This article provides insight on tape libraries, what they are, how they work, what business impacts they deliver and how to best implement tape libraries and ensure adoption into business applications.
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What are tape libraries
Tape backup in general has played a critical role in the IT industry for decades, providing low cost off line and archival secondary storage for primary disk systems. Tape libraries using robotic mechanisms were introduced to the marketplace in the mid-to-late 1980's and served to dramatically improve the efficiency of operations by automating a traditionally manually-intensive activity. Tape and tape libraries continue to maintain a substantial cost advantage relative to much higher performance disk storage.
How do tape libraries work?
What business impact do tape libraries bring?
Automated tape libraries have served to dramatically cut IT operations cost by largely eliminating the manual process associated with loading tapes for backup and restore. Libraries have also opened up new applications for deep storage archiving and records retention.