Reproducible and detectable

Data recovery plan

Modifications to data and data carriers must be reproducible and detectable. It is important to decide which data can be accessed by whom, how long it has to be kept and when it needs to be available if recovery is necessary.

All this is often recorded in a data recovery plan, giving consideration to which data needs to be recovered. Recent studies, however, have shown that only 19% of companies have such a plan.

Traceability of the tapes

Tapes have to be furnished with a unique identification so that, even after many years, a tape can be located quickly. During audits, too, it is important to be able to show where an individual tape is located. If you had to arrange this in your company, the large numbers and different circulation schedules would soon make it an administrative nightmare. It is handier to use the off-site provider’s track and trace portal. According to The Enterprise Group, 56% of companies say that the most important criterion when selecting an off-site provider is being able to manage data easily. The second criterion (mentioned by 50% of the surveyed companies) is the ease of implementation at the off-site tape storage supplier.

Offline, offsite data vault - BackupNed (4)

Recovery of legacy systems

Back-up tapes made with obsolete software which have been archived for a long time (long-term data archiving) can be problematic to recover. Make sure, therefore, that you always subscribe to restore on demand, and preferably at the offsite provider. If that has been done, Backupned can ensure that your data is delivered in the format you want.

Physical location

Finally, the growing quantity of data makes it important that enough space can be reserved in the physical location where the tapes are stored. If fast, immediate availability is less important to you, data storage on tape is by far the cheapest and safest option. What’s more, tapes – depending on the physical location of the tape storage – can usually be returned within three hours. In practice, therefore, the availability of tape, about which some people have their doubts, proves to be better than expected. If data classification is not an issue in a company, it is wise to consider storing all data on tape for the time being.