Storing DLT tapes

[Theresa Patrie]

We are looking for a storage solution for our DLT tapes. Right now they are stored in plastic bags in locked metal cabinets. Our main concern is water damage if the sprinkler systems went off and leaked into the cabinets. I checked out Turtlecase storage boxes and they look like they might do the job. Does anyone have any comments or other suggestions?? Thanks!

P.S. This thread has been moved from Storage>General to Tape Libraries and Drives. -HP Forum Moderator

[Jared Westgate_1]

Hello Theresa,

I have never used a Turtlecase before, but I didn't see anyone responding to your question, so I thought I'd be the first.

I just wanted to say not to forget about fire protection. If your sprinklers are coming on, it probably means theres a fire!

But seriously, we use a fire resistant safe to store our media. At every monthend, we do a special full backup that subsequently gets stored in a safe deposit box of a local bank. It certainly isn't perfect, but hopefully (we haven't had to yet) it will work. If your media is important enough to be protected against water/fire damage, it should be important enough to store offsite.

Just don't forget to clearly define exactly what you are protecting against, along with all other requirements, in order to find the best solution (You'd be suprised how often people don't do this). I'm sure you've heard all this before, but I just thought I'd give you my two cents.

Best of luck,

Jared

[harry d brown jr]

Are the tapes stored off site or onsite? Plastic bags sound good, providing they are closable.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi,

The best answer is to not worry about it. The preferred method is to keep one set of media on-site for immediate restores and keep a copy of the backup media offsite. In my case, as soon as the nightly backups finish a copy of that media is produced for off-site storage. If you follow this procedure, you are always protected.

[Vito Sarducci]

Are these DLTs in a TLD or standalone drives? Are they onsite or offsite? I would not worry about them as long as you have a duplicate copy of the DLT going offsite. With regards to backup applications, you should duplicate your backup tapes somehow if your DRP issue is redundancy in tapes and losing a tape to environmental concerns like water damage of such.

Veritas Netbackup has a neat utility to duplicate the backup tape upon verification. Backupexpress also carries a duplication process. You can write a standard script to tee the tape to another tape, but your manpower hours do count.

HTH,

Vito

[Karen T]

Anytime you have backup tapes, optical media, etc. that has critical data stored on it, there should be an off-site storage location as well as an on-site location. Each of these locations should be fireproof, waterproof and safe from theft, just to name a few requirements. Plastic bags with zip closures will prevent some water but certainly won't protect from extreme heat, large amounts of water, sharp objects, etc. There are many types of storage possibilites that meet this criteria and more. What is chosen will be dependent on your company's requirements and budget. Here's to safe data storage!

[Theresa Patrie]

Thank you all for your input. Most of it, thoughwas very general. We currently store a set of DLT's here and a duplicate set at another company site. The question still is, what should we store them in? I found some fireproof safes costing about 4K, but I think that these may be overkill since if there is a fire, the sprinkler systems would almost immediately go off. Therefore, what I really need to protect from is water. Plastic bags are a quick fix, but certainly should not be our long-term solution. Does anyone have any specific information (ie:web sites or vendor names) where I can find something that would suit this purpose??
Thanks!

[harry d brown jr · Accepted solution]

Theresa,

he is a site that lists some options:

http://www.drj.com/vendor/drj5med.html

[paul courry]

Hmmmmm..........

I have a concern about the plastic bags. At what temperature do they melt all over your tapes? The next question is what temperature is your safe guaranteed to not exceed. If the safe stays cool enough, no problem. If the safe gets too hot, big problem.

This is why metal boxes are used to store a lot of tapes sent off site.