Tape completed its journey back to ‘relevance’ at EMC World 2012. In truth its relevance has really never been lost to the data center and companies like Spectra Logic have been at the forefront of providing those data centers with innovative solutions. What is interesting is just how visible Spectra Logic is at the very place where the technology was pronounced dead almost a decade ago. Not only is EMC re-embracing tape at EMC World 2012 by inviting Spectra representatives to be in attendance and to have their products on display, it’s now set up to sell the entire Spectra Logic tape library product line.

Why is EMC Embracing Tape in 2012?

What’s responsible for this turnaround in position by the disk giant? The simplest answer is that their enterprise customers never stopped using tape or thought of it as irrelevant. IT Managers have continued to use tape as the big ‘backstop’ in the data center, catching all types of data that are thrown at it. The majority of these IT professionals have always looked at disk as a way to augment tape, not replace it. Even those who were bent on replacing tape have discovered that the sheer economic advantages of tape are not easy to dismiss. And, our checks with the EMC field support this turn of events.

The scale that large tape libraries have reached underscores its position as the only real alternative for large data sets and helps explain tape’s stickiness in the larger enterprise data center. The surprise is the number of mid-range tape libraries that are being proposed and sold to the mid-sized segment of EMC’s customer base. These aren’t companies that have massive archives or large backups. They don’t need libraries that scale to thousands of slots and should be well served by EMC’s disk-based data protection products. But they’re still counting on tape. They share a common challenge with the larger enterprise, cost justifying the ongoing expense of disk-based backup.

Why is the Data Center Returning To Tape

Disk Can’t Keep Up - Even with Deduplication

EMC disk-based products are meeting front line data protection needs, but customers are looking to tape to curtail their growth and to once again be the reliable backstop to their disk based strategy. Once you get over the initial euphoria of savings that deduplication brings, you have to realize that primary data is still growing and backup data is growing right along with it. Deduplication only bends the slope of the data growth curve, but even with deduplication data continues to grow at unprecedented rates. If an alternative is not found the cost of even deduplicated disk systems will still overwhelm the economics of disk backup. 

Tape is Reliable

The rush from tape to disk was driven by concerns over reliability. In the early 2000s there were countless stories about backup failures and tape was often the scapegoat. Our experience indicates that these backup failures were often caused by a failure in process more so than hardware.

Disk is now in the reliability crosshairs. As capacities have increased so have the chances of drive errors and eventually drive failures. As we discussed in the article “Why LTO-6 Will Save The Data Center”, based on the current reported Bit Error Rates from manufacturers, a drive will typically fail long before a piece of tape media will. 

Tape is Fast

Disk certainly has the advantage when a single file needs to be recovered. But it no longer has the advantage in backup performance, assuming that the network is up to snuff - nor does disk have a restore advantage for large, full system recoveries.

Essentially disk gets a 45 second ‘head start’ on tape, while the media is located and placed in the tape drive. If the restore is less than 45 seconds, like a single file restore, then disk is probably faster. But if the restore takes 3-4 minutes from disk, then tape will likely overcome this 45 second head start. The longer or larger the restore job, the more significant tape’s restore advantage will become.

Tape is Archivable

Tape is also better suited to transition from backup to archive for a customer. While many of the disk based backup appliances are adding capabilities to better handle the challenges of long term retention, tape has already solved them. It does not have problems scaling the deduplication index, managing power or configuring itself better for expanding capacity. Users are now looking to tape to not just back up their files stores and databases, they are also using it to offload the primary copy of files to tape.

EMC’s Big Advantage - It Focuses on Customer Need

EMC is unique when compared to most other storage companies. It plays no favorites with its existing products and isn’t shackled by a “not invented here” mentality. If their customers and prospects consistently demand something to help them solve a problem, EMC figures out a way to provide that in expert fashion. Sometimes this is through acquiring technology, other times through a resale relationship like it has with Spectra Logic.

EMC has learned that customers need tape to fight the battle with data growth and maintain protection of data assets. Clearly they are looking to Spectra Logic to supply that part of the arsenal.

Spectra Logic is a client of Storage Switzerland

previous entry: “Leveraging the Server Network For Agile IT”