Oxford Style Debate – Episode 2: Tape Is Dead. Or Is It? Let’s Debate.

I totally understand your point. I felt some of this pain recently during a large recovery from tape.

In my case, we had around 130 VMs in the same media pool, so the restore was not simple at all. Loading/unloading tapes, finding the right restore points and planning the restore order made everything slower than a disk restore.

But we followed a priority strategy: AD, databases, logistics systems and critical services first. The goal was not to restore everything at once, but to make the environment operational again. Medium and low impact VMs came after.

And this is the point for me: it was not perfect, but it worked.

The backup server was compromised, repositories were compromised, and storage replication was compromised. Without the offline tapes, we would basically have nothing to restore from.

So yes, tape is painful sometimes. It is not perfect and it is definitely not the fastest option. But when it is well planned, with good media pools, media sets, rotation, maintenance and proper handling, it can still save the environment.

Another important point is cost. In projects, when we identify that an environment is not really following a 3-2-1 strategy, we usually recommend different ways to improve resilience: immutable repositories, object storage, backup copy, tape, offsite copies, etc.

But not every environment can adopt the ideal strategy right away. Some still rely on a very simple local backup strategy, and cost has a huge weight in these decisions.

So for me, tape is not about convenience. It is about having something to restore when everything else is gone, without making the cost impossible for the customer.

Thanks for challenging me. I’m in Team Tape isn’t dead! Why?

Let me tell my thoughts

• Real air-gap, not a software promise: A cartridge in a vault can't be encrypted, deleted, or accidentally “de-immutabled” (is this the correct word?) via an API. Object-lock is software, and software could have bugs, misconfigurations and sadly sometimes admins/users with too many privileges.
• Regulatory reality (often a Germany-specific thing): We have many customers who often request a 3-10 year retention. Also in some financial services, BaFin requirements (MaRisk, outsourcing) often explicitly call for a physically separated copy.
• The "CEO wants the last backup under his pillow" factor: Not a technical argument, but very real: if your chief justice wants to physically hold the last backup, that's stakeholder management and the best architecture fails without money given.

Where "modern" solutions fall short in practice

• Object storage stays online: and online means reachable by default. Ransomware groups now target IAM keys and API access directly, not just production VMs.
• Unseen or Hidden costs: Ingress is cheap, mass-restore from cold tiers can take weeks and get expensive fast.

Conclusion

• Tape handling costs staff time - manual swaps, labeling, vault logistics (taken offline, transport to a vault).
• Tape never belongs at the front of the recovery chain for RTO-critical systems — it's simply too slow for that role.
• That's exactly why the original statement is a false conflict: it's not "tape OR object storage," it's 3-2-1-1-0 -> tape delivers the cheap, air-gapped long-term copy; object/disk delivers the fast restores.

For sure, the Tape discussion also depends on your customers requirement. I wouldn’t recommend Tapes in every customers solution - probably the best answer would be, it depends 😉

Let’s throw the ball to another continent back, i call out for DJ JP! ​@Jean.peres.bkp 

Great Post!…..I'm waiting for the application plugin to integrate better with Tape for LTR…...it will surely come in release 13.1🤞

Thanks for challenging me, my German friend! ​@Dynamic 

Receiving the ball over here.

I'm also on the team that believes Tape isn't dead.

Posting my insights:

- How the market has been moving

• IBM has been massively transforming and improving its tape solutions.

The announcement introduces the IBM TotalStorage Ultrium Tape 2U Autoloader 3581 (models L28 and F28), a midrange tape automation solution that incorporates LTO Ultrium 2 technology, delivering significant improvements in capacity and performance over the previous generation. The system provides up to 1.6 TB native capacity (3.2 TB compressed) across 8 cartridge slots, with data transfer rates reaching up to 35 MB/s native (70 MB/s compressed), more than doubling Ultrium 1 performance. It also includes advanced features such as digital speed matching, a larger 64 MB buffer, improved power management, and backward compatibility with earlier media, making it a reliable and efficient solution for automated backup, archiving, and reducing backup windows in open systems environments.

