> Anybody read the Mainframe Executive article on the death of tape as a > backup media? The guy writing it used to work for STK and Sun, and now > works for disk-based backup vendors. He says the following: > > - 15% of all backups fail (my experience < 1%) > - 10-50% of all restores from tape fail (my experience <1%) > - 40-50% failure when restoring data from tape > 5 years (my experience > again is <1%) > > So what are you guys seeing out there? Do we really have mainframe tape > failure rates in the double-digits percentwise? If we do, then the guy is > right and tape is dead, but I just don't buy those figures. What say you?
Even on 3420's, of which I have seen a few snapped tapes, error rates were much lower than these ones. I would be curious as to where he came up with these numbers. Given the thousands of 3420's I used, the error rate on those was below 1%, and on 3480, 3490, 3490E and 3590 tapes the rates have been far below 1%. On various tape systems I've used to back up PC workstations and network servers, on the other hand, I have definitely seen high error rates, although probably much closer to 15-20% at the highest than the up to 50% he reports. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
