You found the backup wrap up your go-to podcast for all things
Speaker:backup recovery and cyber recovery.
Speaker:In this episode, we challenge the notion that cloud versus
Speaker:tape is an either or proposition.
Speaker:I saw this LinkedIn post claiming that.
Speaker:LTO Library Robots are the only robots not making things easier
Speaker:in 2025, and it got my attention.
Speaker:He suggested that tape is too slow and unreliable compared to cloud for active
Speaker:archives, which got me a little worked up.
Speaker:Here's the thing, if you're putting data in cloud's, cheaper tiers, guess what?
Speaker:It's probably sitting on tape anyway.
Speaker:Persona and I break down, uh, I think a real comparison, cost, access, time, data
Speaker:integrity, and location considerations.
Speaker:But honestly, I just start by rejecting the premise of the question because it's
Speaker:probably on tape if it's in the cloud.
Speaker:I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker:By the way, if you don't know who I am, I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.
Speaker:Backup, and I've been passionate about backup and recovery for over 30 years,
Speaker:ever since I had to tell my boss.
Speaker:We had no backups of that database that we just lost.
Speaker:I don't want that to happen to you, and that's why I do this podcast.
Speaker:On this podcast, we turn unappreciated backup admins into Cyber Recovery Heroes.
Speaker:This is the backup wrap up.
Speaker:Welcome to the show.
Speaker:Hi, I am w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr. Backup, and I have with me a guy who has
Speaker:been flaunting his new job in my face.
Speaker:Prasanna Malaiyandi, how's it going?
Speaker:Prasanna I.
Speaker:I am good Curtis.
Speaker:I, I wouldn't call it flaunting, but I'm just excited about my
Speaker:new job.
Speaker:Oh, you should see the campus.
Speaker:It's so amazing.
Speaker:And the coffee.
Speaker:And the coffee and the food and the food choices are so great.
Speaker:And I'm like, I, my coffee
Speaker:You.
Speaker:Yeah, I see the, I see your coffee choice in the corner.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Let's see if I tilt the camera.
Speaker:That's my new espresso machine, and you can see at the bottom.
Speaker:For those of you watching on YouTube, it has a like a little shelf
Speaker:with a drawer of coffee choices.
Speaker:And as you if you, and so I think people you should watch, or listeners, you
Speaker:should watch the podcast on YouTube
Speaker:and keep an eye on that shelf and see how many go missing every single time
Speaker:you watch between episodes to see how big of a caffeine habit cur Curtis has.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Curtis definitely has a caffeine habit, but the, the rules are that if you
Speaker:get coffee like at like, you know, a breakfast place and then you come home,
Speaker:those coffees, they don't, they don't count.
Speaker:They're together.
Speaker:You can't count them together.
Speaker:'cause if you did, that would be a lot.
Speaker:Have you ever thought about injecting coffee directly into your veins?
Speaker:I don't think that would work out well.
Speaker:So today's topic is not coffee.
Speaker:Today's topic is about tape versus cloud and the, the or, or
Speaker:there, why, why, why is it versus.
Speaker:Because
Speaker:in the last epi, last episode, we talked about how the
Speaker:cloud is probably using tape.
Speaker:Don't, don't, don't be jumping to the punchline,
Speaker:No, I'm, no, I'm just restating You said cloud versus tape
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That is the name of the, that is the name of the show, of the episode.
Speaker:And the reason, the reason it's cloud versus tape is that all of
Speaker:this started with one guy's post.
Speaker:okay.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So this all started from this LinkedIn post that I saw and.
Speaker:It, it had a headline that, you know, a good headline in
Speaker:a post is, is solid, right?
Speaker:And this PO and the headline of this post caught me, right?
Speaker:And here's what it said.
Speaker:This is, this is, this answers your question.
Speaker:Why is this a versus episode?
Speaker:Here's what it said, LTO Library robots, the only robots not
Speaker:making things easier in 2025.
Speaker:What.
Speaker:That's what it says.
Speaker:And he says Controversial.
