[Info-vax] Special deals on Tape Drives

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 3/6/2022 10:09 AM, kemain.nospam at gmail.com wrote:
>> From: Info-vax <info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com> On Behalf Of Arne Vajhøj via Info-vax
>> On 3/5/2022 6:53 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> How would I perform backups and test them if I don't even know where,
>>> physically, the system I am running on is?  If I did, would they even
>>> let me in the door, much less into the data center?
>>
>> You access the systems over the network.You don't need to know where the
>> hardware is physical located - you just need to know how to connect.
>>
> 
> In many cases, this is correct i.e., location independent services,
> does not depend on the distance between the service provider and the
> service consumer.
> 
> However, if there are latency considerations with some workloads,
> then like outsourcing, one of the first questions to the new provider
> is "where are your data centres located?"
> 
> Case in point - Microsoft Azure DC's in Canada are located in Toronto
> and Quebec City. AWS DC's are located in the Montreal area. That’s it
> for these vendors. For those Customers in Western or Eastern Canada,
> choosing Azure or AWS must ask if any of their workloads will be
> subject to latency issues. And as readers in comp.os.vms already
> know, bandwidth and latency are two totally different subjects.

There can be both end user latency reasons and legal reasons to
want the cloud provider in a certain region. That is quite common.
And the big cloud providers are constantly expanding to try and
cover more area.

But for the sysadm ssh'ing in it does not matter.

>>> Are you saying backups have to be done over the Internet to tapes
>>> located in my office?  After all, the reason for going to The Cloud
>>> was to get out of the data center business.  Even in a data center as
>>> small as mine was at the University doing a complete backup (usually
>>> done once a month) over the network could take a more than a day.
>>> That can't be right.
>>
>> Anything is possible.
>>
>> But typical you will backup to backup storage at same or alternate cloud
>> provider.
>>
>> Large backups take time - both with tape drives and network.
> 
> Correct - there is usually a solution for all scenarios.
> 
> However, the challenge with many Cloud backup scenario's is the
> amount of data to be backed up (usually in multiple TB's range), and
> the time to backup over the network.
> 
> A few considerations: - most backup providers charge by the amount of
> data that gets backed up and archived. If one does the math, TB++
> backups on a daily, weekly, monthly basis often have a large
> additional re-occurring monthly cost; - many App environments will
> have "backup windows" where backups must be completed within that
> Window. Anything outside this Window may impact other aspects of the
> IT SLA's (impact on users, App support batch jobs etc.)
> 
> If a company requires offsite backup archiving separate from the prod
> data (comp.os.vms readers understand the difference between
> replication and off-site data backups), then the backup discussion in
> the Cloud gets exponentially more complex.
Cloud backup storage cost money. Tapes, tape drives and
tape storage cost money.

Nothing is free.

Companies must do the cost analysis and decide what works
for them.

AWS takes 5 cent per GB month for "warm" storage and 1 cent
per GB month for "cold" storage. That is 600 and 120 dollars
per TB year respectively.

Arne