Click here to visit NSISERV.COM
TECHNOLOGY SERVICE NEWS
QUARTERLY REPORT July 2005, Vol. 2, Issue 3 ©2005

Backup Evolves
Companies are moving from tape to tapeless for “Data Protection”

As data growth explodes, reliable data backup and restoration are becoming increasingly vital. Around the clock business operations, catastrophes, lawsuits, and federal regulations are all combining to make backup a higher priority than ever before.

Survey March 2005
Enterprise Strategy Group
163 respondents

Half reported tape limitations have affected their ability to backup and recover on schedule.
“Backup reliability is now at the forefront,” said Bill Thompson, Vice President of NSI.
Thompson

“Backup reliability is now at the forefront,” said Bill Thompson, Vice President of NSI. “Our people are hearing about it everywhere they go, and what they’re hearing is tape is not keeping pace.”

One result has been the emergence of tapeless storage as a backup alternative. With a tapeless solution backups can be run on schedule, more data can be archived, and backup/recovery is much faster.

Some companies that have switched to disk-based backup systems have found they can now backup fifty servers in the same amount of time it used to take to back up one.

In the past, disk backup has been viewed as more expensive than tape, but acquisition costs are only part of the story.

“The operational and administrative costs of tape must also be factored in,” Thompson said. “Tape requires a lot of labor, so although tapeless may cost more up front, the total cost from a management perspective is much less than with tape.”

IBM Tapeless Backup Solution

NSI helped IBM create a new suite of tapeless backup solutions to address the needs of small and medium sized businesses. The IBM xSeries Solution for Tapeless Backup is 200-300% faster than tape, it has a longer archiving and storage life, there are no cumbersome multi-tape issues for larger backups, and recovery is very fast, making it easy to find and recover individual files.