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:Uh, and then he goes on to basically do a tape versus cloud, uh, post.
Speaker:and, and we'll include, And we'll include the link to the post in the show notes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So all you tape, well, actually I don't, I don't know.
Speaker:Just 'cause you're backup friendly doesn't mean you're tape friendly.
Speaker:You should be tape friendly if you're listening to, if you listen to this
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Just so they can see what the original post was about.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:No, I want him, I want him to go comment on,
Speaker:um, you know, I mean, he'll, he'll like it.
Speaker:'cause basically the pose is, you know, advertising how amazing they
Speaker:are first off, he makes two, um, I'll say claims about tape, one of which
Speaker:I thought was totally outta line.
Speaker:And then the other I think is in the context of, you know, in
Speaker:the context is not that big of a deal, but when we talk about.
Speaker:So his points, so he's basically suggesting, first off, he's saying
Speaker:cloud is better than tape for the concept of an active archive.
Speaker:Let me define active archive.
Speaker:And that is.
Speaker:Well, it's somewhat self-defining, but it, you know, a traditional archive
Speaker:is you make a copy and you put it on a shelf and you hope you never touch it.
Speaker:An active archive is secondary data, right.
Speaker:You know, uh, maybe even tertiary, you know, data of
Speaker:secondary or tertiary importance.
Speaker:But we might occasionally access it.
Speaker:Not rarely, but occasionally.
Speaker:And
Speaker:just to chime in on that, so when you said active archive, I was like, that
Speaker:sounds like an oxymoron, you know?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because no one thinks active and archive together now having
Speaker:worked in storage for a long time.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Normally what we'd also call that is HSM, right.
Speaker:Hierarchical storage management.
Speaker:yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I, I think HSM would qualify Yeah.
Speaker:Where older data sort of gets tiered off into lower costs, lower storage,
Speaker:just to keep it still visible, right.
Speaker:And accessible.
Speaker:But there is sort of a penalty of being able to read that data back.
Speaker:But from a client perspective, it's still available and usable.
Speaker:Right, and it, it.
Speaker:It might not be fully HSM, right?
Speaker:'cause the, the, the idea of HSM is that it, it just magically comes back.
Speaker:But, but it, it is, it is this idea of an archive, which is actively,
Speaker:that you're actively pulling stuff out on a regular basis.
Speaker:And as opposed to sort of the traditional, like you said, like
Speaker:true archive where you put it there and you just, you never access it.
Speaker:and just, uh, one example, and
Speaker:let me know if you think this makes sense for our listeners too, is like.
Speaker:Medical research like DNA research, like these models and this data,
Speaker:scientific data that they collect, right?
Speaker:They may not actively need it, right?
Speaker:To use it on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker:They might need to store it because in some future point they may need
Speaker:to be able to reference that data.
Speaker:And usually this data is very, very large data sets.
Speaker:And so you don't wanna necessarily keep it stored on your primary
Speaker:storage system because of cost.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Um, but you still want it.
Speaker:You wanna make sure it stays around and you wanna be able to
Speaker:access it right there, there.
Speaker:By the way, there's an entire, uh, group called the Active Archive Alliance, which
Speaker:is a whole, whole number of people, some of which listen to the show that, um, that
Speaker:are basically vendors dedicated to this concept of the, of the active archive.
Speaker:So he, you know.
Speaker:He was basically suggesting that if you have an active archive, if you're going
Speaker:to regularly retrieve data from the archive, then again, according to the
Speaker:post, you should put it in the cloud and not on tape because cloud is better and
Speaker:tape is, his two claims are too slow.
Speaker:And he basically implied that it was unreliable.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:He said, if you want that clip at your fingertips without the weight
Speaker:and the will it load anxiety.
Speaker:I was like, what the, what, what is that?
Speaker:So, so basically he's saying it takes too long and, and it's, and
Speaker:it's not reliable and so therefore you need to put it in the cloud and.
Speaker:okay.