• IBM acquired Diligent

IBM acquired Diligent Technologies to strengthen its portfolio in data protection, specifically in the area of Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL). The goal of this acquisition was not to replace traditional tape, but to complement it by adding advanced inline deduplication capabilities designed for backup and archive workloads. Diligent’s VTL technology emulates traditional tape libraries while using disk-based storage, allowing organizations to integrate seamlessly with existing backup environments while significantly reducing storage consumption through deduplication. With this move, IBM reinforced its strategy of offering both physical tape and virtual tape solutions, giving customers flexibility to choose the most efficient approach depending on performance, scalability, and cost requirements, especially in scenarios with large data volumes and repeated backup data.

- How I see clients moving on the subject
Since 2016, I have been overseeing backups, restores, tape handling, and secure transport operations, moving tapes daily to large corporate vaults.
Even though the cloud is flexible, fast, controllable, and highly available,
tapes remain a critical option for many companies.
Along this path, I've seen many businesses being restored, and customers "saving their own skin" at various points in their day.

- It's not for every customer
I believe that tape storage will still exist for many decades, but it will always depend on the client's profile.
There are clients for whom it doesn't make sense to keep the data for that long, or they don't have the infrastructure to create a tape environment.

We have healthcare clients in Brazil who need to keep their data for 20 years.

It's a challenge even for tapes, imagine structuring all of that in the cloud?

That's it, team!

Now I'm going to pass the ball to ​@kristofpoppe 

AGAINST the statement

The statement "Tape is dead — stop living in the past and use a real archival solution like Object Storage or dedicated deduplication appliances" appears frequently in discussions about modern data protection. At first glance, it sounds convincing. Object Storage offers scalability and immutability, deduplication appliances provide excellent storage efficiency, and cloud services promise virtually unlimited capacity.

However, reality is more nuanced.

While tape is no longer the default backup target for operational recovery, it remains an important component of enterprise data protection strategies. Modern backup architectures increasingly combine multiple storage technologies, each optimized for different objectives such as Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), long-term retention, cyber resilience, and cost optimization.

The Evolution and the future of Tape

Twenty years ago, tape was commonly used as both the primary backup target and the archive medium. Daily backups were written directly to tape and restores were often performed from tape as well.

Today's environments look very different.

Typical backup infrastructures now use:

• High-performance disk repositories
• Immutable Object Storage
• Cloud archive tiers
• Deduplication appliances
• Hardened Linux repositories
• Tape libraries

Instead of competing with these technologies, tape complements them.

Modern backup architectures often follow the 3-2-1-1-0 rule:

• 3 copies of data
• 2 different storage media
• 1 copy offsite
• 1 immutable or offline copy
• 0 backup verification errors

Tape naturally fulfills the offline copy requirement.

Advantages of Tape Storage

True Physical Air Gap

The biggest advantage of tape remains its complete physical isolation.

A tape cartridge stored inside a secure vault cannot be reached through:

• malware
• ransomware
• compromised administrator accounts
• stolen credentials
• API abuse
• operating system exploits

Unlike immutable Object Storage, tape is not merely protected by software policies—it is physically disconnected.

During several ransomware recovery scenarios discussed by practitioners, tape was not the fastest recovery medium, but it was often the only surviving copy after the production infrastructure had been compromised.

Extremely Low Cost per Terabyte

Tape continues to provide one of the lowest storage costs available.

Advantages include:

• inexpensive media
• very high capacities
• long media lifespan
• no continuous licensing costs per TB
• excellent scalability

Organizations storing petabytes of cold data often achieve a significantly lower total cost of ownership than with disk-based archives.

Zero Energy Consumption While Stored

Unlike disk-systems, tape consumes no electricity while sitting on a shelf.

There are no spinning disks, no powered controllers, and little to no cooling required.

