Tape technology offers more advantages. Relatively inexpensive, sensitive to disk drive capacities and easy to automate, it is a good medium for full system backup. Tape allows a way to replicate all operating system and application settings on a volume that can be removed and archived offsite. For organizations with substantial data holdings, tape is probably the best backup medium. As well as offering high capacity and easy availability, tape suits the common desire of IS departments to control storage centrally.
Businesses can centralize storage control in one of two ways.
The first is by putting assets in a central location - a glass house or series of glass closets. The second is by using software that integrates storage management into network management. Either strategy helps provide a global administrative interface that can be managed for high availability. The success of products such as Computer Associates International Inc.'s Unicenter TNG and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP OpenView shows that administrators undoubtedly want this integration. In some smaller installations, each workstation or workgroup has its own backup devices, and for some of them, this approach works well.