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I didn't know they ever stopped storing data on tape. Tape to my knowledge has been pretty much in continuous use at big corps since their invention. Sure there

I didn't know they ever stopped storing data on tape. Tape to my knowledge has been pretty much in continuous use at big corps since their invention. Sure there was things like AWS glacier becoming possible alternatives but tapes are pretty entrenched.

yeukhon 9y ago
I'd think most new startups do not have tape backup system, because they either export copies to a disk, or to services like S3 (then Glacier), since tape requires significant investment. I don't even believe SOX requires tape backup. Tape backup is common for storing master files like the master for a song. Those you can't risk keeping on a magnetic disk.
- foobiekr 9y ago
  IMHO and from talking to a large number of people in startup leadership positions, many startups don’t even have a disaster recovery or business continuity plan let alone any formal backup process. Sometimes they have expressed doubt that such things are even necessary since they are using distributed systems. In a lot of ways what I’ve seen in that regard is similar to the way some people confuse a RAID array with having solved their backup problem. Your mileage may vary but this is common enough that not only is tape not part of it but even the backup concept is absent.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  If you use cloud storage, your provider's tapes are your tape backups.
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    Where I work we have to have a tape backup. This is a business decision. If AWS is completely gone or someone accidentally deleted everything, we need to be able to restore our data in a few days and tape is the only option. This has been the business system for many years. That's how the music industry works. Someone at Pixar accidentally deleted Toy Story 2 scene...
    - jpk 9y ago
      To be fair, the second time was for creative reasons (they decided they'd made a bad movie and rewrote it). But you're right, the first time was an errant "rm -rf *".
natoliniak 9y ago
Yep, i was also surprised by the article's premise. All the places I worked in managed nightly/weekly backups on ~220GB cartridge tapes. It was slow, but cheap and secure. Although I still have nightmares of having to manage Commvault's backup scripts.
bhauer 9y ago
The chart in the article essentially confirms your premise. It shows no decline; steady increase in tape shipments over time.
zitterbewegung 9y ago
Some have speculated that AWS Glacier is just a service that still stores information on Tape anyways. I remember when I saw a robotic tape storage machine at Fermilab when the Tevatron was still active. That was awesome. They also had racks of tapes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Glacier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Glacier
- rdtsc 9y ago
  I am surprised that this hasn't been leaked with how many people work at Amazon. Would expect some anonymous post somewhere "Oh yeah we use X, Y and Z there"
- cortesoft 9y ago
  Given that you have to request access to your data, then wait a bit of time before you can download lends credence to it being tape based, or at least something similar.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    the power density of these data centers is so high that power and cooling may be your limiting factor. In which case having racks of hard drives where most of them are powered off half of the time would be feasible. But then you have to schedule powering up the right racks for the current set of requests.
    - wlesieutre 9y ago
      See Facebook's "Cold Storage" systems for an example of this https://code.facebook.com/posts/1433093613662262 https://code.facebook.com/posts/1433093613662262 > To get the most data into this footprint, we needed high density, but we also needed to remain media-agnostic and low-frills. Using the theme that “less is more,” we started with the Open Vault OCP specification and made changes from there. The biggest change was allowing only one drive per tray to be powered on at a time. In fact, to ensure that a software bug doesn’t power all drives on by mistake and blow fuses in a data center, we updated the firmware in the drive controller to enforce this constraint. The machines could power up with no drives receiving any power whatsoever, leaving our software to then control their duty cycle. > Not having to power all those drives at the same time gave us even more room to increase efficiency. We reduced the number of fans per storage node from six to four, reduced the number of power shelves from three to one, and even reduced the number of power supplies in the shelf from seven to five. These server changes then meant that we could reduce the number of Open Rack bus bars from three to one.
tpeo 9y ago
In all likelihood, this article is meant for people who don't worry/don't need to know about data storage.

yeukhon 9y ago

I'd think most new startups do not have tape backup system, because they either export copies to a disk, or to services like S3 (then Glacier), since tape requires significant investment. I don't even believe SOX requires tape backup. Tape backup is common for storing master files like the master for a song. Those you can't risk keeping on a magnetic disk.

foobiekr 9y ago
IMHO and from talking to a large number of people in startup leadership positions, many startups don’t even have a disaster recovery or business continuity plan let alone any formal backup process. Sometimes they have expressed doubt that such things are even necessary since they are using distributed systems. In a lot of ways what I’ve seen in that regard is similar to the way some people confuse a RAID array with having solved their backup problem. Your mileage may vary but this is common enough that not only is tape not part of it but even the backup concept is absent.
fjsolwmv 9y ago
If you use cloud storage, your provider's tapes are your tape backups.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  Where I work we have to have a tape backup. This is a business decision. If AWS is completely gone or someone accidentally deleted everything, we need to be able to restore our data in a few days and tape is the only option. This has been the business system for many years. That's how the music industry works. Someone at Pixar accidentally deleted Toy Story 2 scene...
  - jpk 9y ago
    To be fair, the second time was for creative reasons (they decided they'd made a bad movie and rewrote it). But you're right, the first time was an errant "rm -rf *".

natoliniak 9y ago

Yep, i was also surprised by the article's premise. All the places I worked in managed nightly/weekly backups on ~220GB cartridge tapes. It was slow, but cheap and secure. Although I still have nightmares of having to manage Commvault's backup scripts.

bhauer 9y ago

The chart in the article essentially confirms your premise. It shows no decline; steady increase in tape shipments over time.

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Some have speculated that AWS Glacier is just a service that still stores information on Tape anyways. I remember when I saw a robotic tape storage machine at Fermilab when the Tevatron was still active. That was awesome. They also had racks of tapes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Glacier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Glacier

rdtsc 9y ago
I am surprised that this hasn't been leaked with how many people work at Amazon. Would expect some anonymous post somewhere "Oh yeah we use X, Y and Z there"
cortesoft 9y ago
Given that you have to request access to your data, then wait a bit of time before you can download lends credence to it being tape based, or at least something similar.
- hinkley 9y ago
  the power density of these data centers is so high that power and cooling may be your limiting factor. In which case having racks of hard drives where most of them are powered off half of the time would be feasible. But then you have to schedule powering up the right racks for the current set of requests.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    See Facebook's "Cold Storage" systems for an example of this https://code.facebook.com/posts/1433093613662262 https://code.facebook.com/posts/1433093613662262 > To get the most data into this footprint, we needed high density, but we also needed to remain media-agnostic and low-frills. Using the theme that “less is more,” we started with the Open Vault OCP specification and made changes from there. The biggest change was allowing only one drive per tray to be powered on at a time. In fact, to ensure that a software bug doesn’t power all drives on by mistake and blow fuses in a data center, we updated the firmware in the drive controller to enforce this constraint. The machines could power up with no drives receiving any power whatsoever, leaving our software to then control their duty cycle. > Not having to power all those drives at the same time gave us even more room to increase efficiency. We reduced the number of fans per storage node from six to four, reduced the number of power shelves from three to one, and even reduced the number of power supplies in the shelf from seven to five. These server changes then meant that we could reduce the number of Open Rack bus bars from three to one.

tpeo 9y ago

In all likelihood, this article is meant for people who don't worry/don't need to know about data storage.