For archives that may remain untouched for years, this significantlyreduces operational costs.

During periods of high energy prices this  represents a significant advantage of tape storage.

Long-Term Data Retention

Many industries must retain information for decades.

Examples include:

• healthcare
• government
• legal archives
• financial institutions
• research organizations
• media companies

Tape media is specifically designed for long retention periods when stored correctly.

Large Capacity

Modern LTO cartridges store enormous amounts of data.

Large tape libraries can scale into multi-petabyte environments without requiring thousands of continuously powered disks.

This capacity advantage is expected to increase even further in the coming years. The technology roadmap for tape includes cartridge capacities exceeding 500 TB per cartridge. Modern enterprise tape libraries can accommodate approximately 1,600 cartridges within a single rack. At future cartridge capacities of more than 500 TB each, this would provide approximately 800 PB of storage capacity in a single rack.

Compliance

Many regulations require:

• offline copies
• WORM retention
• secure offsite storage
• protection against unauthorized modification

Tape naturally satisfies many of these requirements.

Despite its strengths, tape is certainly not perfect.

Disadvantages of Tape

Slow Random Access

Tape is a sequential medium. Finding a single file requires positioning the tape.

As a result, random-access restores are significantly slower than restores from disk or Object Storage.

Longer Recovery Times

If aggressive Recovery Time Objectives are required, tape is usually not the best recovery source.

Technologies such as:

• Instant Recovery
• SureBackup
• granular restore

are all significantly faster from disk-based repositories.

Operational Overhead

Tape introduces manual processes:

• media handling
• labeling
• rotation
• offsite transportation
• vault management
• inventory tracking

Although automated tape libraries reduce manual effort, tape operations generally remain more complex than managing Object Storage.

Hardware Dependency

Reading old tapes requires compatible drives.

Organizations must consider:

• drive generations
• firmware compatibility
• maintenance contracts
• spare hardware

Long-term archive planning therefore includes hardware lifecycle management.

Tape versus Object Storage

Rather than replacing tape, Object Storage solves different problems.

Object Storage excels when:

• frequent restores are expected
• automation is important
• cloud integration is required
• immutable backups are needed without manual intervention

Tape excels when:

• decades-long retention is required
• offline storage is mandatory
• ransomware resilience is paramount
• cost per TB matters
• enormous archive capacities are needed

Is Tape Really Dead?

The evidence suggests otherwise.

Tape has largely disappeared from small business backup environments where simplicity, cloud integration, and rapid recovery dominate purchasing decisions.

In contrast, tape remains widely used for:

• long-term archives
• government
• healthcare
• banking
• scientific research
• media production
• hyperscale data centers
• mainframe environments

Community participants also pointed to continued growth in LTO media shipments and increasing demand driven by AI and large-scale cold-data retention, indicating that enterprise tape usage remains active rather than disappearing.

The technology has simply moved from being the primary backup medium to becoming a specialized long-term and archival platform.

Conclusion

The statement

“Tape is dead — stop living in the past and use a real archival solution like Object Storage or dedicated deduplication appliances.”

is not accurate.

A more accurate statement would be:

“Tape is no longer the primary backup destination, but it remains one of the most effective technologies for long-term retention, true physical air-gapped protection, regulatory compliance, and cost-efficient archival storage. It will continue to play an important role alongside Object Storage, cloud archives, and disk-based repositories in modern enterprise data protection architectures.” 

Modern data protection is not about choosing tape or object storage. It is about selecting the right technology for each workload.

For operational recovery, disk repositories, immutable Object Storage, and deduplication appliances are superior choices. For long-term retention, cyber resilience, and physical isolation from compromised environments, tape continues to provide capabilities that no online storage technology can fully replicate.

The strongest enterprise backup architectures therefore combine multiple technologies rather than treating them as competitors. Tape has not disappeared—it has found its optimal role in a layered data protection strategy.

Nice narrative ​@JMeixner! 
Good to have your words here.