- vbi



- --
featured link: http://fortytwo.ch/smtp

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: get my key from http://fortytwo.ch/gpg/92082481

iKcEARECAGcFAkDUHGlgGmh0dHA6Ly9mb3J0eXR3by5jaC9sZW dhbC9ncGcvZW1h
aWwuMjAwMjA4MjI/dmVyc2lvbj0xLjUmbWQ1c3VtPTVkZmY4NjhkMTE4NDMyNzYw
NzFiMjVlYjcwMDZkYTNlAAoJEIukMYvlp/fW4n4An1pGXas2XQ/okitb7+/iikIN
dB/5AJ92QlhWHDjekmcplswrD8HyNRZgpA==
=0ASY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Thanks to all who have responded with the obvious, common sense approach to
this matter, ERGO, that tape backups, or some other offsite type of backup
system is a necessity.

What I forgot to mention here is that I am dealing with "Educators" who are
really, really dense when it comes to anything having to do with technology.
Essentially, you have one director who feels that tape backups are not
reliable, ever, period and that experience is based upon his personal
feelings or the feelings of others who are just plain too lazy to set up
some type of disaster mechanism off site be it tape, hard drive, magic
F***ING oxide pixie-dust media or what have you.

I know guys and gals, I know. . . just relying on stuff on site no matter
what is just plain dumb. Even for those of you out there who may think that
tapes do fail from time to time (of course they do), you would have to say
that if you regularly check the tapes, the backup devices, perform routine
restorations and all of the other "Duhhhh-basics" you are going to be in
better shape.

My "thing" is wanting to walk off-site with a tape or two in my briefcase,
come home and stick them in my firebox on a rotating basis. If a plan
decided to land on our facilty, or if a nicely placed bolt of lightning hit
the building and used the network cable as a means to send its electron
offspring to to their worst, we would be screwed, the director would go on
break or hide their head in the sand and the grunts would have to be the
ones doing the clean up. Except that, in this case, all of us grunts are in
agreement that we will go so very high up in our chain of command that we
will let them know this was preventable and produce a plethora of
documentation despite the "director's" 'feelings that tapes are never
reliable".

In short, I know that all of you here are credible sources, Jesus, its like
telling you to keep a spare tire in the trunk of your car or to wear your
body armor when you are going into Bagdad, but what I cannot convey enough
to you guys is that I need the ****, the goods, in the form of papers.

Theres got to be some white papers out there, hell, I got calls to MIS
buddies of mine as far as the NSA asking if they have anything along the
lines of "duhhh, you better backup off site" white papers to show this
director.

I can't believe that its come to this. That there are those in our industry
that are so stupid and are permitted to be in charge of people like us.

Anyways, enough rambling (jokes about breaks, drinks, drugs, etc., will be
heartily laughed at, I assure you), but I think that if such a paper or set
of papers could be found, perhaps some other poor slobs out there besides me
will be able to sigh when a restoration is performed and not fry when they
are into their fifteenth cup of coffee while the supervisor is home banging
his mother up the butt.

Thanks for your time,

Rog
"Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder" wrote in
message ...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Clinging to sanity, Jolly Student mumbled in his beard:

I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology
Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable".

I guess if he wants hold to that opinion, then let him. Don't try to argue
on that. Instead, argue on the number of failures it takes to shut the IT
down.

Like, no offsite backup -- fire at the place and we're out.
Backup server's filesystem is online -- bug/virus eats filesystem and
we^re
out

etc.

Convince him that (using tape, RAID, whatever) he doesn't want a system
where one single failure can take the company out. If he wants to do
offsite backup with RAID storage over network, fine. Tape or disk or
whatever doesn't matter, number of failures to kill the IT infrastructure
is the thing that matters here.