Speaker:Keep going.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, but that's, that was the point of his post.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And I, I, I know that, that one of the first things that's going to come
Speaker:to your mind is if you put it in the cloud, it might indeed be on tape.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So it's, so first off, there, there is no such thing as tape versus cloud.
Speaker:It's, it's really tape versus.
Speaker:His post was about T versus cloud.
Speaker:And so I thought it was a, you know, a good topic to discuss and also to just
Speaker:bring up the fact that, um, if, if the listeners don't know, if you are using
Speaker:the lower cost tiers of cloud storage, you are most likely storing your data on tape.
Speaker:Go listen to our episode a couple or a couple episodes ago.
Speaker:We just talked about this.
Speaker:Did we, I forgot.
Speaker:Yes, we did.
Speaker:Curtis,
Speaker:Do you remember what the title of that episode was?
Speaker:I don't think it's been published yet, but it,
Speaker:Oh, is that what it is?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:We did
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:We did, we did talk about what,
Speaker:IS tape backup dead.
Speaker:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So yes.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So we did, we did mention that that in the tape back is taped back up
Speaker:dead episode, which is, which is, which is related to this episode.
Speaker:And there, and then we made a lot of really good points in that
Speaker:episode, which we're not gonna take the time to rehash in this episode.
Speaker:This is mainly about, first off, this idea of is cloud better than tape?
Speaker:And first off, I'm gonna say that I reject the premise because it's
Speaker:really disc versus tape, right?
Speaker:Not cloud versus
Speaker:but even if I just took, so I think that is definitely a fair angle to look at it
Speaker:in my mind.
Speaker:When you said cloud versus tape, the one thing that, or couple
Speaker:things pop to mind, right?
Speaker:So one is.
Speaker:Storing data on cloud.
Speaker:If your infrastructure that you need to access the data is on premises,
Speaker:you're going to need to pull the data back and send the data up.
Speaker:And that's gonna take time to, especially if these are active archive
Speaker:scenarios, like I had mentioned, where you might have a very large data set.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So
Speaker:one is it's not gonna be instantaneous, right?
Speaker:Versus something that might be on premises like your tape library
Speaker:Yeah, that's a, that's a great point.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So, so if we're, if we are talking like, if we, if we don't reject the premise and
Speaker:we say cloud versus tape, like setting aside the fact that cloud is often tape,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:If we're talking about putting your data in a cloud vendor, ver
Speaker:put, versus putting your data in a tape library that you control Yes.
Speaker:Access.
Speaker:Could be an issue depending on the size of the things that we're talking about.
Speaker:It's not instantaneous to move things back and forth from the cloud.
Speaker:Um, potentially this is mitigated by moving where your infrastructure is.
Speaker:If your infrastructure is up, you know, if you're, if you're storing the data
Speaker:in a AWS and your compute happens to be an AWS, it's a much shorter trip.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:the,
Speaker:I
Speaker:that, that is a really valid point.
Speaker:And then the other, so I had two more points.
Speaker:Um, the second one is cost, right?
Speaker:He doesn't necessarily talk about that, but.
Speaker:He doesn't talk about cost at
Speaker:Right, but if, say you wanted not the very lowest cost storage
Speaker:that's in the cloud, but something that's a little bit more practical,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:You're paying per month, per
Speaker:gigabyte, right?
Speaker:If you have very, very large data sets and multiple, very, very large
Speaker:data sets, the cost can quickly add up, especially if this is archive,
Speaker:which implies that you're keeping it for a very, very, very long time.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And that's a really good point, right?
Speaker:And, and that's been historically my, you know, when I'll, I'll quickly
Speaker:summarize the things that I, um, talked about in the other episode.
Speaker:Cost, uh, initial integrity and long-term integrity, right?
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Tape is much, much, much, much, much cheaper than literally
Speaker:in all three categories.
Speaker:It is at least one, sometimes two, sometimes three orders of
Speaker:magnitude better in that category.
Speaker:So, and, and in fact, I've, I've regular, I've regularly made the
Speaker:claim if what we're talking about is long-term storage, that set aside,
Speaker:set, set aside, cloud for the minute.
