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Backup Buying Guide

LTO (Linear Tape-Open)

An LTO drive is a backup tape drive, these are connected to servers then the backup software on the server writes the data to a tape. These are good when you have large amounts of data to backup and you need to take it off site. They are robust and small so easy to take off site. The tapes are cheap but the LTO drives are fairly expensive and once you reach the max capacity to will either need to use more tapes per backup or buy a new unit.

RDX

RDX is a backup technology that works similar to external hard drives, you get an enclosure that connects to the server then you have cartridges (2.5" hdds in a ruggedized case) which then push in to the enclosure. The enclosures are relatively cheap but the cartridges are more expensive than tapes, however the enclosures can take any capacity cartridge so it can grow with your data.

Cloud

A number of vendors (redstor, iron mountain) now offer a cloud based backup solution. This works by installing an agent (piece of software) on each server which will be configured with the back-up solution details (IP address, Assigned user details) the backups are managed by a web based GUI or a management console which can be installed anywhere on the network that has connectivity to all servers, all backup and restore configuration is set via the console/gui