Tape Backups Are Not Reliable - EVER
Jolly Student
Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any dumber.
Yes, I am cross posting here but the recommendations for such are only in
the case where the subject matter concerns a bunch of groups. I think this
qualifies as such.
I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable". This director had a
"consultant" come in to back up his assertion, a consultant who asked to
check his email via his "AOL" account (indeed, his email address is
something like Iconsult_Fo...@aol.com).
Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".
So we now we have a huge, Raid 5 server that has a pretty decent amount of
capacity and are using a company's software to that backups are quick and
slick. Cool, my life is so much easier. But thats it. . . we do NOT have
an offsite backup, we do NOT have another inhouse SDLT tape backup drive and
the entire compliment of our backup resides ONLY on this single Network
Attached Raid 5 server. Sure, its housed in a closet somewhere, but what if
we had a catastrophic failure, how about a huge fire, or a plane hitting us.
See, this "consultant" has "clients" in Manhattan who have their offices on
the 89th floor, but their Tapeless Backup servers in the basement. Errr, is
it me or do basements and the safes that may be contained therein get buried
under rubble, or are there some group of IT specialists out there who
specialize in nothing but digging out backup servers from the rubble.
As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible, reliable
sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or otherwise.
This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a bottomless pit, but
the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the "director" who, along with
their "consultant" has them believing that the system we currently have in
place is relable.
Normally I would just shut my face since my life is a lot easier in terms of
backup, hell, set it and forget it is the name of the game. However, I know
full well that if we ever got hit with a major disaster the "director" would
be off on his vacation while the rest of us poor slobs had to restore data
from God knows where. Oh, and if we were to get hit by a brand new,
spanking virus because the "director's" kid came in and did so, well, our
Network Attached Storage pig would also suffer.
In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type of
white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape backup
drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving are not "unreliable"
, they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of the person who is
responsible for them.
Oh, and for the record, dear friends of mine swear by SDLT tape drives and
the like, but I cannot bring an IT manager from CitiCorp into this
discussion because, since he is a friend of mine, his opinion is not
"neutral".
Please help
Roger.
Steve Stone
> Okay Folks:
>
>
>
> Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any dumber.
>
>
>
> Yes, I am cross posting here but the recommendations for such are only in
> the case where the subject matter concerns a bunch of groups. I think this
> qualifies as such.
>
>
>
> I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
Tapes do go bad and so do tape drives or the tape is recorded on a drive
with an alignment problem and results in failures trying to read the tape on a
different drive.
Hard drives crash and burn too.
You site two different problems:
A single backup stored only onsite
and
no tape backup
In my mind you have to follow the proper procedure to have reliable backups on any type
media.
Depending on a single onsite backup without a remote stashed away at an alternate location
is foolish or desperate (no money to do so).
Steve
Jolly Student
I will not argue that tapes and drives go bad. Espcially if you dont test
them on a regular basis or if you throw them to your dog as a chew toy from
time to time. Thats not the point here.
The point here is that the director maintains that we do not need any other
type of backup device. I only suggested SDLT because of its portability. I
mean, I take an SDLT full backup once a week and stick it in a safe deposit
box is a lot better than just relying on one backup server in one location.
Thats the point.
Thanks,
Walt
Jolly Student
Ivan Marsh
Please allow me to preach to the choir: Always get tape!
RAID is very cool and helps quite a bit when you loose a drive.
RAID controllers do fail on occasion and in the most amusing ways.
I had an HP LF server that had a bug in the firmware. It lost a drive, I
replaced the drive, It happily went about stripping the blank drive over
the data on the remaining good drives.
If it weren't for a tape backup I would have had a LOT of empty disk
space.
--
i.m.
The USA Patriot Act is the most unpatriotic act in American history.
Steve Stone
> PS. Money is NOT the object. Its a director who just wants to be right.
>
>
>
Then it is time for you to prepare yourself to replace him when the backups are needed and
fail !
Steve
Robert G. Ragosta
><snip>
>
> I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
> has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable". <snip>
>
> Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
> spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".
