Although declared dead many times, the classical process of backup to tape lives on. It continues to offer simple, flexible and cost effective solutions to maintain the day-to-day safety of data. It also facilitates the safe-keeping of data off-site or in another secure environment. Even in cases where performance and reliability is relatively poor and where restores are time-consuming, classic tape backup cannot be devalued.
However, synchronization (or copying data to additional hard disks, servers or RAID systems), not only offers high performance, but enables immediate access to data in case of loss on primary storage, since the data is constantly available on-line. New generations of Virtual Tape Libraries even allow the removal of the hard disks for external keeping. However, VTL can be more expensive and is often less affordable for many small to medium businesses.
An optimal solution lies in combining the two approaches, yielding a backup to disk to tape solution (B2D2T), taking advantages of the best of both worlds. By employing PresSTORE Synchronize for short term data protection (B2D - backup to disk) and saving data in near time, the highest possible data availability is achieved, since it is accessible on-line and no restore is necessary.
Additionally, the server hosting PresSTORE can become a hot-spare system for this data. The two tier paradigm decouples the time and load consuming tape backup from primary servers, since only synchronized data is backed up to tape (B2D2T - backup to disc to tape). This approach derives further benefits, by allowing longer time intervals between tape backup and for backup windows, while taking advantage of low-priced media and enabling storage of tapes off-site for further data security.
PresSTORE Synchronise and Backup offers countless possibilities to help you manage your data. If you need to backup to disk, backup to disk to tape or just backup to tape, PresSTORE backups data network-wide, supporting Mac OS X, Sun, Linux and Windows.
