As the demand for storage grows and technology progresses, the economics of owning storage change. Not all that long ago we wanted to write as much as we could to tape, because tape was cheap and on-line storage was expensive. Now many people think that on-line storage is infinite (almost) and free (not at all, but we'll talk more about this later). In today's economics, storing your data on tape is one of the most expensive things you can do. As a result, many of the people I talk to have abandoned tape altogether for on-line archives. Not only are the on-line archives cheaper, but they are more flexible and much easier to search. But this doesn't mean you can manage them like tape...

With tape the deal was write it and forget it. Tapes in a mountain somewhere generally receive no maintenance (not that this is the right thing to do). On-line storage, on the other hand, needs maintenance. As you write more, you need to provision more. And if you don't organize it well, as you write more, specific things become harder and harder to find.

The bottom line is that this is a real paradigm shift. It is not as simple as substituting a disc for a tape. You have to manage differently as well. It's time to change your thinking as well as your media...

Friday, October 13, 2006 6:18:50 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)      Comments [0]  Storage Management