Speaker:Even if we looked at disc that we're going to own, which we know long term is going
Speaker:to be cheaper than doing it in the cloud, uh, assuming we have a hundred percent
Speaker:utilization and all of that, right?
Speaker:But, um, if the disc were free,
Speaker:right, it would still be more expensive than tape.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Why would I say that?
Speaker:Power cooling
Speaker:Power and cooling
Speaker:right?
Speaker:And data center space.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Um, because it's going to be bigger than the tape, it's going to create way
Speaker:more power need, or it's gonna have way more power needs, which then creates
Speaker:way more heat, which then has to be dissipated through, uh, cooling, right?
Speaker:So that's why I've often made the, the argument, again, cloud is a different
Speaker:argument, but when it comes to cost, even if disc were free tape would be cheaper.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Why is that?
Speaker:because.
Speaker:Well, you just talked about it, right?
Speaker:Because tape is, you write it and then it just sits there.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:You are not powering it.
Speaker:You're not cooling it.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:In fact, it should be, I think in the last episode we talked about, right?
Speaker:It should be stored at room temperature, Right.
Speaker:So
Speaker:And, and the, and the even and the drives, unlike disc, the drives aren't consuming
Speaker:much power when they're not being used.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, and they're consuming.
Speaker:And, and when the drive is doing something, it's consuming less
Speaker:power than the same amount of disc.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, the tapes consume zero power, right?
Speaker:So the, the tape li a tape library that is.
Speaker:You know, this big and a tape library that's this big, consumes
Speaker:the same amount of power.
Speaker:And, and for people, uh, listening to the podcast, Curtis basically showed
Speaker:maybe a foot and a half versus six feet.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:So,
Speaker:so,
Speaker:yes.
Speaker:those listening at home, yeah.
Speaker:Uh, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:Well, it just, it just cost is definitely the number one, uh, thing.
Speaker:Because, because then when we talk about cloud, your point is super, super valid
Speaker:because if we're talking cloud, you are paying every single month forever.
Speaker:As long as you're keeping that, that archive in there and you're
Speaker:paying by the gigabyte and that per gigabyte price is, um, that
Speaker:you're paying every month is likely.
Speaker:And it's probably similar to the acquisition price of tape.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Meaning, meaning just buying that one tape and you're,
Speaker:you're gonna pay that per month.
Speaker:and then the other thing to also mention is active.
Speaker:So you talked about active archive, so I'm
Speaker:assuming you are gonna be reading the data periodically,
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Which means that depending on what storage tier or storage class you use
Speaker:for the cloud, you may have different costs for reading the data back.
Speaker:Right, which
Speaker:could be very very expensive for the lowest cost tier of storage.
Speaker:right, right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They do charge you quite a bit.
Speaker:'cause the idea with of depending on the class that you put in, so your choice
Speaker:is paying more per gigabyte per month.
Speaker:And be able to access it no problem.
Speaker:Or pay less per gigabyte per month and then pay a lot when you access it.
Speaker:Um, you know, pick your poison, right.
Speaker:Um, and also the cost per month is also going to depend, usually depends on how
Speaker:quickly you'll be able to access it.
Speaker:At least it isn't a WSI know like in Google storage, Google Cloud storage.
Speaker:the same, I think
Speaker:it's the
Speaker:same, the same access time, but they just charge you again
Speaker:based on when you access it.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Uh, I, I have one more.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay, so the third one, right?
Speaker:My third point about this, just cloud versus tape,
Speaker:assuming once again that you're running on premises,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:And you're storing your data in the cloud, right?
Speaker:We talked about the cost of storing it up there, the cost of the time
Speaker:it takes to transfer it up and down.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:One other cost we didn't talk about is egress cost,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Well, I, I thought, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna play dumb here.
Speaker:I thought we just talked about that, the charge
Speaker:No, that's just to restore the data.
Speaker:But to actually transfer the data
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:is a cost as well.