>
> So we now we have a huge, Raid 5 server that has a pretty decent amount of
> capacity and are using a company's software to that backups are quick and
> slick. Cool, my life is so much easier. But thats it. . . we do NOT have
> an offsite backup, we do NOT have another inhouse SDLT tape backup drive
> and the entire compliment of our backup resides ONLY on this single
> Network
> Attached Raid 5 server. Sure, its housed in a closet somewhere, but what
> if we had a catastrophic failure, how about a huge fire, or a plane
> hitting us.
>
> <snip>
> As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible, reliable
> sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
> really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or
> otherwise. This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a
> bottomless pit, but the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the
> "director" who, along with their "consultant" has them believing that the
> system we currently have in place is relable.
><snip>
> In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type of
> white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape backup
> drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving are not
> "unreliable" , they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of
> the person who is responsible for them.
>
> Roger.
(Cross-posting removed..)
Well, considering the "facts" as you stated, most important is that you are
NOT a "small" company (+600)...
Second, there are two dimensions to "Recovery":
1) Operational
- typically on-site, high-density, quick access
- short-term and NOT archival in intent
- customarily "system-specific" in terms of configuration, interfaces,
operation
2) Archival-Disaster
- typically off-site, low-medium density, serial access, massive volume
- long-term, archival and incremental ("trail"..) in purpose
- NOT "system-specific" generic media, and generic
interface/configuration
Formally, for mid to large-size companies BOTH modes of Recovery are
considered mandatory (by Policy) and required (by regulation/law).
To have only on-site, transient, operational recovery capability is a "good
thing"- but would NEVER meet typically applied formal IT audit
practices/standards; nor probably regulatory requirements (industry sector
dependent)...solely on it's own. Disaster Recovery means just that
"DISASTER": no system, no center, no basement, no building, maybe even no
people; essentially no on-site (POOF!, gone!..).
Regards,
Robert G. Ragosta
--
Linux User #273716 / Linux Machine #227435
KNode 0.7.2 / Mdk 9.2.1 / XFce 4.05 / KDE 3.1.4
"Which is better- Artificial intelligence or REAL stupidity...?"
David Bailey
> Okay Folks:
>
>
>
> Here is one for all of you who thought that people could not get any
> dumber.
>
>
> As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible,
> reliable sources of published information that basically say its really,
> really, really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape
> or otherwise. This Raid 5 server that we have at our company is not a
> bottomless pit, but the higher ups do not listen to me, only to the
> "director" who, along with their "consultant" has them believing that
> the system we currently have in place is relable.
>
>
>
> Normally I would just shut my face since my life is a lot easier in
> terms of backup, hell, set it and forget it is the name of the game.
> However, I know full well that if we ever got hit with a major disaster
> the "director" would be off on his vacation while the rest of us poor
> slobs had to restore data from God knows where. Oh, and if we were to
> get hit by a brand new, spanking virus because the "director's" kid came
> in and did so, well, our Network Attached Storage pig would also suffer.
>
>
>
> In short, I need some type of recommendation, in writing, in some type
> of white paper, from some type of credible sources, that SDLT tape
> backup drives, at least for the purpose of long term archiving are not
> "unreliable" , they are only as "unreliable" as the poor work habits of
> the person who is responsible for them.
>
>
>
> Oh, and for the record, dear friends of mine swear by SDLT tape drives
> and the like, but I cannot bring an IT manager from CitiCorp into this
> discussion because, since he is a friend of mine, his opinion is not
> "neutral".
>
>
RAID is all well and good as a reliable first line of defence, but it
ISN'T a backup strategy. The ONLY things that RAID (5) does is improve
performance and give *some* resistance to disk failure (I have seen a RAID
5 system with 2 bad disks!). It still needs a backup strategy on top of
it.
If you don't have a secondary backup device / medium somewhere, what do
you do after say a virus gets into your system, or someone deletes a file?
An example is a company I have done some work for. They have about 2Tb in
a raid 50 array (two raid 5s mirrored). They had a hardware issue where
the first array got some corruption (I believe it was a firmware issue
with one of the controllers that caused the initial problem). This then
mirrored across to the other array. So now they have 2 sets of identical
*corrupt* files. They did have tape backup as well. It took a while, but
they did restore their data.
Tapes may not last forever, but what is the purpose of your backup
strategy? Do you want to restore files from 10 years ago? Do you want to
recover from something like a virus attack or deleted files over a
relatively short time frame? Tape may or may not be able to do the
former, but it can definitely do the latter. If tape can't do the former,
I don't really know what else could.
