Austin Lane

This is the long-awaited third and final installment on the types of backup systems for small and medium businesses. I have run across many so-called experts in technology that think that tape backups are outdated and useless for the current business environment. In the remainder of this article, I will explore that option as well as the benefits to utilizing tape backup systems.

Tape Backup System Benefits

• Reduces Total Cost of Ownership –  Over the long haul, tape backup systems are cheaper to setup and run than any other type of backup system. While there is a larger up-front investment to purchase the tape drive, tapes, and software, this is a one time purchase. Tapes should be purchased whenever they begin wearing out, or at a specified retention period. Compared to online backups, with their monthly fees that are subject to change per their contract, you will end up paying more for the online backup over the 5 year life of the tape backup system than you would if you had purchased a tape backup system.
• Physical Security of Backup Media — Utilizing tape backups allows for greater physical security of the backup media. Backup media should be stored off site as well as on site, and in a locked safe or vault. When encryption is turned on, the data on the tapes stored in an off site safe are protected physically as well as electronically with the encryption. Online backups transmit your data across the internet, hopefully in an encrypted manner, and then are stored at a provider’s data center. During the time when the backup is running, online backups are more succeptible to hacking than tape backups. Also, with an online backup, you don’t have your data stored in multiple physical locations, so if the data center at the provider loses your backups for any reason, you suddenly have no way to recover your data if you have a catastrophic data loss at your office.
• Recovery time — Tape backup systems sport the fastest bare metal recovery times of any type of backup system. With a tape backup system, Austin Lane Managed IT Services can completely restore your server to the point it was before the backup ran. The amount of time this process takes can vary, but with current technology, it can be completed in as little as 2 hours. On the other hand, with an online backup solution, the best-case scenario is that the provider is able to overnight a hard drive to you, which could take 24 hours or more to arrive before you even begin the recovery process. If your provider doesn’t offer this option, then the amount of time needed to recover your data would be based solely on your internet connection speed, if you are even able to access the internet.

Arguments Against Tape Backup

• Tape Backup is Expensive — This is one of the most frequent arguments I hear against utilizing tape backup systems. Fortunately, this isn’t true. According to Mozy’s website for MozyPro, it costs $6.95 per month for each server you wish to backup plus $0.50 /GB of data each month. Currently, an average amount of data to backup would be about 200GB. If we were to compare features, a tape backup system user would spend less than $3,500 for a tape backup system with software. This tape backup system can backup 400GB of data without compression and will have 10 different backup media to restore from. As a result, this would require 2000 GB of data backed-up online to be equivalent to the tape backup system. At this data amount, the monthly charge for MozyPro would be $1006.95. If we want to assume just one copy of the data, it would still run $106.95 each month for MozyPro. Over 5 years, this would cost $60,417 and $6,417 respectively, while the cost of the tape backup system is holding steady at $3,500.
• Tapes are Fragile, Old Technology — I hear this often from users who want to use external hard drives instead of tapes for backup media. Unfortunately, hard drives are extremely fragile devices and are more expensive than a tape. The typical tape that can hold 400 GB of data natively runs about $40. Right now, a 500GB external hard drive is listed for $79. The truth is that tapes are the best option for small businesses with a modest amount of data to backup. They are fairly robust, and can be dropped from desk-high without damage. If you tried to drop a hard drive from that height, chances are that you would damage the drive enough to lose data on the device.

If you have any questions about backup solutions for your small or medium business, please contact Austin Lane Managed IT Services.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Backup, IT Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.