Tape Catalog Management: Maintaining Access To Data On Legacy Systems
When your organization needs to access data on legacy systems, every second counts. Without a robust, secure catalog management plan, your legacy infrastructure can become a liability.
Data tape cartridges remain the standard for long-term data archives. Unfortunately, few formats are backwards-compatible. If your storage infrastructure relies on backup software servers, email platforms, or tape storage systems that are no longer supported, you might not be fulfilling retention requirements.
Even when your organization maintains access to legacy hardware, actively accessing data can be a time-consuming process. Regulatory bodies won't accept excuses for delays — and neither should your business.
Manage Your Legacy Data With Confidence
Total Data Migration can help you address data retention challenges before they lead to fines and penalties. Features of our data tape catalog ingestion services include:
- Decades of experience and an established track record
- Support for all data tape formats and backup software systems
- Full chain-of-custody reports for worry-free compliance
- Solutions for converting to new tape formats or securely transferring data to the cloud
- An array of full-lifecycle services for managing other storage media challenges
At Total Data Migration, we provide value to our clients by helping them retain the data that they have stored on legacy backup infrastructures and tapes. Legacy systems can fail and prevent users from accessing crucial data. Our team will work closely with your staff to design an optimal solution. You'll get the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your data is available — period.
As the foremost experts in tape catalog ingestion, Total Data Migration provides the resources you need to protect legacy data and maintain compliance. Get started today.
WHY IS PROFESSIONAL TAPE DISPOSAL & ERASURE IMPORTANT?
Logistical Expertise
Secure Chain-of-Custody
Environmentally Friendly Disposal
Global Support
Supported Platforms:
- NetBackup
- Backup Exec
- Arcserve
- Commvault
- HP Data Protector
- Retrospect
- Other major platforms. Contact our team to learn more.
Catalog Ingestion vs. Legacy System Maintenance
Tape catalog ingestion is expensive — but in most cases, it’s absolutely necessary.
Legacy systems are labeled using the word “legacy" for a reason: They utilize technologies that can no longer function as a primary system for archival storage. Maintaining a legacy system can quickly become prohibitively expensive.
Factors to consider:
- While some enterprises have built proprietary systems to continue using legacy hardware, this isn’t a practical (or cost-effective) approach: Legacy data storage often has a significant physical footprint and substantial licensing costs.
- Trusting a legacy system may also expose your data to ransomware attacks and create other security concerns.
- Tape catalog ingestion allows you to maintain important data while moving away from your legacy system.
Our catalog ingesting service allows us to move the catalog to a non-proprietary format without losing any of the information needed to identify tapes during restoration. With support for more than 3,500 combinations of storage media, format, and backup systems, we’re able to handle projects of all sizes — saving your IT team hundreds of hours of work.
TDM offers unique advantages for enterprise tape catalog projects: We will help you restore your tapes if the need ever arises. In addition to catalog ingesting services, we offer secure tape erasure, enabling your organization to maintain full compliance — while eliminating cost-intensive legacy technology from your archival storage or disaster recovery plan.
Our Catalog Ingestion Process
Every commercially available backup software creates a catalog of each tape created. This catalog contains details of what files or sessions exist on each tape, along with the physical location of the data. When a user needs to restore a file, they interrogate the catalog using the backup software to identify the required tapes.
By drawing on our extensive experience with backup and archival data storage systems, we provide streamlined catalog ingestion that gives you full access to important data — when you need it. Our process:
- TDM’s experts use proprietary tools to extract the catalog from each device.
- The catalog information is converted to a non-proprietary format such as MySQL or SQL.
- The new format can be interrogated outside without the original backup software to identify the tape’s content.
- Tape restoration can be completed using our non-native restoration tools.
Our process is scalable, flexible, and customizable to meet your enterprise’s goal outcomes.
Contact Us Today
With full-lifecycle data management solutions, Total Data Migration is the industry leader in tape catalog ingestion services. Get in touch with a legacy storage expert.