Tape also has the advantage that you can have offsite storage if you want.
If you are concerned about the reliability of your tapes, test them every
now and again. Anyone who is really serious about their backup strategies
tests their entire strategy, including a full restore on a regular basis.
If you really want documentation try this search:
tape backup reliability "white paper"
It gives *plenty* of hits.
Gerard Bok
wrote:
>I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
>has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable".
>Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
>spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".
There's only one thing more stupid than backup on tape: no
backup. (As you have now.)
>As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible, reliable
>sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
>really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or otherwise.
Well, can't promise on either 'credible' or 'reliable', but heck,
I said it.
--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok
Bill Unruh
]On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 20:11:50 GMT, "Jolly Student" <jo...@joy.com>
]wrote:
]>I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
]>has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable".
]>Enough jokes aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
]>spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".
So? What conclusion does he draw from this?
Anyway, one option would be to buy an offsite large hardisk computer, and
once a day do an rsync from your office computers to the hard disks on this
offsite computer. that saves the stuff on hard disk, which also has its
problems.
Secondly, it depends on what the size of your backups are (600 people
sounds like a lot) but a DVD will hold 4GB. If you have to change 100 DVDs
a night, this is a hopeless solution, but if it all fits on one, this is a
possibility. Or use them for incrimental backups.
But do you need backups? YES.
]>As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible, reliable
]>sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
]>really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or otherwise.
Many businesses have gone under because they lost everything in a
fire/sabotage/earthquake/whatever.
Just imagine what your business would do if they lost everything on their
computers.
Gerard Bok
un...@string.physics.ubc.ca (Bill Unruh) wrote:
>bok...@zonnet.nl (Gerard Bok) writes:
>
>]On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 20:11:50 GMT, "Jolly Student" <jo...@joy.com>
>]wrote:
No offence Bill, but if you cut all of my text while quoting,
would you please also delete the "Gerard Bok writes" part ?
Jolly Student
this matter, ERGO, that tape backups, or some other offsite type of backup
system is a necessity.
What I forgot to mention here is that I am dealing with "Educators" who are
really, really dense when it comes to anything having to do with technology.
Essentially, you have one director who feels that tape backups are not
reliable, ever, period and that experience is based upon his personal
feelings or the feelings of others who are just plain too lazy to set up
some type of disaster mechanism off site be it tape, hard drive, magic
F***ING oxide pixie-dust media or what have you.
I know guys and gals, I know. . . just relying on stuff on site no matter
what is just plain dumb. Even for those of you out there who may think that
tapes do fail from time to time (of course they do), you would have to say
that if you regularly check the tapes, the backup devices, perform routine
restorations and all of the other "Duhhhh-basics" you are going to be in
better shape.
My "thing" is wanting to walk off-site with a tape or two in my briefcase,
come home and stick them in my firebox on a rotating basis. If a plan
decided to land on our facilty, or if a nicely placed bolt of lightning hit
the building and used the network cable as a means to send its electron
offspring to to their worst, we would be screwed, the director would go on
break or hide their head in the sand and the grunts would have to be the
ones doing the clean up. Except that, in this case, all of us grunts are in
agreement that we will go so very high up in our chain of command that we
will let them know this was preventable and produce a plethora of
documentation despite the "director's" 'feelings that tapes are never
reliable".
In short, I know that all of you here are credible sources, Jesus, its like
telling you to keep a spare tire in the trunk of your car or to wear your
body armor when you are going into Bagdad, but what I cannot convey enough
to you guys is that I need the shit, the goods, in the form of papers.
Theres got to be some white papers out there, hell, I got calls to MIS
buddies of mine as far as the NSA asking if they have anything along the
lines of "duhhh, you better backup off site" white papers to show this
director.
I can't believe that its come to this. That there are those in our industry
that are so stupid and are permitted to be in charge of people like us.
Anyways, enough rambling (jokes about breaks, drinks, drugs, etc., will be
heartily laughed at, I assure you), but I think that if such a paper or set
of papers could be found, perhaps some other poor slobs out there besides me
will be able to sigh when a restoration is performed and not fry when they
are into their fifteenth cup of coffee while the supervisor is home banging
his mother up the butt.
