Another debate, another reminder of why I love this format. Thank you to everyone who took part in Episode 2 of our Oxford Style Debate. It was great to see so many well-reasoned arguments, different viewpoints, and real-world experiences shared throughout the discussion.
This month's statement was:
"Tape is dead — stop living in the past and use a real archival solution like Object Storage or dedicated deduplication appliances."
To help select this month's winners, I invited
A huge thank you to Fabian for sharing his expertise and helping identify the most insightful arguments from both sides of the debate.
Winner Against “Tape is dead” -
'’matheusgiovanini made the strongest case against the statement by sharing a real recovery scenario from his own experience. In his mentioned case, the backup server, repositories, and storage replication were all compromised, and offline tape was the only surviving recovery option. He provided a practical example of restoring around 130 VMs from tape.
What stood out most was his consistency throughout the discussion. He also listened to counter arguments, like concerns about verification or extra work, and answered them fairly instead of ignoring them — but he kept his position clear and continued to defend it.'’
Winner For “Tape is NOT dead” -
'’jos.maliepaard had the clearest argument in favor of "FOR". While many “FOR” arguments ended up drifting toward “tape is still useful in some cases,” he stayed focused on why tape can fail as a reliable modern recovery strategy. His points were based on real operational issues: tapes that are not truly air-gapped, poor storage practices, labeling challenges, and compatibility issues with older tape drives. His strongest point was that tapes are often not re-checked for years. As a result, corrupted, outdated, or even infected backups can remain unnoticed until the moment they are needed.'’
That wraps up Episode 2 of our Oxford Style Debate!
Congratulations to
A huge thank you to everyone who participated, shared their perspective, and helped make this another great discussion. I can't wait to see what Episode 3 brings!