(sorry, I know this won't really be ammo for you as it's not in a pdf with
a
good logo on top, but it's the best I can do)

cheers
- -- vbi



- --
featured link: http://fortytwo.ch/smtp

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: get my key from http://fortytwo.ch/gpg/92082481

iKcEARECAGcFAkDUHGlgGmh0dHA6Ly9mb3J0eXR3by5jaC9sZW dhbC9ncGcvZW1h
aWwuMjAwMjA4MjI/dmVyc2lvbj0xLjUmbWQ1c3VtPTVkZmY4NjhkMTE4NDMyNzYw
NzFiMjVlYjcwMDZkYTNlAAoJEIukMYvlp/fW4n4An1pGXas2XQ/okitb7+/iikIN
dB/5AJ92QlhWHDjekmcplswrD8HyNRZgpA==
=0ASY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

"Jolly Student" wrote in message
et...
Okay Folks:

Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any
dumber.

Yes, I am cross posting here but the recommendations for such are only in
the case where the subject matter concerns a bunch of groups.

Your cross posts did not appear. What were the other NGs?

I think this
qualifies as such.

I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable".


For those of us who have been around for quite awhile that statement is very
accurate. Tape backups have never been really relaible because tape
technology is inherrently unrelaible.

This director had a
"consultant" come in to back up his assertion, a consultant who asked to
check his email via his "AOL" account (indeed, his email address is
something like ).

Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".

They are right HOWEVER that does not mean that tapes have no useful purpose
in any situation.

So we now we have a huge, Raid 5 server that has a pretty decent amount of
capacity and are using a company's software to that backups are quick and
slick. Cool, my life is so much easier. But thats it. . . we do NOT have
an offsite backup, we do NOT have another inhouse SDLT tape backup drive
and
the entire compliment of our backup resides ONLY on this single Network
Attached Raid 5 server. Sure, its housed in a closet somewhere, but what
if
we had a catastrophic failure, how about a huge fire, or a plane hitting
us.

The issue of tapes and offsite backups have little to do with one another.
Offsite backups are generally mandatory.

See, this "consultant" has "clients" in Manhattan who have their offices
on
the 89th floor, but their Tapeless Backup servers in the basement.

Basement is ok but basement of a building three blocks away is better and
best of all is in a granite mine on a different continent....well no best is
in quantum entangled storage in another galaxyg.

Errr, is
it me or do basements and the safes that may be contained therein get
buried
under rubble, or are there some group of IT specialists out there who
specialize in nothing but digging out backup servers from the rubble.

It's all a cost risk issue. There may be an inexpensive high bandwidth link
easily available to the tapeless backup server in the basement but the link
gets vastly more expensive as the distance grows. For instance generally
such a link within a building has no regulatory requirements except for fire
code on the wires themselves. Run that same link to a building three blocks
away may get into a whole bunch of regulated arenas and costs.

Tapeless backup is clearly the way to go in most situations.

As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible, reliable
sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or
otherwise.

You wont find any really smart such claims as tapes just aren't the answer
in many cases.

Backup has little to do with tape.
Backup criteria include:
Offsite. How far is the question?
How many independent(in both number and location) offsite backup copies are
really needed? Many of the existant backup cycle strategies come from tape
technology and are often just bunk for pure backup strategy.
How does backup strategy fit with the overall recovery strategy. If the
whole 90 story building collapses then do you have a recovery strategy
whereby the business can start again in two days in temp facilities in
NJ(was the building occupied when it collapsed?)? Maybe the backups in a
hard basement can be dug out faster than the business can start functioning
again?

This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a bottomless pit,
but
the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the "director" who, along with
their "consultant" has them believing that the system we currently have in
place is relable.

If well designed it IS rather reliable.

Normally I would just shut my face since my life is a lot easier in terms
of
backup, hell, set it and forget it is the name of the game. However, I
know
full well that if we ever got hit with a major disaster the "director"
would
be off on his vacation while the rest of us poor slobs had to restore data
from God knows where. Oh, and if we were to get hit by a brand new,
spanking virus because the "director's" kid came in and did so, well, our
Network Attached Storage pig would also suffer.

Not if well designed. The 'backup server' I've been talking about is a
server specifically designed for backups and nothing else and therefore
would be highly immue from such external attacks.

In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type of
white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape backup
drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving

Tapes have NEVER been considered a viable "long term archiving" medium.

are not "unreliable"
, they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of the person who
is
responsible for them.

