Today many organisations continue to use traditional magnetic tapes to backup, store and protect their businesses 'life-blood' or data. Over the last several years, Microsoft introduced additional supported devices into their popular freely supplied backup software to enable users to leverage removable USB hard disk drives. This is an interesting move by Microsoft as traditionally, storing data on a hard disk drive has never been considered best practice due to the risk of hard disk failure.
For a small business, the financial investment to implement a tape backup solution according to best practices incorporating tape rotation, tape replacement, cleaning can be a financial obstacle too great to overcome and push SMEs down the route of purchasing several USB hard disks and relying upon 2 -3 disks to store all their data. There is an alternative which has emerged over recent years which providing you partner wisely can save SMEs thousands whilst also importantly raising the level of protection of the data.
Outlined below is a brief comparison between traditional tape backup versus online backup.
Scalability
Should your data requirements increase you may be forced to purchase additional hardware and software grows with you from a few Gb to many terabytes of data.
Automation
Whilst the software used by tape backup is automatic, the physical loading/unloading of tapes is not. Over the course of a year, this can take up considerable (and expensive) man-hours. By comparison, online backup is completely automatic - the entire process is managed by the client software and storage platform.
Security
Data is typically stored on tape in an unencrypted format. If these tapes are ever moved offsite (which they should be for offsite protection) there will be a security risk. is encrypted using a key known only to you even before it leaves your computer/server. It is fully encrypted whilst being transmitted over the Internet and remains encrypted on our servers.
Offsite Backups
Tape backups require them to be physically moved to an offsite location - preferably every day. This obviously takes time and the location is rarely secure. Online Backup is by its very nature "offsite" and therefore you data is protected from any number of physical threats.
Level of capital expenditure
There is a high initial cost to tape backup solutions. All the hardware needs to be purchased along with associated tapes and cleaning media. Staff training costs are also very high. There are also a number of hidden costs such as weekly testing of the backup and replacement of hardware. With online backup you simply pay for what you use on a monthly basis.
Ease of restoration
To find even a single file from a tape backup typically takes many hours and sometimes days. With online backup this restoration time can be minutes. Even with a complete disaster data can be restored in a few mouse clicks.
If you would like some more information on how you can benefit from Online Backup please contact us.
Layer 7 IT Solutions invites you to partner with us today and have piece of mind that your business is protected with a customised Online Backup solutions from Layer 7. http:/layer-7.co.uk.
Don't take chances with you business data. Get it right the first time. Use a team that gets results every time. Call us today on 01670 528 455 or email info@layer-7.co.uk for more information on how we can protect your most critical business asset, your information.
Layer 7 IT Solutions thank you for taking the time to read this article, if you would like to find out more please contact us,
info@layer-7.co.uk
01670 528 455
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