As data storage needs continue to grow, many organizations are still relying on aging tape drives and media for backup and archival storage. However, these legacy solutions come with significant risks and limitations that make upgrading to modern data storage technologies a necessity. Here is an in-depth look at why it’s time to move beyond tape drives and media.
The Downsides of Using Legacy Tape Storage
Tape drives and media have been a staple of data backup and archiving for decades. However, this old technology comes with some major downsides:
Slow Performance
Tape drives have very slow data transfer speeds compared to modern storage technologies like SSDs and HDDs. Backing up or retrieving large amounts of data from tapes can be extremely time consuming. This leads to delays and productivity losses.
Limited Scalability
Tape libraries have limited capacity for growth. Most libraries max out at a few petabytes of compressed data. As data volumes continue to explode, tape storage can’t keep pace. Upgrading to a new library with more slots is costly and disruptive.
Minimal Data Protection
Tapes only offer basic data protection and redundancy. There is no native data duplication or parity. A tape failure can lead to permanent data loss if backups weren’t copied to multiple tapes. Relying solely on tapes is risky.
No Random Access
Tapes store data sequentially. To access a specific piece of data, the tape drive must scan through the entire tape. This makes it impractical to retrieve small amounts of data efficiently. HDDs and SSDs allow instant random access.
Frequency of Failure
Tapes have limited shelf life and are prone to wear, dust damage, and media errors. Tape failure rates increase substantially after 3-5 years. Maintaining a reliable tape library requires continually replacing aging cartridges.
Cost Inefficiencies
While tape capacity is inexpensive per gigabyte, the total cost of ownership is higher than disk-based storage when factoring in library maintenance, tapes, staff time, and lost productivity from slow access.
Benefits of Modern Storage Solutions
Migrating from tape to disk-based backup and archival storage offers big advantages:
Faster Backups and Restores
HDD and SSD storage offers extremely fast data transfer speeds. Backing up or retrieving data takes minutes instead of hours compared to tape.
Scalability
Disk-based backup appliances scale into the exabyte range, removing capacity limitations. Expanding capacity is as simple as adding more drives.
Advanced Data Protection
Built-in redundancy features like RAID protect against drive failures. Snapshots and replication provide an added layer of protection from data loss.
Instant Data Access
HDD and SSD storage allow instant access to any piece of data without needing to sequentially scan through the entire repository.
High Reliability
Disk drives designed for enterprise use are rated for million hour MTBFs and 5-7 year lifespans. Disk-based repositories avoid the routine maintenance tapes require.
Improved TCO
The total cost of ownership of disk backup and archive solutions is now on par with tape while delivering significantly higher performance, scalability and reliability.
Modern Tape Replacement Options
Here are some leading technologies to replace aging tape infrastructure:
Disk Backup Appliances
Turnkey disk backup appliances like Dell EMC Data Domain provide easy to manage disk-based backup repositories that start small and scale up massively. Deduplication maximizes capacity while replication ensures protection.
Cloud Backup Services
Cloud-based backup services like Amazon S3 Glacier offer virtually unlimited capacity for archival storage at very low cost. Redundancy is built-in and accessing data is fast when it is needed.
On-Prem Object Storage
Software-defined object storage like OpenIO delivers tape-like capacities with cloud-like accessibility and economics on-premises by utilizing commodity hardware.
Magnetic Tape Technology
Newer tape formats like LTO-9 offer higher capacities and throughput than aging formats and may be an option for some organizations. However, limitations around access latency, reliability, and scalability remain.
Time to Upgrade
Relying on aging tape infrastructure introduces unnecessary risks, management burdens, costs, and performance limitations. Migrating to modern disk-based backup and archive solutions offers compelling advantages around speed, scalability, data protection, and costs. For IT teams struggling with tapes, now is the time to upgrade. The benefits are clear.