Reliability is always the sum of all such factors and any backup strategy
should look more towards the least common denominator...Murphy....an
automatic corrollary to Murphiy's law is that tapes are unrelaible. The
proof of that is the incredible cycle strategies that have developed over
the years for tape backups. That comes from the fact that too frequently
the tape isn't usable for any one of a number of reasons.

Oh, and for the record, dear friends of mine swear by SDLT tape drives and
the like, but I cannot bring an IT manager from CitiCorp into this
discussion because, since he is a friend of mine, his opinion is not
"neutral".

Tapes are on their way out in many situations(NOT ALL).

For all modest configuration servers and workstations I'm telling folks to
use removeable SATA HDs in trays with good carrying cases for offsite
backup. Firewire or USB2 is also viable.

"Jolly Student" writes:

Thanks to all who have responded with the obvious, common sense
approach to this matter, ERGO, that tape backups, or some other
offsite type of backup system is a necessity.

Run, do not walk to a comp.risks archive and wallow in over a decade
of idiocy, screwups and ****-up by the numbers(again). Select as many
as you can stomach...

Rule 1: A backup does not exist until it has been properly restored.

Rule 2: Backups are not crispy and toasty. If it is in the building,
it is not a backup.

Rule 3: The primary function of a fire safe is to provide a cool quiet
place for all the steam and acidic fumes to condense and concentrate.

Rule 4: It will never happen to you. Disasters only happen at previous
places of employment.

Subrule 1b: You DO have a spare drive don't you...

--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda.
West Australia 6076
comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.

Jolly Student, you and I are cut from the same mold. You try to make life
better for all, but are stymied by stupidity.

You will go far, but not at that company.
Do what you can, but keep packing your bags with successes that you can
point to when you apply for next job which will be at a company with more
reasonable people.

Ask this at your next team meeting: If this company can pack all those
numb-nuts into one room why can't they pack the important company data onto
a single backup tape?

Of course, that is a stupid thing to say, and you will be labeled a
controversial oddball.
But at least you can practice giving them the finger each time your career
takes another flush down the toilet.

I would like to know how it goes.

"Ron Reaugh" wrote in message
...

"Jolly Student" wrote in message
et...
Okay Folks:

Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any
dumber.

Yes, I am cross posting here but the recommendations for such are only
in
the case where the subject matter concerns a bunch of groups.

Your cross posts did not appear. What were the other NGs?

I think this
qualifies as such.

I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology
Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable".


For those of us who have been around for quite awhile that statement is
very
accurate. Tape backups have never been really relaible because tape
technology is inherrently unrelaible.

This director had a
"consultant" come in to back up his assertion, a consultant who asked to
check his email via his "AOL" account (indeed, his email address is
something like ).

Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".

They are right HOWEVER that does not mean that tapes have no useful
purpose
in any situation.

So we now we have a huge, Raid 5 server that has a pretty decent amount
of
capacity and are using a company's software to that backups are quick
and
slick. Cool, my life is so much easier. But thats it. . . we do NOT
have
an offsite backup, we do NOT have another inhouse SDLT tape backup drive
and
the entire compliment of our backup resides ONLY on this single Network
Attached Raid 5 server. Sure, its housed in a closet somewhere, but
what
if
we had a catastrophic failure, how about a huge fire, or a plane hitting
us.

The issue of tapes and offsite backups have little to do with one another.
Offsite backups are generally mandatory.

See, this "consultant" has "clients" in Manhattan who have their offices
on
the 89th floor, but their Tapeless Backup servers in the basement.

Basement is ok but basement of a building three blocks away is better and
best of all is in a granite mine on a different continent....well no best
is
in quantum entangled storage in another galaxyg.

Errr, is
it me or do basements and the safes that may be contained therein get
buried
under rubble, or are there some group of IT specialists out there who
specialize in nothing but digging out backup servers from the rubble.

It's all a cost risk issue. There may be an inexpensive high bandwidth
link
easily available to the tapeless backup server in the basement but the
link
gets vastly more expensive as the distance grows. For instance generally
such a link within a building has no regulatory requirements except for
fire
code on the wires themselves. Run that same link to a building three
blocks
away may get into a whole bunch of regulated arenas and costs.

