Do Most Restores Really Fail?

Every once in a while I see some analyst, usually talking about some backup to disk product, say "X% of all attempts to restore from tape fail" where X is some ridiculous number like 62.7. While I've been involved in my share of restore disasters from OnStream tapes and no OnStream drive to "We found tapes 1-3 and 5-8 do we really need tape 4 of that set" 95% were due to stupidity of some sort. So tell me folks what percentage of your restores fail? Good restore war stories also welcome.

Howard Marks, Network Computing Blogger

July 30, 2008

1 Min Read
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Every once in a while I see some analyst, usually talking about some backup to disk product, say "X% of all attempts to restore from tape fail" where X is some ridiculous number like 62.7. While I've been involved in my share of restore disasters from OnStream tapes and no OnStream drive to "We found tapes 1-3 and 5-8 do we really need tape 4 of that set" 95% were due to stupidity of some sort. So tell me folks what percentage of your restores fail? Good restore war stories also welcome.

About the Author

Howard Marks

Network Computing Blogger

Howard Marks is founder and chief scientist at Deepstorage LLC, a storage consultancy and independent test lab based in Santa Fe, N.M. and concentrating on storage and data center networking. In more than 25 years of consulting, Marks has designed and implemented storage systems, networks, management systems and Internet strategies at organizations including American Express, J.P. Morgan, Borden Foods, U.S. Tobacco, BBDO Worldwide, Foxwoods Resort Casino and the State University of New York at Purchase. The testing at DeepStorage Labs is informed by that real world experience.

He has been a frequent contributor to Network Computing and InformationWeek since 1999 and a speaker at industry conferences including Comnet, PC Expo, Interop and Microsoft's TechEd since 1990. He is the author of Networking Windows and co-author of Windows NT Unleashed (Sams).

He is co-host, with Ray Lucchesi of the monthly Greybeards on Storage podcast where the voices of experience discuss the latest issues in the storage world with industry leaders.  You can find the podcast at: http://www.deepstorage.net/NEW/GBoS

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