archiving data, was RE: Media Longitevity/Care

[Doc Shipley]

David H. Barr wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:42:30 -0600, Doc Shipley <doc at mdrconsult.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>This reminds me that I read not too long ago that many of the super
>>>computer labs ship PCs between sites because it's *faster* to ship a
>>>working PC with 1TB of disk containing data than it is to transfer it
> 
> 
>>  We have a client who owns what they call a "fleet" of SNAP servers
> 
> 
>>time they had about 16TB on the road on any given weekday.
> 
> 
> Yikes, brings new meaning to the term "Our System Crashed."  Wonder
> what the insurance is on something like that....

   The insurance in that case was basically irrelevant.  Their insurance 
would cover the hardware replacement costs, period.

   That same company looked at insuring 400TB of current data (maybe 15% 
dynamic, but all of it needed online).  The bottom line was that 
assigning a meaningful value is not possible.  Even in terms of lost 
revenue, the formulae were, in Lloyd's of London's words, "necessarily 
subjective and inconclusive".

   Lloyd's were of course willing to insure against data loss anyway, 
for any amount the client wanted to set on it, at about 1/3 that amount 
per year.  $client declined.

   FWIW, I don't agree that it's not possible to maintain reliable data 
backups.  You can argue that they're never 100% foolproof, but nothing 
ever is or will be.

   My company does a lot of DRM and data protection (we're a Tivoli 
sales, service & education partner).  I get to see and hear how a lot of 
shops handle their backups.  Basically, it boils down to redundancy 
(with geographic separation), versioning and revisioning, and 
monitoring.  Within sensible limits, the choice of media is entirely 
optional.


	Doc