PRESS RELEASES - 2007

INGENIUM CORPORATION FEATURED IN BYTEANDSWITCH ARTICLE – MANAGING TAPE IN THE AGE OF DISK

Tucson, AZ – Tape storage or disk archiving – which method is best to store data that is critical to your organization? In an article published by ByteandSwitch (“Managing Tape in the Age of Disk, July 20, 2007), Bruce Wiley of Ingenium Corporation, weighed in on the advantages of tape vs. disk storage. Mr. Wiley is a Systems Administrator for Ingenium at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, where tape storage is still in use.

Organizations archive data – either via tape, disk or optical storage -- to provide a means of restoring that data in the event of a system failure. While some believe that restoring tape is not the best alternative, Mr. Wiley said he has confidence in AMARG’s Spectra Logic LTO-3 tape library’s ability to meet all backup contingencies. Mr. Wiley explained to ByteandSwitch that the storage device is directly attached to a group of servers and does incremental backups of about 3 to 9 Tbytes each week.

“Surprisingly, restoring from tape doesn’t take a long time,” Mr. Wiley said. “We could get a file back in 20 to 30 minutes. If a server fails, though, it could take 48 to 72 (hours) to get it back.”

In determining network or storage add-on requirements, Mr. Wiley suggested that key areas for consideration are determining how critical backups are to your organization as well as the impact of short- or long-term failure. “The best thing anyone can do is keep meticulous records and monitor data. Pull all the reports, understand and look at trends before you buy.”

The full article, Managing Tape in the Age of Disk, can be found on ByteandSwitch at http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=129616.