Re: Alternatives to Iron Mountain

Recall would be one of IM's competitors, but as DR2 mentioned you can roll
your own if you have multiple facilities. At a previous employer we had
multiple facilities around Chicago & the suburbs. We used a
grandfather/father/son strategy and rotated tapes from the data center to
facility A to B to C and then back to the DC.

I've also seen branch offices that simply use UPS to ship their tapes to the
main office. As long as a speedy return of the tapes is not a priority you
can do this if your company has multiple facilities but they aren't
geographically close.

Another option if you have a disaster recovery provider is to send your
offsite backups there. I'm sure there would be a fee but if you actually
had to start a recovery at least the media would be immediately available.

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Don <dr2@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rob,

It may be a bit simplistic, but if all you're doing is offline backup tape
and archival tape storage, go rent an environmentally controlled storage
unit across town, put a big data safe in it and roll your own off site
schema. I know plenty that have done this and gotten rid of organizations
like tin mountain, etc... Check around local locksmiths and office
furniture liquidators for used data safes (Schwab used to make a good one
as
I recall) and do some cost analysis.

If you have a division in a separate building across town, have them build
a
small "fireproof room" in it and slide your safe in there...

DR2

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 1:28 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Alternatives to Iron Mountain

Anyone using an offsite tape company? We're using Iron Mountain however
we do not have a receptionist and they like to switch around their arrival
time and it's getting hard to get someone in the department to forfeit
their lunch in case Iron Mountain may show up. We had an alternative plan
where they were given access to a secured room to pick up or remove tapes
and this worked well for awhile. Now they want us to key in some PIN
number - back to missing lunch. That's why we're looking at alternatives.

Rob Berendt
--
Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com

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