Historically, tape backup has been the method of choice for organizations managing a disaster recovery strategy. Copies of on-premises data were transferred to tape, which was then delivered to an off-site location for secure storage.
As data volumes continue to grow exponentially, disaster recovery through tape backup has become extraordinarily costly and difficult to manage, and data replication has replaced tape backup as the primary tool for disaster recovery.
However, data replication is not without its challenges. Replicating backup and archiving data can consume vast amounts of storage and WAN bandwidth, significantly increasing the cost of disaster recovery operations. Managing replication of data in increasingly diverse IT environments – where data may be stored on premises, in virtualized environments, or in hybrid and multi-cloud environments – adds additional burden to IT administrators. And managing the specifics of compliance with a large number of ever-evolving regulatory frameworks can easily overwhelm IT teams.