Can you explain the benefits of using offsite disk backups for disaster recovery? Why not just use tape?
There are many benefits of using offsite disk backup. In most cases, offsite disk backup is faster than tape because there is no data seek time, which is typical for tape. Also, there’s no media handling with offsite backup, so with tape out of the picture, we have the ability to start using replication technologies to send data across the wire instead of having to rely on physical tape movements. Also, disks are random-access devices, so they have no mount points. When you’re using a tape, you have to wait for the media and the tape drive before you can access the data, whereas with disk, once the application accesses the data, it opens up multiple access streams. Offsite disk backup has the big advantage to leverage replication, too, but technologies such as snapshots and block-level backups can also capture a portion of the data that’s changed. One downside to consider about offsite backup is that it costs more than using tape. Can you outline the difference between synchronous and
Related Questions
- Why can I use tape or an external hard drive for backups? What are the benefits of a combined local and offsite backup solution?
- What if a client wants multiple manufacturing and distribution locations for geographic benefits or disaster recovery?
- What would a Backup & Disaster Recovery Solution be without solid backups?
