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AWS Tape Gateway

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Re: AWS Tape Gateway

#11

Post by sithadmin »

bob1029 wrote: post #4

AWS doing tapes like this feels weird to me. The physicality of the thing is kind of the point in my mind. Virtualizing the last line of defense seems wrong, but perhaps I could be convinced otherwise. Why doesn't Iron Mountain or some other competitor offer a service like this?

Iron Mountain does have a service that will pick up physical tape and offload to other storage, but nothing like AWS's virtual tape capabilities.

FWIW, Amazon isn't 'doing tapes' with this product. It's just a compatibility shim laid on top of object storage so that legacy tape backup/archival systems can eliminate physical tape libraries.

Re: AWS Tape Gateway

#12

Post by jaywalk »

johnklos wrote: post #3

"Tape Gateway supports all leading backup applications" Only huge companies like Amazon can be this dumb. They don't even mention tar or pax, the two most common tape backup applications. Also, how will this magic Amazon "Tape Gateway" back up petabytes over slow links? There are many data heavy businesses that don't necessarily have tons of Internet bandwidth. Fully saturating a 100 Mbps outgoing connection will onl…

> Also, how will this magic Amazon "Tape Gateway" back up petabytes over slow links?

Easy: it won't. If you have more data than bandwidth, you won't use this service. Not sure why you seem to think otherwise.

Re: AWS Tape Gateway

#13

Post by sithadmin »

johnklos wrote: post #3

"Tape Gateway supports all leading backup applications" Only huge companies like Amazon can be this dumb. They don't even mention tar or pax, the two most common tape backup applications. Also, how will this magic Amazon "Tape Gateway" back up petabytes over slow links? There are many data heavy businesses that don't necessarily have tons of Internet bandwidth. Fully saturating a 100 Mbps outgoing connection will onl…

You upgrade your WAN circuits to meet your needs, or you suffer the consequences. Simple as that. If you can't upgrade the WAN circuits, you stick to local tape libraries.

Re: AWS Tape Gateway

#15

Post by felixgallo »

johnklos wrote: post #3

"Tape Gateway supports all leading backup applications" Only huge companies like Amazon can be this dumb. They don't even mention tar or pax, the two most common tape backup applications. Also, how will this magic Amazon "Tape Gateway" back up petabytes over slow links? There are many data heavy businesses that don't necessarily have tons of Internet bandwidth. Fully saturating a 100 Mbps outgoing connection will onl…

click on the 'AWS snowball with tape gateway' tab.

Re: AWS Tape Gateway

#16

Post by Tepix »

jmclnx wrote: post #14

Having to restore data from Mag Tapes over decades and getting CRC errors maybe 20% of the time, this cannot possibly be worse.

But vastly more expensive, that's for sure.

Re: AWS Tape Gateway

#17

Post by brudgers »

SCdF wrote: post #5

Dumb question, and I'm guessing this is a "if you don't know it's not for you" situation, but what is the point of a virtual tape? Isn't the point of a tape that it's not virtual? Or is this more replicating tape software apis (WINE/proton style) so you can get rid of physical tapes (because you no longer care about their physicality) without having to change your backup strategy?

Even for a new strategy, using a tape abstraction might simplify the design and/or implementation because backup tools and culture have their roots in tape.

There's a sense in which tape is water in which backups swim.

Re: AWS Tape Gateway

#19

Post by brudgers »

jaywalk wrote: post #12
johnklos wrote: post #3

"Tape Gateway supports all leading backup applications" Only huge companies like Amazon can be this dumb. They don't even mention tar or pax, the two most common tape backup applications. Also, how will this magic Amazon "Tape Gateway" back up petabytes over slow links? There are many data heavy businesses that don't necessarily have tons of Internet bandwidth. Fully saturating a 100 Mbps outgoing connection will onl…

> Also, how will this magic Amazon "Tape Gateway" back up petabytes over slow links? Easy: it won't. If you have more data than bandwidth, you won't use this service. Not sure why you seem to think otherwise.

Amazon has a service to send a semi-trailer to the loading dock of your data warehouse, so you can forklift in pallets of physical media.

Then hauls it all away for ingestion into its cloud.

Or, if it will fit in your station wagon, you can haul your data down the highway to one of Amazon's clouds.

Or put it in a box and ship it Fedex.

Re: AWS Tape Gateway

#20

Post by shrike »

SCdF wrote: post #5

Dumb question, and I'm guessing this is a "if you don't know it's not for you" situation, but what is the point of a virtual tape? Isn't the point of a tape that it's not virtual? Or is this more replicating tape software apis (WINE/proton style) so you can get rid of physical tapes (because you no longer care about their physicality) without having to change your backup strategy?

The VTL was invented because, at the time (2012ish), none of the largest enterprise backup solutions had a good S3 interface and none supported Glacier. After talking with the backup software vendors (Spectrum, Tivoli, Symantec, Commvault, etc) it became clear that adding another backup target wasn't something we (AWS) could get them to prioritize, for perfectly reasonable reasons. We could (and did) apply pressure via our shared customers, even then they estimated it would take years.

The fastest way to enable large enterprise access to S3 and Glacier for backups was to meet them where they were. We did this by virtualizing a tape library.

Background: I'm one of the original inventors - https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa.... I am no longer with AWS.

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