Once upon a time, tape backup was the only answer for a Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy. In many cases today, we have found this strategy incomplete and not successful. Often times, tapes are stored next to the system, stored in a closet, in the trunk of a car, or other places where they are unprotected from potential damage and not available if there were a local or regional disaster (i.e. flood, hurricane, tornado, office fire, earthquake, car accidents, house fire, etc.). Even though tape backup is reliable, tape media is not always replaced every 2 years (as recommended) and can wear out.
Questions for you to consider: When was the last time you tested your tape backup, to make sure everything is backed up? And when loaded to a test system, is your tape backup capable of running your operations?
For most of our customers tape backup continues to have its place in their DR plan. With changing times and technologies, we should be enhancing our DR plan to include new advanced technologies as the 1st line of defense in case of a disaster. Many of our customers who have assessed their DR plans have elected to use a Virtual Tape Library (VTL) to manage their backups and use tape backup as a second layer of protection. Most VTL solutions are faster, require less downtime to backup, offer the ability to dedupe your data as it backs up, offer options for encrypting data, and doesn’t require additional software. Also, most VTL solutions are compatible with the save commands you already know and work with; IPL, SAVSYS, SAVLIB, SAV, SAVDLO, and tools like BRMS & Robot/SAVE. VTL’s can add another layer of protection by replicating backups offsite to another location or to the cloud.
There are a wide variety of ways to enhance your DR Plan and you can rely on Arbor Solutions to help you determine what is best for your environment. Arbor Solutions is partnered with VTL manufacturers and cloud partners to offer VTL implementations, tape recovery testing, offsite backup replication, Disaster Recovery As A Service (DRAAS), and High Availability (HA).
Give us a call or send us an email to start the conversation about modernizing your DR and Backup plan.
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