The Reality Of Cloud Vs Tape For Active Archives
Backup Central, Monday, March 31st, 2025
When someone puts 'cloud vs tape' in a headline, they've immediately lost me. Why? Because it's a false dichotomy that misunderstands how modern storage works. Let me explain.
I recently saw a LinkedIn post claiming that 'LTO Library robots are the only robots not making things easier in 2025.' The post went on to suggest that for an active archive, cloud storage is superior to tape because tape is supposedly too slow and unreliable. As someone who's spent decades in the backup space, this claim got me worked up.
First, let's define what we mean by an active archive. This is secondary or tertiary data that isn't accessed frequently but might need occasional retrieval. It's not the data you need daily, but it's also not cold storage you'll never touch again.