Speaker:So for
Speaker:instance, if your infrastructure exists on premises to pull your data from
Speaker:the cloud back to your data center, they're going to typically charge you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which you now need to factor in.
Speaker:And once again, this goes all the way back to the active archive definition, right?
Speaker:You're reading this data at some frequency, right?
Speaker:It's not just staying up there and you're never getting it back, right?
Speaker:So in addition to paying the restore cost, right, you also have to pay
Speaker:the data, transfer out cost or egress cost, and that could add up,
Speaker:especially if your data set is large.
Speaker:Yeah, that, that's a, and and just to sort of put in, know, simpler language,
Speaker:those last two things you're paying.
Speaker:I, I, if you're using infrequently accessed object storage, and, and
Speaker:that's part of the CO and that's the, like Glacier Deep Archive, for example,
Speaker:is one of these things where you, you get a really cheap monthly cost, but
Speaker:that's based on the idea that you're never gonna bring any of it back.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But if you do bring it back, then they charge you extra just
Speaker:to take it out of the archive.
Speaker:And then you're right.
Speaker:There is then the cost to, to bring it back so that first cost would happen,
Speaker:whether it leaves the cloud or not.
Speaker:Just like if, if they transferred it within Google, I'm sorry.
Speaker:Or within AWS, uh, and then that second cost is when you bring
Speaker:it back to your environment.
Speaker:Yeah, that's, these are really good, these are really good points.
Speaker:Um, the other, and, and, and just really quickly to talk about
Speaker:the, the data integrity issue.
Speaker:Tape is better at writing ones and zeros than disc.
Speaker:Um, and, uh, fi, um, um, flash, right?
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:What, what's with, what's with the
Speaker:no, I keep,
Speaker:WTF?
Speaker:Why the face?
Speaker:So I'm, I'm thinking though, so I agree that it is better
Speaker:There's no agree or disagree.
Speaker:It's just a scientific fact.
Speaker:Facts.
Speaker:but I do wonder with object storage
Speaker:and how they do sharding and everything else, if their error rates are actually
Speaker:better than single disc, maybe not quite approaching single tape level.
Speaker:So let, so let,
Speaker:of
Speaker:that's it.
Speaker:It's a good point.
Speaker:I don't mean to cut you out, but that's a good point.
Speaker:But I don't think so because when the.
Speaker:When the, um, initial corruption happens with a single bit,
Speaker:they've, they, they can possibly.
Speaker:The point is that when they read the data back, they might not notice
Speaker:that the corruption has happened.
Speaker:It's just there, there are all kinds of error correction that you can
Speaker:do on top, but again, it's just a that, that you can try again, try
Speaker:to mitigate some of these problems.
Speaker:But it's a simple fact that disc wakes makes.
Speaker:Way more errors when writing ones and zeros to magnetic media than tape does.
Speaker:It's literally two orders of magnitude better from the best
Speaker:disc to the worst tape, right?
Speaker:And then the nicer tapes is another one, or even two orders of
Speaker:I agree that it's not gonna be the same.
Speaker:I'm just wondering if it's better when we talk about object storage, right?
Speaker:Or a system like AWS versus like your traditional disc, right?
Speaker:Because of the additional protections that some of these storage vendors, uh, create.
Speaker:I'm not gonna say it's gonna beat tape,
Speaker:but I do wonder if it, maybe the delta is just a little bit better.
Speaker:I follow what you're saying.
Speaker:I'm just, I'm just saying.
Speaker:Well, so here's the thing.
Speaker:People write to tape with object storage too, and we write to disc
Speaker:with object storage too, right?
Speaker:So your, if, if we've got object storage on both sides, then it's
Speaker:still better on tape than disc.
Speaker:Yes, that is true.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I mean, we could argue, we could, we could, we'd have to do a
Speaker:lot of research to figure out whether, how much better it is.
Speaker:But the, the simple fact is it's better.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:By the way, I, I like you challenging me on this, but,
Speaker:but that's just, that's just it.
Speaker:And then let's talk about the other thing.
