In the beginning that was tape and we all got used to it. While tape is widespread in its use even to this day organizations that need to protect ever-growing amounts of mission critical data each day are finding that tape just can’t keep up. All the solutions to the tape backup problem involved backing up to disk. With no tape drives involved, and no linear tapes than would need to be traversed, backups and restores to disk are commonly 10 times faster than those to a tape library.
If the backup-to-disk target emulates industry-standard tape libraries and tape drives, then the backup software that is currently being used up can provide a smooth transition for existing personnel who don’t have to learn new backup software or chain should there are procedures which are proven and ingrained.
When choosing a backup-to-disk solution to replace a tape backup solution there are two ways to go. The first is to purchase an all-in-one appliance that contains CPU, memory, and some amount of storage. Appliances come in various sizes. Unfortunately getting a perfect fit on day one and having the backup-to-disk target grow as needs grow over time are challenging. Once the backup-to-disk appliance fills up, a disruptive and costly forklift upgrade to a new appliance is required.
The alternative is to purchase software that can be run on any industry-standard servers to create a backup-to-disk target that can be accessed through iSCSI or Fibre Channel protocols, commonly known as a virtual tape library. Small sites need a smaller virtual tape library while larger sites need more compute power to perform deduplication and far more storage.
When it comes to offsite protection of backup data, rather than making copies of the backup tapes, backup administrators prefer to send the data to a remote site or cloud for offsite protection. Asynchronous replication is perfect for this application and as than a proven solution for years.
Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to modernize backup operations to meet demanding backup windows without having to back up to tape libraries or tape drives.
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