ExaGrid's Eye on Deduplication

In part 1 of our “5 Ways Disk Backup Can Help Your Business” blog series, we discussed how a disk-based backup solution helps businesses get faster backups as their data grows. In part 2 of this series, we discuss how disk backup with data deduplication helps reduce or eliminate failed tape backups.

One of the most consistently annoying challenges in backup operations is the prevalence of tape backup failure. Estimates show that 15 to 30% of backups to tape based media fail while 30% or more of restores from tape fail.

The percentage is significantly higher if you broaden the definition of a backup failure.  While most people do not count a backup job that exceeds your backup window as a failure, there is a pretty good argument that it is indeed a failure. Many organizations that I speak to have strict policies that backups cannot run after a certain hour and therefore any that are still running are shut off.  Even if you can allow them to keep running into the business day, no one would advocate that you can sustain that mode of operation, so “failure” is the right label.

Eliminate Tape Failures Without Throwing Your Library Out The Window

Because tape itself is at the heart of a lot of the failures organizations experience, it is hard to see a better future without taking tape out of the equation. However, there are things that can be done to eliminate some of the failures associated with tape without throwing your library out the window:

• Clean the tape drives at least as often as the vendor recommends. Like oil changes, these guidelines represent a minimum amount of care required to keep things running.
• Though costly, perform all required maintenance on the drives and library. Tape systems are highly mechanical and require diligent attention to avoid catastrophic failure.
• Bite the bullet and pay for the vendor technician to come in a replace worn parts.
• When it’s done, it’s done. When the old gray mare just isn’t what she used to be, it’s time to replace the library. 

If all of the above sounds a lot like a trip to the dentist where you hear “Oops, out of novocain”, then perhaps its time to consider disk backup as an alternative to tape. With the advent of lower cost disk technologies combined with data deduplication, you may find that some vendors (though not all) offer disk-based backup appliances that are cost competitive with a tape library replacement. At ExaGrid, we have made it our mission to rival tape library costs with our disk backup appliances.

Enter disk, exit the issues of tape and the associated backup failures. This includes the “failures” where the backup’s jobs are simply not finishing during the window.  Because disk backup is faster than tape and supports greater concurrency, you will not only eliminate media errors, jammed tape drives, and so on, you will see faster backups.

Learn how Gardner Trucking recovered quickly from a system crash after replacing tape and avoided a loss of $200,000 in business and productivity by having made the switch from tape to a disk backup with data deduplication system. Is it time for you to make the switch from tape to disk backup?