Speaker:And again, you could argue that maybe, um, object storage would notice this.
Speaker:And, it may notice it, but it might not.
Speaker:And that is long term, a bit rot.
Speaker:Um, bit rot is way worse on this than it is on tape.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Possibly.
Speaker:And,
Speaker:of the, uh, object storage stuff would maybe notice that the bit rot
Speaker:happened, uh, and then self-repair.
Speaker:I would hope so.
Speaker:Um, but my, but the alternative, the common belief is that tape is bad
Speaker:for long-term storage and tape is bad at writing data in the first place.
Speaker:And I'm saying it's actually better,
Speaker:No, I, I, I don't disagree with that at all.
Speaker:Uh, the other thing to also remember is cloud isn't something magical.
Speaker:It's just someone else's server,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:it's not a, it is not magical.
Speaker:Um, but let's talk about, let's talk about his two, his
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:I, sorry.
Speaker:that's, that's, those are the thoughts that ran through my head
Speaker:when you said cloud versus tape, and I was like, huh.
Speaker:So he, he, he has two claims.
Speaker:One is, he's saying that, that it takes too long to, if, if you're
Speaker:doing an active archive kind of thing, it takes too long to load.
Speaker:And second, it's, um, that, you know, you, you, you might, it might not load.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:Does
Speaker:he talk about?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What does he mean by takes too long?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:Well, let's do the second one first, because I think it's just total bunk.
Speaker:I, I, I said, what are you talking about?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Maybe if we're talking about LTO from.
Speaker:Or.
Speaker:10, 15 years
Speaker:Or it's that one tape drive that you had at that one company you worked for like
Speaker:25 years ago where you would write it, you would put it out and you'd put it
Speaker:in a different one and it wouldn't work.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:that, was like 25, 30 years ago.
Speaker:We, we, yeah, we've worked on that.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And there was, when LTO was early, there was this concept of a loss leader, right.
Speaker:Where, you know, but it, it was fixable, right?
Speaker:It wasn't, your data wasn't in question.
Speaker:It was fixable and it was also rare.
Speaker:Uh, whereas when something bad happens to a disc, it's not fixable.
Speaker:You can, you just swap it out.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So this, this idea that it might not load, I was like, come on man.
Speaker:Like, what are you talking about?
Speaker:That, that's just, that's just a fud that, that has no, as many
Speaker:tapes as I have had in my life.
Speaker:I unless we talk, unless we go back to the early, early, early days, I, I don't have
Speaker:any memory of a tape that just wouldn't load that, that, that I couldn't fix.
Speaker:Um, so, but the, but the second one is, you know, it's, it's both
Speaker:a valid and an invalid claim and that is that disc will take longer.
Speaker:I'm sorry, tape will take longer to load than disc.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:So it's both.
Speaker:It's it's valid and it is, and it's invalid for multiple reasons.
Speaker:One that I think even in an active archive situation, the idea is this stuff got
Speaker:archived and now you're bringing it back.
Speaker:The average load time of a tape is around two and a half
Speaker:minutes last time I checked.
Speaker:And so if you've, if you've archived it, that means you
Speaker:haven't looked at it in Right.
Speaker:The expectation is very low.
Speaker:expectation is very low.
Speaker:If it comes back in two and a half minutes, what?
Speaker:What's the problem?
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Deep archive.
Speaker:I think it's 12 hours,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:For normal
Speaker:restore time
Speaker:you can, you can pay extra to get it back faster, but
Speaker:and by the way.
Speaker:You know, I can't prove this because I don't work there.
Speaker:And if I did work there, I probably wouldn't be able to tell you the,
Speaker:when they designed glacier and you know, and Glacier Deep Archive, they
Speaker:designed that SLA with tape in mind, right there is, why is it 12 hours?
Speaker:If it's disc, why is it any kind of hours?
Speaker:If it's disc, it's clearly tape.
Speaker:And by the way, that means it's tape on a shelf, meaning
Speaker:it's not tape in a tape robot.