Tapeless backup is clearly the way to go in most situations.

As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible,
reliable
sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or
otherwise.

You wont find any really smart such claims as tapes just aren't the answer
in many cases.

Backup has little to do with tape.
Backup criteria include:
Offsite. How far is the question?
How many independent(in both number and location) offsite backup copies
are
really needed? Many of the existant backup cycle strategies come from
tape
technology and are often just bunk for pure backup strategy.
How does backup strategy fit with the overall recovery strategy. If the
whole 90 story building collapses then do you have a recovery strategy
whereby the business can start again in two days in temp facilities in
NJ(was the building occupied when it collapsed?)? Maybe the backups in a
hard basement can be dug out faster than the business can start
functioning
again?

This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a bottomless pit,
but
the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the "director" who, along
with
their "consultant" has them believing that the system we currently have
in
place is relable.

If well designed it IS rather reliable.

Normally I would just shut my face since my life is a lot easier in
terms
of
backup, hell, set it and forget it is the name of the game. However, I
know
full well that if we ever got hit with a major disaster the "director"
would
be off on his vacation while the rest of us poor slobs had to restore
data
from God knows where. Oh, and if we were to get hit by a brand new,
spanking virus because the "director's" kid came in and did so, well,
our
Network Attached Storage pig would also suffer.

Not if well designed. The 'backup server' I've been talking about is a
server specifically designed for backups and nothing else and therefore
would be highly immue from such external attacks.

In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type
of
white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape backup
drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving

Tapes have NEVER been considered a viable "long term archiving" medium.

are not "unreliable"
, they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of the person
who
is
responsible for them.

Reliability is always the sum of all such factors and any backup strategy
should look more towards the least common denominator...Murphy....an
automatic corrollary to Murphiy's law is that tapes are unrelaible. The
proof of that is the incredible cycle strategies that have developed over
the years for tape backups. That comes from the fact that too frequently
the tape isn't usable for any one of a number of reasons.

Oh, and for the record, dear friends of mine swear by SDLT tape drives
and
the like, but I cannot bring an IT manager from CitiCorp into this
discussion because, since he is a friend of mine, his opinion is not
"neutral".

Tapes are on their way out in many situations(NOT ALL).

For all modest configuration servers and workstations I'm telling folks to
use removeable SATA HDs in trays with good carrying cases for offsite
backup. Firewire or USB2 is also viable.

Ron:

Thank you for your words of wisdom. I personally like the fast no tape
system but the bug up my butt is that we dont have anything off site. If
you told me to get this or that and that its more reliable than tape, but
that I can TAKE IT OFF SITE, I dont care if it looks like a barbie lunchbox.
.. . sign me up.

Do you have any info on credible removable SATA HDs in trays and good
carrying cases for offsite backup. Right now I have a pair of Imega 280gb
fire wire drives that I am trying to use for the purpose, but they have
their issues. I still like the convenience of tape on account of size, but
if you are telling me there is something more reliable than tape and that
has the offsite features I am looking for, great, no sweat, I will do it.

I fear that the director will, however, then have another excuse because I
think the issue here is that he just wants to be right. My fear is
protecting our organization from a major disaster and although I am being
overly cautious, I really like the idea of taking a full backup home with me
on a Monday (after full backup on Sunday) and then the baby backups the
other days for the sake of, well, just in case something happens, then its a
pain in the butt, but not a total disaster.

These removable devices that are not tape based, how are they in terms of
ease of portability and size. Well, I know they will not likely be cheap,
but, well. Shoot sir.

Thank you for your time and wisdom.



"Jolly Student" wrote in message
et...
Okay Folks:

Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any
dumber.

Yes, I am cross posting here but the recommendations for such are only
in
the case where the subject matter concerns a bunch of groups.

Your cross posts did not appear. What were the other NGs?

I think this
qualifies as such.

I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology
Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable".


