Disk-to-Disk-to Tape

Disk-to-Disk-to Tape (D2D2T) refers to backing up data on disks first and tape (or optical disk) second. Backing up onto tape is performed at less frequent intervals than from disk-to-disk.

Traditionally, many businesses have done backup directly to relatively inexpensive tape systems. For many computer applications, it's important to have data immediately ready to be restored from a secondary disk if and when the data on the primary disk becomes inaccessible. The time to restore data from tape would be considered unacceptable. On the other hand, tape is a more economical alternative for long-term storage (archiving). Because it's also more portable, tape is often used for off-site backup and restoration in case of a disaster.

As backup and recovery becomes more of a chief concern in the data center, storage managers are looking to new technologies to make the process easier. Tape isn't going away, but it will be increasingly joined by disk as a core backup technology.

Gavin Rosenberg, Marketing Director from Sunstar Company says that in the past, backing up to tape was the way to go. "Sure we had our problems; be it the media, the drive/library or the backup window. I am convinced that D2D2T is the ultimate backup solution. Backup to disk locally, replicate the backup to offsite disk, then backup to tape there. You never have to touch the tapes as they're offsite already. In order for this to work though, you have to have something that changes the way backups are done. You can't do it with traditional backup software because there wouldn't be enough bandwidth to replicate full and incremental backups."

There are numerous manufacturers of hardware and software that will copy the data across. Nexsan Technology recently introduced the Assureon.  Assureon is a combined hardware/software platform that provides fixed-content archive storage capabilities for the enterprise. The platform is disk-based, and offers both WORM storage capabilities as well as automated retention periods in which files cannot be changed or erased until their designated retention period has elapsed.

There are those skeptics that feel that disk is not ready for "prime time." SATA Disk based arrays have penetrated every market, there are millions of these drives "spinning" and drive failures are rather infrequent. With RAID5 or RAID6 and hot spare implemented the odds of data being lost is extremely slim!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Home    How to reach us!    Request a Quote or Information    Site Map   News    Forms    Policies   Education  Search

Please contact us at 800-663-5523 or click here  for Pricing, Inventory or to Request additional information on any product .