| Although all the exposure around disk-based backup | | | | perform as desired. For example, an LTO-4 tape |
| and data deduplication, tape remains the leading way | | | | drive has a native transfer rate of 120 MBps. If you |
| that users finally store their backups. Even if they | | | | consider that most open-systems environments |
| first back up to disk, most users ultimately store | | | | average 1.5:1 compression, which means that |
| their backup on tapes. Learn about recent changes in | | | | effective throughput of an LTO-4, is 180 MBps, yet |
| tape technology and how to best utilize tapes in a | | | | very few environments run their tape drives at this |
| modern backup environment in this tutorial. | | | | speed. When you use a 180 MBps tape drive to write |
| An Intro to Tape Backup Storage | | | | a 30 MBps stream, or even an 80 MBps, it spends a |
| What role should play a tape backup storage in a | | | | good deal of its time going back and forth |
| backup system? To answer that, first we have to | | | | (backhitching, as it's called) to keep up with that |
| talk about the streaming nature of tapes. Tape | | | | slower data rate. If it backhitches a lot, we call it |
| drives are usually designed to go very fast, and | | | | shoe-shining, because the actions of the tape wheel |
| when they are not run at that speed, they do not | | | | imitate that of a person shining his shoes. |