I am always looking for different viewpoints and perspectives on how tape technology is being used and its future. I recently came across this piece by Mark Peters and Jane Wright from the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) entitled Tape Usage is Declining But It Shouldn't Be. The research brief makes some interesting points and I wanted to highlight some data that resonated with me.
First, let me start by saying that I find most tape-centric articles amusing. Many of them are sponsored by disk vendors who uniformly like to state that tape is obsolete. The underlying message is that tape should be replaced with something better (translation: Expensive disk). Obviously, from a disk vendor viewpoint they see dollar signs in this prophecy, but is it really good for customers? I think not, which is a position I share with most industry analysts. There is no doubt that tape's role has been changing, but it is far from dead.
The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)'s research suggests that tape is still widely used and found that about 92% of companies with over 100TB of data use the technology in their environment. Tape's adoption is less in smaller environments (75%) which makes sense because these smaller environments probably have a significantly reduced investment in tape hardware, processes and knowledge and thus may leverage other technologies like cloud or disk.
The report all provides some interesting insights into tape usage particularly as it relates to onsite and offsite tape usage. The table below indicates the primary tape usage models of companies with less than 100TB of data versus those with more.
Less than 100TB
Greater than 100TB
We use tape to store backup data offsite 55%
53%
We use tape to store archive data offsite 42%
52%
We use tape to store backup data onsite 48%
44%
We use tape to store archive data onsite 25%
32%
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2012
It is interesting to note that smaller environments rely more heavily on tape for both local and offsite storage than larger. Conversely, the data indicates that users with greater than 100TB of data use tape in a more archive centric. These statistics clearly indicate that tape is in widespread use in both larger and smaller customers irrespective of the tape is dead mantra, and it is particularly noteworthy to see its widespread use as both a backup and archive target.
ESG makes a very important point in the conclusion. They state Although it may come as a surprise to some IT professionals who remember a time when tape was a more problematic media than disk, the current state of tape media is highly reliable (indeed, often exceeding that of disk!). Furthermore, tools such as Linear Tape File System (LTFS), are making tape self-aware and making the tape system as transportable as a (very large capacity) USB drive. The key takeaway is that the advancements in tape technology combined with the reliability and consistency of the medium make it compelling solution for storing large quantities of data; tape is an ideal Tier 3 storage platform. And so to my disk friends, I have to say that tape is indeed very much alive.
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I am always looking for different viewpoints and perspectives on how tape technology is being used and its future. I recently came across this piece by Mark Peters and Jane Wright from the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) entitled Tape Usage is Declining But It Shouldn't Be. The research brief makes some interesting points and I wanted to highlight some data that resonated with me.
