Stephen Manley published a blog post today called “Tape is Alive? Inconceivable!” To which I have to reply with a quote from Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” I say that because, for me, it’s very conceivable that tape continues to play the…
Keep it up, Apple, and I’m going back to Windows. I was a Windows customer for many years. Despite running virus/malware protection and being pretty good at doing the right things security-wise, I had to completely rebuild Windows at least once a year — and it usually happened when I really didn’t have the time…
"The Cloud" has changed the way I do business, but I'm not always sure how I should back up the data I have "up there." So I thought I'd write a blog post about my research to address this hole in our plan. Truth in IT, Inc. is run almost entirely in the cloud. We…
Dell continues its global domination plans via more acquisitions. Last year, they acquired Ocarina & Compellant. This year they’ve acquired Wyse (they’re still in business?) and Sonicwall. But now they’ve entered into my world. They have announced that they are acquiring Appassure and Quest Software. For those of you who haven’t been following these companies,…
When I'm talking about backing up of virtual servers & desktops, I always get asked "what do you think about Veeam/vRanger/PHD Virtual/VMPro? Should I buy that instead of NBU/TSM/CV/BE/AS/DP/etc's VADP agent?" The first thing I can say is that it has definitely become a trend to install a purpose-built backup app for VMware/Hyper-V. On one…
Sometimes I walk to work in the mornings (I live just over 2 miles from the office), and if I leave early enough I walk down this particular sidewalk that has just been sprinkled with water. On each side of this sidewalk is grass, and watered grass here in Southern California tends to mean that…
The FCC gives discounts to schools and libraries if they want to buy a tape-based backup system, but not if they want to use disk or any type of cloud-based architecture. No, this is not me saying this is an example of how tape is better. It’s me, an American citizen expressing frustration at how…
I don’t care if you use disk, tape, or the cloud to back up your systems. (In case you think I’m swayed by advertising, I have advertisers from all of those categories.) Having said that, it bothers me when I see misinformation being used to sway you one way or the other. This is why…
I just wrote a blog post about how Gartner never said that 71% of tape restores fail. They never said anything like it. Another statistic that is often quoted is "The Yankee Group said that 54% of tape restores fail." Guess what? They never said that, either. What they did say in a 2004 paper…
How many times have you read that Gartner said 71% of tape restores fail? Google it. You’ll find dozens of references to this Gartner “statistic.” It was cited again recently in an article by Highly Reliable Systems, along with a bunch of other stats about how tape sucks. I saw Dave Russell of Gartner last…