Is Tape Worthy of Blogging?

One of the more interesting (to me – at a Led Zeppelin party, it would qualify as “boring beyond uninteresting” and you would rightfully be labeled a pariah) differentiators one of our vendors has to offer is the soon-to-be-released “C2 Media” option. But, before I go into that, let me get you up to date.

The vendor is Spectra Logic, a Boulder, Colorado-based tape library and backup-to-disk manufacturer. They have been offering ‘Certified Media’ as an option for some time now. For any astute buyer, you will find that this offering is more expensive than getting tapes on your own from many sources. And, when Spectra uses the term ‘certified’, to some in the market, the term implies “factory refurbished”. I spoke with Jesse Childs from Spectra, and he assured me that their tapes are not only 100% new, but tested to virtually eliminate ‘infant mortality’, which is where questions of whether a drive or a tape is a cause for backup failure. But, when I say ‘more expensive’, I mean in terms of initial purchase. Spectra’s offering includes bar-code labeled media in TeraPacks, which are removable and self-contained cartridge trays that make it simple to load and unload multiple (up to ten) tapes at once for offsite storage. Additionally, any tape that fails can be returned for a new, labeled replacement, no questions asked. The alternative to this is that the less expensive media needs to be returned to the tape manufacturer (TDK, Maxell, Fuji, etc.) and will only be replaced if they agree that it is, in fact, defective, according to Doug Broshar from Capital Media. This, of course, brings you back to the question of a backup failure – was it the tape or the drive? A perfect storm for finger-pointing.

So, in March or April of this year, Spectra Logic will be releasing their C2 Media option. This makes a good thing even better, or so I’ve been told by Ted Sarganis at Spectra. It will do the following:

The tape is manufactured by the manufacturer and shipped to Spectra. Spectra certifies it and ships it to the end-user. Using their BlueScale technology within their libraries, the creation date, serial number, bar-code label and unique BlueScale identifier are logged.
During the lifetime of the tape, BlueScale monitors the date tape was last accessed, number of reads and writes, the number of soft errors, the max tap capacity and the remaining tape capacity.
Then, BlueScale knows when to retire the tape and provides life-cycle vital statistics such as the encryption moniker and moniker expiration date, cleaning tape data with notice of expiration, and user-defined error rate threshold notification.

According to Childs, this is the next logical step for Spectra and it solves a lot of his customer media-related issues. My question is, do you agree? Let me know your thoughts.

Lastly, I said I’d try to make this entertaining. While I was googleing (a word(?) that, up until a few years ago, you could not use in polite company) recently, I came across an article of a guy that got fired for posting a Dilbert cartoon. Click here to view the cartoon and related article.

Welcome!

This is just a quick note to welcome you, as one of the first to poke your head in, to a new editorial section I am maintaining as Technical Lead for TriAxis Storage Solutions, Inc. (www.triaxis.com)

What has been driving this is to help you, an associate in the industry, learn more about how the vision, from a technical viewpoint, is developed for TriAxis. Additionally, I may be a bit late with this editorial (OK, I'll call it a weblog...) piece as I have been asked several times by clients and prospects if they could view white papers and evaluations I've developed while in this role. So, I will try.

I will try to...

... make it informative.
... make it entertaining.
... encourage you to be interactive.
... make it a site that you'll want to revisit.

Again, thanks for coming. This place holder is so our web team can finish developing this aspect of the site. Stay tuned.

Mumf