10 Reasons Tape Backup Remains Important to the Enterprise

By Chris Preimesberger

Despite all the new technologies, including the cloud, tape has been the primary means by which organizations back up and recover critical data for over 50 years.

The first tape reader/recorder had reels the size of a pizza, and its drive was as a big as a refrigerator. A single tape often reached 1,200 feet in length.

The largest digital tape available now stores up to 185TB (soon to be 220TB), versus only 10TB for the largest available disk drive. The storage economics benefits here are basically off the charts.

Automated tape systems have a proven reliability rate of more than five 9’s, or 99.999 percent, according to a recent storage industry study.

According to Gartner, disk-to-disk-to-tape should remain the predominant strategy for enterprises through the next several years, despite newer disk-based solutions gaining media attention.

Tapes now act like enormous USB drives, capable of transporting tremendous volumes of data every day.

Tape has a shelf life of 30 years, which far surpasses the typical 7- to 10-year period for the spinning disk, whose always-on technology contributes to notably higher energy costs.

Tape and cloud-based archives should be friends, not foes. When companies craft a strategy that balances both their benefits, they often see measurable results.

Tape has proven its value as a reliable method for recovering data in the best and worst of circumstances. In other words, it’s always got your back. It has helped many companies recover from natural and man-made disasters, breaches, viruses and other security violations.

There are big things in store for tape, as future generations have already been planned, and each will take the capacity of tape to previously unseen levels, industry analysts believe.