By Bob Conway. I recently saw an article in InformationWeek after the our recent DAT announcement. I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject.

DAT/DDS The Tape Format That Will Not Die

Posted by Howard Marks, Jul 23, 2008 11:07 PM
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/datdds_the_tape.html
After an absence of five or six years, and two generations, DDS trademark owner Sony (NYSE: SNE) is rejoining HP (NYSE: HPQ) in supporting the seventh generation of DDS/DAT drives, DAT320, targeted at the SMB market. DAT320, like HP's DAT160s abandons the Digital Auto Tape cartridge, and its 4mm wide tape, using 8mm tape in a two reel cartridge instead. My biggest problem with DAT320 is that I don't think the SMB customer with one server should be backing up to tape. I've seen too many SMBs fail at making a good backup every day, and getting one offsite occasionally, with a tape drive. They don't change tapes, don't notice with the backup program fails, don't take tapes offsite and, since they're not IT professionals, generally don't understand how backups work and don't care to know till something goes wrong. A combination of a local backup to a USB hard drive and an online backup makes more sense to me for these folks.

The real question to me is do we need a tape format specifically for low end use. Even if you disagree with me and think SMBs can handle tapes effectively why have tape formats specifically for the low end. Why can't SMBs use earlier generations of LTO? I just opened the CDW site to see what the street prices for SMB backup devices really are and right there on the front page are an HP DAT160 drive for $849 and a Tandberg LTO-2 drive for $760. Paying more for a drive that has less capacity (200 native GB/tape vs. 80 for DAT160) and no automation upgrade doesn't make any sense to me. Unlike DAT160 drives which can mount and read DDS-4 tapes the new DAT320 drives are only backwards compatible with DAT160 so there aren't many organizations that will get any real benefit from backwards compatibility.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Howard offers some interesting views, and no doubt they do reflect real life experiences for some people. We at HP have a different take on this issue. Also, while I can empathize with the comments on people not changing tapes, not noticing when the backups do occasionally fail etc., we should not conclude that the technology solution is at fault when it is generally poor operating processes or practices which are actually to blame. After all, automobiles crash every day because of poor drivers, that doesn't necessarily make the motor car a poor solution? 

We feel we need to continue to offer choice to our customers so that they can work in a way that feels right for them and that mitigates their risk at an acceptable cost. Online backup may be viable for some people, but if the data set is big the bandwidth needed can be prohibitive, or the local infrastructure may not always be reliable enough to depend upon for the time it takes to complete the data transfer.  And yes, a USB hard drive can be used in many environments to meet the basic needs of data protection. That is why HP supports the use of both these methodologies within our product lines. We also offer RDX based removable hard drives as another cost effective backup and disaster recovery solution for people who want even lower cost, but can manage with fewer pieces of removable media in their rotation scheme.

So, why continue with the DAT product line which is targeted directly at SMB customers?  Our DAT 160 drive has been shipping successfully for just over a year now and in the first twelve months of shipment we have sold an average of 6 data cartridges on each drive. This suggests that thousands of customers continue to see a need for removable backup using multiple copies or versions of their data in a structured media rotation scheme at a relatively low cost.

We also need to respect the investment protection imperative of the many current DDS/DAT users who are still out there in the installed base. After all, since the first DDS drives were shipped in 1989 over 18-million DDS/DAT drives and over 400-million cartridges have been shipped. Of the total number of drives shipped 7.4-million have been sold since the year 2000, and that supports the notion that there is still a very healthy body of very satisfied DDS/DAT users, who like what the core technology offers. And while DAT 320 may be seen by some to offer somewhat limited backwards compatibility, it is still one generation more than switching to any different technology presents.

These are the major factors compelling us to continue to support this very successful tape format for SMBs.