Author name: Managecast Technologies

Ouch, Carbonite is not having a good day.  I see some people choose these low cost cloud backup providers without realizing they are not the same as enterprise-class backup providers like Managecast. It would seem you get what you pay for. Carbonite Forces Password Reset After Password Reuse Attack! Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!

Being the “Cloud Backup Guy” I’ve made a living off replacing tape. Tape is that legacy media right? It’s true that for most small to medium businesses, tape is hard to manage, expensive to rotate offsite, and has virtually been replaced by disk-to-disk (or disk-to-disk-to-cloud) technologies. However, I am finally willing to say tape definitely has it’s place. Given that I have been so anti-tape for many years, I thought it was news to share when I finally decided that tape had it’s place. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had nearly 30 years of IT consulting experience. In the old days I used nothing but tape as it was the only real option for data protection. I’ve also had my share of bad experiences with tape (mostly the old 4mm and 8mm drives and tapes). I hated the stuff and never wanted to rely on it. Like many seasoned IT professionals of the past, many of us had nightmares to tell about tape backup. When I got into the Cloud Backup business, the passion I had for disliking tape really helped me convince folks not to use it. Now don’t get me wrong, I think for most SMB’s tape is dead. However, as your data volume grows, and I am talking 50TB+ of data, you can not ignore the efficiency and cost effectiveness of good old tape. Tape has also come a long, long way over the years. Gone are the days of 4mm and 8mm DAT tapes.  LTO, the clear tape standard for the modern era, boasts LTO-7, now with a native capacity of 6TB+ (15TB compressed) per tape cartridge. LTO offers a reliable and cost effective method to store huge quantities of data at a much lower cost than disk storage technology. What brought about this decision to finally embrace tape?  The decision to choose tape became apparent as we were gobbling up more and more disk space for cloud backups. Our growth rate has been significant and trying to keep up with backup growth meant buying more and more disk. It’s not just the cost of disk we had to buy, but the rack space, the power, cooling, and other costs associated with hundreds of spinning disks, plus the cost of replicating the data to another data center with more spinning disks!  A significant segment of our backup storage was consumed by long-term archival storage of older data that continued to grow rapidly as data ages. Our cloud backup solution allows tiering of the data so that older, less frequently used data could be pushed to longer-term archival storage. Once I faced the decision to have to buy even more disk versus the cost of a tape solution to store the ever growing mountain of archive data, it became a no-brainer. Tape was the clear winner in that type of scenario. Allow me to stress that I am not a proponent of tape except for all but the largest of companies or others who required long-term archive of a large amount of data. It still introduces manual labor to swap and store tapes, take them offsite, etc. For near and medium term data, we still keep everything stored on disk for quick and easy access. However, for the long-term archival data, we are using tape and love the stuff. The nice thing is that our customers still don’t have to worry about using tape as we manage everything for them.

From the one-person office to the largest enterprise, every business has valuable information that needs to be managed, backed up, and securely stored. Today, more companies—large and small—are turning to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to handle their backup and disaster recovery (DR) needs. This raises an important question for businesses of all sizes: Why do YOU need a backup and disaster recovery MSP? The answer is simple: Expertise. Experts agree that disaster recovery planning requires complex preparation and flawless execution. This level of execution may be difficult, if not impossible, for businesses to achieve on their own without the support of a skilled MSP. An MSP ensures that DR plans are fully prepared and continuously monitored, helping to minimize recovery time objectives (RTO) and keep your business running smoothly. We all know that disasters—whether natural or man-made—can happen at any time. It’s the MSP’s job to ensure companies are prepared and that their data is protected. In today’s digital world, protecting your company’s data is a critical task. For businesses without an MSP, backups and disaster recovery are often neglected. These processes tend to become part-time tasks within a company, and there’s rarely someone dedicated solely to managing backup and recovery. Regardless of the company’s size, full-time monitoring and planning are essential for effective backup and disaster recovery. Without an MSP, backups can easily be sidelined by other projects. Often, companies assign data backup to someone with little experience—sometimes “the new guy or girl.” This leads to a lack of consistent monitoring, which puts the company at serious risk of data loss. A backup administrator, without the right expertise, may struggle to keep backups efficient and secure. Additionally, system restores are rarely tested without the guidance of an MSP, which leaves companies vulnerable in a real disaster. How Managecast Solves These Problems: At Managecast Technologies, we provide comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solutions for businesses of all sizes. Using industry-leading software from trusted partners like Asigra, Veeam, and Zerto, we ensure that your data is monitored, protected, and stored securely. Our team brings the expertise needed to execute thorough DR planning and business continuity strategies. Instead of risking your company’s critical data, let the experts at Managecast Technologies handle it. We’ll manage everything from setup and retention policies to backup schedules—ensuring your data is protected in the most cost-effective way possible.

I just had someone contact me and ask my opinion if I thought backup tape is dead. Maybe 6 years ago I would have enthusiastically said “Yes!”, and did so many times. However, after spending the last 6 years dedicated to cloud backup and immersed in the backup industry, my views have evolved on tape. Instead of asking “Is tape dead?”, the proper question is “Has the use of tape changed?”. While tape is far from dead and very much alive, it’s use has substantially changed over the past 5 to 10 to 15 years. In the past, tape was the go-to medium for backups of all types. However, disk has certainly displaced a lot of tape when it comes to near line backup storage of recently created data. Many modern backup environments consist of disk-to-disk backup and then backup data is written to tape after some period of time for longer-term storage and archive. Disk storage is significantly higher cost than tape storage, but for near term backup data the advantages of disk outweigh the cost penalty. For long-term archive of older data, where quick access is not needed, tape is the clear winner. [Read about aligning the cost of data protection vs the value of the data] In my experience, many SMBs have shifted to a disk-to-disk-to-cloud solution with no tape. So, in the SMB one could argue that tape has largely died (or at least diminished greatly). However, at the enterprise-level or those organizations who require long-term retention of backup data, there is no better alternative to storing large amounts of data on tape, and this will probably be the case for the next 10 years or beyond. So, no, tape is not dead, but its use has changed. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!