Enterprise

How tapes ensure redundancy stays safe

By Michael
September 15, 2014

In today’s workplace, some personnel may think that having redundancy in operations is costly. They may think it’s unnecessary or breaks compliance guidelines. They may even think it makes more sense to just put data into a digital platform and remove physical storage altogether.

All of these assumptions are incorrect. If companies dedicate their single-copy solutions to an online, cloud-only environment, what are they to do if there’s a server outage? A major storm? A denial of service attack? And besides, redundancy in no way, shape or form violates compliance requirements. In fact, it’s an encouraged part of a health information management infrastructure.

Best practices
So how are companies supposed to protect their assets without risking their continuity? Backup tape management is the key, as TechTarget stated. The hardware and software involved in this infrastructure option make redundancy much easier to maintain, as well as providing a much more manageable and affordable answer to potential continuity concerns.

Some of the top benefits of using backup tape for redundancy and security include:

  1. Cost advantage
  2. Isolation of information
  3. Manual processing
  4. Ease of use

Whether these solutions are stored on-site or remotely is up to the owning organization, but in the end, tapes are less easily damaged or infiltrated than other systems like virtual machines or cloud infrastructure. That makes them a hardened option for avoiding threats and building more secure, continuous support of enterprise operations.

Powering redundancy
Of course, just like a standard backup tape management system, there needs to be governance and accountability in the redundancy landscape. What good is a tool that’s not compliant or maintained to the proper standards? It wouldn’t be able to hold up against an audit or inquiry, nor would it be able to help companies fully restore their operations in a timely manner.

Keeping the power on within a data center requires a strong attention to detail and a mind for the various kinds of redundancy available to the organization. Healthcare Design Magazine wrote that the major varieties include:

  • Basic redundancy – Power and cooling that builds on existing tiers
  • Concurrent maintenance – Provides ongoing support so facilities never power down
  • Fault tolerance – Any failure in the system is stopped by IT operations, making outages impossible

Selecting the right kind of backup tape redundancy can have a significant impact on how fluid operations can become. Maintaining these additional resources ensures that organizations never need to fear any kind of attack or disaster, making them invaluable for enterprise operations.

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