Speaker:Right, because why would it need to be 12 hours?
Speaker:I, maybe, maybe it's there, there's, you know, it's, if it's
Speaker:a high volume library, there's a, a buildup of requests for tapes.
Speaker:But, um,
Speaker:But we don't know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker:This
Speaker:is
Speaker:don't know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But I, I just, I don't think it's a valid complaint to say I don't,
Speaker:it's gonna be two to three minutes to get my file back, the file that
Speaker:I haven't looked at in six months.
Speaker:I just don't think that's a valid
Speaker:complaint.
Speaker:The expectation is that like the're, even in an active archive.
Speaker:If.
Speaker:If you're gonna put it on tape or in the cloud, which may be on tape,
Speaker:that is, that there's a, there's an understanding there that, that you're
Speaker:putting it in a place that's gonna require some effort to get it back.
Speaker:You're not gonna do that for stuff that you, you might need right away.
Speaker:You're doing, you're gonna put stuff there.
Speaker:Even if it's an active archive, even if it's a full HSM system, you're
Speaker:not gonna put stuff on tape or cloud that you might need tomorrow.
Speaker:This is a, I might need this in six months.
Speaker:And, and again, I just think, you know, if you've waited six months to
Speaker:pull the file out, if it comes out in three minutes from now, I, I don't,
Speaker:I don't see how that's a problem.
Speaker:Um, and if it is a problem, then I would suggest that you've got a bad design
Speaker:You probably
Speaker:don't wanna be actively archiving data.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:You, you, well, you need a, you need a three-tiered archive.
Speaker:Then you need a, you need a disc archive.
Speaker:You need a, whether it's cloud or on-prem disc, you need a dis cache
Speaker:to your.
Speaker:You know, truly old stuff part, right?
Speaker:Um, so that's why, you know, when I read this thing, I, I, I didn't get
Speaker:hot and bothered, but I hearkened.
Speaker:Back to the tape Sucks.
Speaker:Move on.
Speaker:Bumper sticker from your former employer.
Speaker:Do you have it?
Speaker:I don't quite have that one, but I do.
Speaker:Oh wait, I have.
Speaker:What is that?
Speaker:What is that?
Speaker:Oh, is that, that is not cool.
Speaker:It says it was a truck that said lost tapes on the side.
Speaker:And then on the
Speaker:back it does say
Speaker:where, where is it a bumper sticker that says, tape sucks and move on.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I, I mean, you could argue that that was a very successful.
Speaker:Marketing
Speaker:Marketing campaign.
Speaker:'cause we still remember it all these years later.
Speaker:But I remember it because I thought it was bs, right?
Speaker:I mean, tape did suck.
Speaker:Tape does suck in certain ways, but
Speaker:if you use it in the,
Speaker:wrong way, it will suck.
Speaker:Just like anything else though, any other technology, use it in the wrong way
Speaker:or for an unintended use case and there will be issues.
Speaker:so if we talk about cloud.
Speaker:Really what it is, really what the discussion should be
Speaker:is on-prem versus off-prem.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Because cloud is tape.
Speaker:So if I'm putting the data in the cloud, especially older, 'cause you
Speaker:said it's talking about active archive, I'm probably putting it on tape.
Speaker:So it's not tape versus cloud, it's, it's on-prem tape versus off-prem,
Speaker:cloud, whatever that happens to be.
Speaker:is that the thing, or is it disc versus tape and on-prem versus off-prem?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I would just, I would just argue that like if you need the stuff you know,
Speaker:like that, then both tape and long and long term archive is not the place to do.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:put it, if you, if you, if you, if you have access times measured in seconds,
Speaker:then you shouldn't be putting it on either tape or Glacier Deep Archive and the like.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Are are we in agreement there?
Speaker:I am, but
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What is with the,
Speaker:you always have a big butt, you know, that.
Speaker:By the way, that's the dirtiest line in, um, PeeWee's, Herman's big Adventure.