Thanks for your time,
Rog
Robert G. Ragosta
> Thanks to all who have responded with the obvious, common sense approach
> to this matter, ERGO, that tape backups, or some other offsite type of
> backup system is a necessity.
>
> What I forgot to mention here is that I am dealing with "Educators" who
> are really, really dense when it comes to anything having to do with
> technology. Essentially, you have one director who feels that tape backups
> are not reliable, ever, period and that experience is based upon his
> personal feelings or the feelings of others who are just plain too lazy to
> set up some type of disaster mechanism off site be it tape, hard drive,
> magic F***ING oxide pixie-dust media or what have you.
>
> <snip>
> In short, I know that all of you here are credible sources, Jesus, its
> like telling you to keep a spare tire in the trunk of your car or to wear
> your body armor when you are going into Bagdad, but what I cannot convey
> enough to you guys is that I need the shit, the goods, in the form of
> papers.
>
> Theres got to be some white papers out there, hell, I got calls to MIS
> buddies of mine as far as the NSA asking if they have anything along the
> lines of "duhhh, you better backup off site" white papers to show this
> director.
>
><snip>
>
> Anyways, enough rambling (jokes about breaks, drinks, drugs, etc., will be
> heartily laughed at, I assure you), but I think that if such a paper or
> set of papers could be found, perhaps some other poor slobs out there
> besides me will be able to sigh when a restoration is performed and not
> fry when they are into their fifteenth cup of coffee while the supervisor
> is home banging his mother up the butt.
>
> Thanks for your time,
>
> Rog
(Cross-posting eliminated...)
Well, in this case Google is definitely your friend:
To get you started, just a few immediate references:
http://www.securityauditor.net/
http://www.disaster-recovery-guide.com/
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/bytopic/disasters/
Key aspects of this issue topic are: security, recovery, audit, compliance,
IT governance, etc. Regardless of whether your "Educators" are dense or
not- there are still MANDATORY/REQUIRED business practices that must be
acknowledged. Moreover, as I stated before- ANYTHING that involves: public
records, government (US) interaction, and/or regulated fiduciary
responsibilities come under the umbrella of "Sarbanes-Oxley" (amongst
others).
Simply there are practices, customary criteria, and in most instances even
LAWS which dictate approaches to backup (archiving, record-keeping) and
restoration (business protection, continuity, etc.). These items are NOT
matters of: perceptions, whims, rejection, or "opinions".
If you wish to be fundamentally effective on this- hit your management on
the head with mandatory/legal criteria..
Bill Unruh
]come home and stick them in my firebox on a rotating basis. If a plan
]decided to land on our facilty, or if a nicely placed bolt of lightning hit
Yes, but that seems really really unlikely-- far less likely even than a
plane hitting the school.
Jolly Student
"Bill Unruh" <un...@string.physics.ubc.ca> wrote in message
news:cb244f$ogs$1...@string.physics.ubc.ca...
Bill. . . so is it your position that offsite backups are not necessary - or
am I misunderstanding what you are saying.
Bill Unruh
]"Bill Unruh" <un...@string.physics.ubc.ca> wrote in message
Read your original sentence carefully -- especially the last word in the
first line I quote. And then think about educational establishments.
General Schvantzkoph
> PS. Money is NOT the object. Its a director who just wants to be right.
You've made all of the right arguments, maybe you haven't made them to the
right person. Can you at least convince the guy to have two other backup
servers in other buildings. You could also use removable drives. If you
had a rotating pool of plugable SATA drives you could certainly afford to
own enough of them so that you always had a few dozen copies. As long as
you have enough copies then you can tolerate doing backup to media that
isn't absolutely reliable.
Harry Phillips
>
>>PS. Money is NOT the object. Its a director who just wants to be right.
>>
>
> Then it is time for you to prepare yourself to replace him when the backups are needed and
> fail !
>
When the backups are needed is too late, though the company will not
realise that until they are needed.
--
Regards,
Harry Phillips
Harry Phillips
>
> RAID is all well and good as a reliable first line of defence, but it
> ISN'T a backup strategy. The ONLY things that RAID (5) does is improve
> performance and give *some* resistance to disk failure (I have seen a RAID
> 5 system with 2 bad disks!). It still needs a backup strategy on top of
> it.
>
> If you don't have a secondary backup device / medium somewhere, what do
> you do after say a virus gets into your system, or someone deletes a file?
