Document Management and Data Backup

Tape BackupAh, the old standard tape backup…will it ever leave us? Backup to tape is the most cost effective method of providing a recoverable copy of your data. There are many standards and types of drives out there, and it usually pays off to buy the most recent technology, especially with a long term archival project. Below is a quick summary of recommended tape technologies and their speeds:

Digital Linear Tape (DLT) – DLT is a time proven technology that has its origins in the early 80s as a backup for DEC minicomputers. The technology provides from 20-600GB of storage at a transfer rate of 20-400GB per hour (depending on how much you want to spend on your drive and tapes).

Linear Tape Open (LTO) – LTO has become the most recent standard in the backup market, and provides from 100-1600GB of storage with transfer rates in excess of 864 GB per hour.

Advantages: High storage capacity, high transfer rates for connected backup, ease of use, ability to use multi-drive, multi-tape devices for automation
Disadvantages: Restore requires tape drive, transfer rates are limited if backing up network servers, recurring tape costs

External BackupWith the low cost of external hard drives, smaller organizations have taken to the simplicity and low cost of external hard drive devices for backup. Just plug it in, and copy your data. For under $300 you can buy two 500GB external hard drives, and with a rotation scheme, always have one on site, and one off site. This is only recommended for smaller organizations, but I have seen some IT administrators in larger organizations that utilize this as a quick “2nd in line” backup.
Advantages: Large storage capacity, High transfer rates (480 Mbps), cost, restore without additional hardware, rapid restore
Disadvantages: Limited automation

CD DVDThis is the simplest most cost effective backup out there today. Just about every PC or Server comes with a DVD or CD drive that will allow you to burn data to disk. Once again, for smaller organizations this can be a viable alternative for backup.
Advantages: simple, cost effective, restore from any PC/Server with a CD/DVD
Disadvantages: limited size of backups requires “spanning”, manual process

Network Storage DevicesWith the advent of network storage, backup can now be as simple as a network copy of files. This method has the advantage of having the data in a useful format, and readily accessible on the organization intranet. The only problem is that backups cannot be done locally, and must traverse the network (Need some serious planning and infrastructure if you are backing up large data volumes).
Advantages: Ease of use, ease of backup, restore without additional hardware, rapid restore, large storage capacity
Disadvantages: Backup speeds limited to network bandwidth

There are many options on the market today for your backup needs, just insure you include backup and storage in your Document Imaging/Document Management/ECM project planning.