Speaker:She says, I know, but, and he goes, everybody I know has a big, but
Speaker:The, the reason I mentioned that is even if, so you said tape
Speaker:versus Glacier Deep Archive, right?
Speaker:Or whatever else in the cloud,
Speaker:it's some, something like that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think
Speaker:there are cases where you could still leverage.
Speaker:Oh, but that's still considered tape though.
Speaker:No, what I'm saying is the access time of Glacier Deep Archive
Speaker:Necessitates.
Speaker:in the sets it it is, is similar.
Speaker:It's actually worse than tape.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So if what he's saying is you get a better access time, well
Speaker:then that means he's using, like, he's not using any of the tiers.
Speaker:That have massive savings.
Speaker:So now we're talking huge difference
Speaker:It's S3 or, or it's like a normal
Speaker:S3 infrequent access.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:still very, very, very expensive.
Speaker:it's very expensive.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And then so then we're, so, so we're not talking about, I'm, I'm saying
Speaker:the closest thing to compare tape to is Glacier Deep Archive and the like.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, and I'm saying that if you need.
Speaker:Access time measured in seconds . You should not be putting it on tape or there,
Speaker:you should be putting it on, on-prem object storage or cloud object storage.
Speaker:this, this post got me all worked up.
Speaker:I
Speaker:just like, are you forgetful?
Speaker:Because literally three minutes ago you're like, oh yeah, no,
Speaker:this post didn't get me hot and.
Speaker:It got me all worked up.
Speaker:I was like, come on man.
Speaker:Come on, man.
Speaker:Doing my, doing my Biden impersonation.
Speaker:Come on man.
Speaker:Um, yeah, so it, it's about your requirements and if your requirements
Speaker:are measured in seconds, you're right.
Speaker:Tape's the wrong place, but so is Glacier Deep Archive, so
Speaker:But even if your time is measured in seconds,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:also make sure you understand where your data exists because.
Speaker:Even if you had used, say, infrequent access S3 with time measured in
Speaker:seconds, if you have to pull the data back on premises, you're
Speaker:gonna blow it out of the water.
Speaker:It doesn't matter, right?
Speaker:So the only time it makes sense to use cloud and S3, infrequent access for
Speaker:this particular use case, where you need seconds is if your source data or
Speaker:your compute also runs in the cloud.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Good point.
Speaker:Good point.
Speaker:Good point.
Speaker:Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker:You are so right, sir.
Speaker:thank you.
Speaker:Can I have another.
Speaker:my new,
Speaker:oh, the memories.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:The shout out to my fellow shell backs.
Speaker:Somebody knows what that means, but most people won't.
Speaker:Anyway, I'm a, I'm a golden shellback.
Speaker:For those of you that know what that means, the rest of you
Speaker:feel free to Google it anyway.
Speaker:Um, it means that I was both hazed and I, and I hazed, um,
Speaker:the world's oldest hazing ritual.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:Formerly sponsored by the US Navy, um, and now it's a, a,
Speaker:a shadow of his former self.
Speaker:'cause apparently now it's bad to beat people.
Speaker:Oh, Curtis.
Speaker:I kid.
Speaker:I kid.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, um, thanks for, thanks for having the chat.
Speaker:This was, this was fun.
Speaker:You know, it would've been more fun if the guy was here.
Speaker:To defend his position, but that's why we do the podcast so then we can make fun of
Speaker:people without them being on the podcast.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and then, and then he could, he could record his own podcast where he
Speaker:talks about us and how stupid we are.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, uh, thanks to listeners you are, why we do this, that, and I dunno, Prasanna
Speaker:and I got nothing else better to do.
Speaker:Uh, that is a wrap.
Speaker:The backup wrap up is written, recorded, and produced by me w Curtis Preston.
Speaker:If you need backup or Dr. Consulting content generation or expert witness
Speaker:work, check out backup central.com.
Speaker:You can also find links from my O'Reilly Books on the same website.
Speaker:Remember, this is an independent podcast and any opinions that
Speaker:you hear are those of the speaker and not necessarily an employer.
Speaker:Thanks for listening.