Backup and the MLB All-Star Game by Jay Livens

This past Tuesday was Major League Baseball's (MLB) All-Star Game. The game, as always, was a spectacle with big names from both leagues participating and was surrounded with other festivities like the Homerun Derby. Yet, with all the hype, the game was disappointing. It is not that the players aren't talented, but as I watched, I questioned the relevance of the game both to the audience and the players. As the game progressed, my mind wandered to work-related topics (no surprise, there) and I was struck with a commonality between the All-Star game and data backup.

The All-Star game is a major sporting event; however, the ratings trend suggests a steady decline in interest. I believe that this is a reflection of changing viewer dynamics. Twenty years ago, the game was critical because it provided the primary and in some cases only opportunity for baseball fans to see the top players from other divisions and/or geographies. But the world changed. On-demand access to virtually limitless MLB games and highlights has removed the barriers of consuming baseball and viewers now go elsewhere to view their favorite players and teams. (Data is courtesy of the Baseball Almanac.)

But what does this have to do with backup? I am glad you asked. Backup used to be a technology that was defined in a very specific way copy all data to tape. This was a powerful and relatively simple use model which worked well in practice. In many respects, the historic tape-only era was analogous to the time when the All-Star game was highly relevant because it was one solution that was universally supported and used (or watched). Just like there are new ways to watch baseball, the world of backup has changed and there are many new alternative approaches to protect information. It is not uncommon to visit a customer environment and see multiple technologies in use including snapshots, replication, local mirroring, tape backup, disk backup and cloud backup. Whether each of these solutions is actually a backup is a bigger question that is beyond the scope of this blog, but it is clear that many customers view them as alternatives to traditional data protection. Clearly not all of these provide the same robust reliability, low dollar per GB and portability as traditional tape solutions, but in many cases these solutions may be viewed as good enough. Thus, just like our baseball viewing habits have changed so have our backup methodologies.

Looking at the chart above, you might think that I am implying that the importance of backup follows the trend of TV ratings for the All-Star game, but in fact, the opposite is true. Simply put, data is more important than ever today and we are generating ever larger quantities of it. The net result is that the process of protecting and recovering our information is even more important today than ever before and its importance will continue to increase. IT experts must ensure that is safely backed and recovered regardless of protection strategy. Unlike the All-Star game which we can simply turn off when it gets boring, there is no turning off the criticality of data protection to today's corporations.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2013/service-lines/data-backup-and-recov...
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