For those of us who have been around for quite awhile that statement is
very
accurate. Tape backups have never been really relaible because tape
technology is inherrently unrelaible.

This director had a
"consultant" come in to back up his assertion, a consultant who asked to
check his email via his "AOL" account (indeed, his email address is
something like ).

Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".

They are right HOWEVER that does not mean that tapes have no useful
purpose
in any situation.

So we now we have a huge, Raid 5 server that has a pretty decent amount
of
capacity and are using a company's software to that backups are quick
and
slick. Cool, my life is so much easier. But thats it. . . we do NOT
have
an offsite backup, we do NOT have another inhouse SDLT tape backup drive
and
the entire compliment of our backup resides ONLY on this single Network
Attached Raid 5 server. Sure, its housed in a closet somewhere, but
what
if
we had a catastrophic failure, how about a huge fire, or a plane hitting
us.

The issue of tapes and offsite backups have little to do with one another.
Offsite backups are generally mandatory.

See, this "consultant" has "clients" in Manhattan who have their offices
on
the 89th floor, but their Tapeless Backup servers in the basement.

Basement is ok but basement of a building three blocks away is better and
best of all is in a granite mine on a different continent....well no best
is
in quantum entangled storage in another galaxyg.

Errr, is
it me or do basements and the safes that may be contained therein get
buried
under rubble, or are there some group of IT specialists out there who
specialize in nothing but digging out backup servers from the rubble.

It's all a cost risk issue. There may be an inexpensive high bandwidth
link
easily available to the tapeless backup server in the basement but the
link
gets vastly more expensive as the distance grows. For instance generally
such a link within a building has no regulatory requirements except for
fire
code on the wires themselves. Run that same link to a building three
blocks
away may get into a whole bunch of regulated arenas and costs.

Tapeless backup is clearly the way to go in most situations.

As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible,
reliable
sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or
otherwise.

You wont find any really smart such claims as tapes just aren't the answer
in many cases.

Backup has little to do with tape.
Backup criteria include:
Offsite. How far is the question?
How many independent(in both number and location) offsite backup copies
are
really needed? Many of the existant backup cycle strategies come from
tape
technology and are often just bunk for pure backup strategy.
How does backup strategy fit with the overall recovery strategy. If the
whole 90 story building collapses then do you have a recovery strategy
whereby the business can start again in two days in temp facilities in
NJ(was the building occupied when it collapsed?)? Maybe the backups in a
hard basement can be dug out faster than the business can start
functioning
again?

This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a bottomless pit,
but
the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the "director" who, along
with
their "consultant" has them believing that the system we currently have
in
place is relable.

If well designed it IS rather reliable.

Normally I would just shut my face since my life is a lot easier in
terms
of
backup, hell, set it and forget it is the name of the game. However, I
know
full well that if we ever got hit with a major disaster the "director"
would
be off on his vacation while the rest of us poor slobs had to restore
data
from God knows where. Oh, and if we were to get hit by a brand new,
spanking virus because the "director's" kid came in and did so, well,
our
Network Attached Storage pig would also suffer.

Not if well designed. The 'backup server' I've been talking about is a
server specifically designed for backups and nothing else and therefore
would be highly immue from such external attacks.

In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type
of
white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape backup
drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving

Tapes have NEVER been considered a viable "long term archiving" medium.

are not "unreliable"
, they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of the person
who
is
responsible for them.

Reliability is always the sum of all such factors and any backup strategy
should look more towards the least common denominator...Murphy....an
automatic corrollary to Murphiy's law is that tapes are unrelaible. The
proof of that is the incredible cycle strategies that have developed over
the years for tape backups. That comes from the fact that too frequently
the tape isn't usable for any one of a number of reasons.

Oh, and for the record, dear friends of mine swear by SDLT tape drives
and
the like, but I cannot bring an IT manager from CitiCorp into this
discussion because, since he is a friend of mine, his opinion is not
"neutral".

Tapes are on their way out in many situations(NOT ALL).

For all modest configuration servers and workstations I'm telling folks to
use removeable SATA HDs in trays with good carrying cases for offsite
backup. Firewire or USB2 is also viable.