Tape storage technology has been receiving serious competition from disk storage technology for the past few years. Decrease in disk drive prices has been a major contributor. However tape still remains the number one choice for data protection. This however is changing in favour of disks. However can tapes be entirely eliminated from a backup environment ?
A few factors still favor tape:
Investment in tape infrastructure:
Tape technology has been around for more than 30 years now. Administrators
have built policies, budgets etc. around tape technology. While newer
procurement will involve disk technologies, the existing tape infra will be
hard to discard
Price:
While disk prices have lowered significantly over the last few years, the
price per gigabyte is still higher than that of tape.
Longer lifespan:
Tapes have no moving parts. This makes them easier to move and ship around.
Also tapes have a longer shelf life of many years
The shift however is definitely towards disks and over the years we should see fewer new tape installations. However elimination of tape from your infrastructure is hard to visualize
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.