Expert Insight: Going Green With D2D Backup

Posted by Mary Jander on March 14, 2008

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Among the many priorities storage administrators face these days, two seem to work against each other: Disk-to-disk (D2D) backup seems to be in direct conflict with being power-efficient.

Storage pros in 2008 are implementing or expanding their investment in disk-to-disk backup for improved data protection and reliable data recovery. Compared to traditional tape-based protection, disk-to-disk has proven to shrink backup windows, improve restore speed, and bring reliability to a very problematic backup process.

At the same time, storage pros face a crisis in terms of power usage. It's not just about being green, either. It's about growing demand. As one CIO recently told me, "I don't care so much about being green. I simply can't get enough power for my data center."

Unfortunately, despite its multitude of weaknesses, tape has one advantage over disk solutions; it is very power efficient. Lets face it: A cardboard box full of tapes does not use much power. And even though tape has its own environmental impact in terms of storage consumables, fuel for trucks to transport it, and resources associated with temperature-controlled facilities, D2D is still the power hog.