Evaluating automated tape backup operations.

It's the end of another year, a good time to look back on the accomplishments of the organization and plan for the next year. It's also a good time to take a step back and assess the various systems in your IT department to make sure they are meeting your current needs as well as they can. Those that run quietly in the background, such as tape backup systems, are easily forgotten about once they are installed.

Vendors and resellers typically try to help the end user configure a tape backup system to correctly meet their needs at the time of purchase. IT organizations should continue to evaluate their current needs, how they implement automated backup, and make necessary adjustments to ensure the system is performing as efficiently as possible. By understanding changing operational requirements and system maintenance and performance implications, your IT organization can continue to scale with the expectations of the business.

Capacity Growth

Changes in capacity requirements are the hardest to predict, especially in rapidly changing business environments. Have you added new users and applications since installing the backup system? Mergers and acquisitions have a huge impact on all systems, including back-end data protection systems. Have infrastructure changes, such as the addition of SAN or NAS architectures, affected the way backup and recovery are performed? Would increased capacity help you meet "backup window" limitations?

Almost all tape formats provide a capacity-doubling roadmap that allows the periodic replacement of the drives within existing libraries to take advantage of new, higher-capacity tape cartridges. The newer drives are backward compatible with the older tapes and the library, so your previous investment is largely protected as your capacity requirements grow. Of course, adding additional hardware is also an option if your capacity growth requirements exceed the release schedule of new drives and media.

Operations

In these days of trying to squeeze as much cost as possible out of our operations, it may be useful to take a look at sharing your tape backup system with other applications, such as long-term archival of data that is in its final form and is infrequently accessed. The more data that is moved from primary storage to tape, the less that has to be backed up on an on-going basis, and this will have a dramatic positive impact on your backup processes. And as data ages, its value to the organization typically decreases, so it makes a lot of sense to store the data on your most cost-effective storage resource: the tape library.

Performance

The nightly backup window continues to be a fact of life in most IT environments. As the amount of data increases in the organization, it is natural to assume that the amount of time needed to back it up also increases. But by adding more drives to the backup system, or more interface channels (such as Fibre Channel or SCSI connections), the amount of data that can be pumped into or out of the system in a given amount of time can be increased to meet the current requirements.

As drive technology improves to double capacity, one may get added data transfer throughput as well. The new double capacity tape isn't any longer than the old tape, and it doesn't move any faster across the drive's read/write heads, but the bits of information are packed much closer together on the tape, so twice as much data is processed in the same amount of time. But of course, all the other components in the data path, such as the server, network interfaces, switches and cables need to be able to handle this increased throughput in order to take full advantage of it.

Processes

It is also a good practice to periodically review your data protection programs to validate their effectiveness and look for ways to improve them.

Review backup tape use and re-use policies to verify that you are getting the most from your consumables budget, but not risking data by over using tapes. The useful life of a tape cartridge is expressed in terms of full file passes and differs by technology platform. Archival life can approach 30 years, but the useful life of a cartridge depends on how it is used.

Review the number and effectiveness of "backup sets": how many do you really need? Review off-site storage programs: Is the facility far enough away to protect data from regional events, such as the blackout in the Northeast this past summer? Does the data retrieval timeframe from this facility still meet your requirements?

Do these programs meet current and anticipated compliance requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC 17a-4, HIPAA and other Federal regulations? Are your data retention and deletion policies effectively and faithfully followed to protect your organization from civil and criminal litigation?

Maintenance

If your tape library is more than a couple of years old, it may be good to check the system's error logs for occurrences of "soft" errors. Most drives and libraries have mechanisms for automatically recovering from many types of problems to keep the system up and running. But these self-correcting processes will slow down the performance of the system and increase the workload on its various components as they re-try the operation at slower speeds or in different ways.

It is recommended to implement a preventative maintenance program, as recommended by the vendor. Preventative maintenance should include cleaning, as well as replacing worn parts. Check with your maintenance provider to assure that the drives and libraries are periodically cleaned; accumulating dust is the most prominent cause of soft errors. Check with the vendors to see if they have issued any Field Bulletins or other service notices that might have an impact on the reliability, longevity and/or performance of your system. Vendors typically provide firmware updates that can increase the system efficiency, and even if you aren't experiencing any problems, you should consider keeping the drive and library firmware as up-to-date as possible. It is also imperative that all drives in your library are running on the same microcode to eliminate any cross-programming issues. This may even be a condition for continued support by the vendor or service organization. A well-maintained drive will perform more consistently and reduce tape/drive system errors as well as improve compression rates.

Lastly, perform a critical evaluation of your system's service organization and your service contract. Is the contracted response time sufficient, and is it being met? Does the service engineer arrive with the parts needed to repair the system, and does he/she show respect for your operation, equipment and personnel by keeping disruptions to a minimum?

Summary

It's easy to assume that once a tape backup solution has been put into place, it will meet the needs of the organization for years to come. But in the real world things change, and the configuration and efficiency of the organization's data protection systems should be periodically reviewed and adjusted as needed. The end of the year is as good a time as any to perform this important review.

Richard Harada is president of the Tape Technology Council, the primary industry resource for promoting, integrating and using tape storage devices. A non-profit organization comprised of leading tape storage companies, the TTC functions as a conduit for information exchange between manufacturers and the industry. The TTC includes Certance; Fujifilm; IBM; Imation; Maxell; Quantum; Sony Electronics; StorageTek; and TDK.

www.tapecouncil.org

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