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EVALUATING THE COST OF A DLTtape BACKUP SOLUTION
12.2
If you’re dealing in megabytes, you probably do not need an indus-
trial-strength solution. You are probably well covered by a desktop
solution using 4mm DAT tape that costs a few hundred dollars.
However, once your volume reaches gigabytes, you should consider
a more robust solution, like a DLTtape system. If you must deal
with tens or hundreds of gigabytes, or terabytes, you should con-
sider a DLTtape library or autoloader.
If your backup need is “every once in a while” or “when you get around
to it,” then you don’t really need DLTtape system backup. However, if
you back up on a regular schedule – nightly incremental backups and
weekly full backups – then you are beyond desktop-class backup solu-
tions. If you need to back up on a tight schedule – for example,
between midnight and 6 a.m. – you probably need an industrial
strength backup solution, like a DLTtape-based system.
What’s It Worth To You?
What if you have customer data on your system? What if your
clients depend on the data on your system to do their job? In more
and more situations, your data is really your business, and the cost
to back it up is small compared to the potential loss if you do not
back up. If that is the case, you should be using DLTtape system
backup.
Look At All The Pieces
If you are doing desktop level backup, the process is quite simple. But if
your business depends on availability of data you need to take a much
more comprehensive view of your backup strategy and its total cost.
Total cost includes the cost of the backup hardware, backup software,
perhaps a more comprehensive storage management software package,
and high-capacity media. In addition, you must consider the more
complex (and bigger) cost of labor, downtime, risk, and future needs.