>
> An example is a company I have done some work for. They have about 2Tb in
> a raid 50 array (two raid 5s mirrored). They had a hardware issue where
> the first array got some corruption (I believe it was a firmware issue
> with one of the controllers that caused the initial problem). This then
> mirrored across to the other array. So now they have 2 sets of identical
> *corrupt* files. They did have tape backup as well. It took a while, but
> they did restore their data.
>
> Tapes may not last forever, but what is the purpose of your backup
> strategy? Do you want to restore files from 10 years ago? Do you want to
> recover from something like a virus attack or deleted files over a
> relatively short time frame? Tape may or may not be able to do the
> former, but it can definitely do the latter. If tape can't do the former,
> I don't really know what else could.
>
> Tape also has the advantage that you can have offsite storage if you want.
>
They are all good suggestions, and to use them pose them as questions to
the "director" and how RAID is going to help when those events occur,
and it is not a matter of if it's a matter of *when*.
Send him an e-mail and CC *his* boss, phase it as a concern that someone
raised and that you would like to know if the "consultant" and has
answers for.
Even go so far as to blow smoke up his arse to make him feel good and
but the blame on the "consultant" for not brings up these issues.
--
Regards,
Harry Phillips
Harry Phillips
>
> Theres got to be some white papers out there, hell, I got calls to MIS
> buddies of mine as far as the NSA asking if they have anything along the
> lines of "duhhh, you better backup off site" white papers to show this
> director.
>
My feeling on this is that doing and off-site back-up is so obvious that
it would be looking for a "white paper" on the fact that you must keep
breathing to stay alive.
--
Regards,
Harry Phillips
Midnight Java Junkie
those wide open spaces and it has taken out devices in the past.
I take it that I misundertood what you were saying, in that you would not
disagree that offsite backups are generally a good thing to have
irrespective of the nature of the organization.
"Bill Unruh" <un...@string.physics.ubc.ca> wrote in message
news:cb4kdu$tnl$1...@string.physics.ubc.ca...
Midnight Java Junkie
in education it seems that the strangest and often least logical ideas that
would cause people to be fired in the world of business, have a way of
either being ignored or better yet, justified, until it hits the fan. Then
they play the blame game all the while the students suffer the most.
"Harry Phillips" <ha...@hkjsfh.com> wrote in message
news:kiifq1-...@news.myaccess.com.au...
Jim Dauven
Contact the insurance carrier for the company and tell them that
there is no off site backup or tape backup to be installed in a disaster
recovery site.
The CFO (Chief Financial Officer) will get a call from the
friendly insurance agent notifying him of a steep increase in coverage
because of no off site backup.
The CFO and possibly the CEO will have a real intense sit down
talk session with your IT director and I will guarantee that you will
have a tape back up app in a few weeks.
Chir...@gmail.com
> Gerard Bok wrote:
>> On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 20:11:50 GMT, "Jolly Student" <jo...@joy.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I work for a mid-sized company (600 employees) whose "Technology Director"
>>> has openly said that "Tape backups are not reliable". Enough jokes
>>> aside - its going to get serious and this group seems to be
>>>spreading the rumor that "Tape Backups are Always Unreliable".
>>
>>
>> There's only one thing more stupid than backup on tape: no
>> backup. (As you have now.)
>>
>>
>>>As stupid as this question is, I need to basically find credible, reliable
>>>sources of published information that basically say its really, really,
>>>really dumb to not archive stuff onto some type of medium tape or otherwise.
>>
>>
>> Well, can't promise on either 'credible' or 'reliable', but heck,
>> I said it.
> Contact the insurance carrier for the company and tell them that
> there is no off site backup or tape backup to be installed in a
> disaster recovery site.
>
> The CFO (Chief Financial Officer) will get a call from the
> friendly insurance agent notifying him of a steep increase in coverage
> because of no off site backup.
>
> The CFO and possibly the CEO will have a real intense sit down
> talk session with your IT director and I will guarantee that you will
> have a tape back up app in a few weeks.
company. Much less expensive than instituting adequate backup.
Linea Recta
--
regards,
|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os
Vahis
> That's what I found out 20 years ago...
on ftp,and let the rest of the world mirror it."
Linus Torvalds 1996.
Vahis
--
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