This reference may be dating myself, but have you seen “Marathon Man” with Dustin Hoffman? In the movie Laurence Olivier repeatedly asks Dustin Hoffman “Is it safe?” just before he drills into Dustin’s teeth – with no anesthesia. Just thinking about that scene makes me cringe. Of course, Dustin has no idea what he’s being asked or what the question is in reference to. He tries answering “Yes” and “No,” but he really has no idea.

That scene reminds me of the question many IT managers ask themselves: can I retrieve/restore data from tape cartridges that haven’t been touched in years? It’s a good question. Many customers I talk to are concerned about this exact issue. Whether the application is archive or disaster recovery, data being retained for long periods of time often goes untouched for years. Much like Dustin, you really don’t know the answer to the question.

On June 27, Quantum released a new feature for the Scalar i6000 tape library: Extended Data Life Management or EDLM. EDLM provides users with the capability to proactively check the health of their data on tape cartridges. EDLM is policy based so the entire process can be automated. Plus, it runs in the background so users can be running their backups and scanning the health of their archive/DR tapes at the same time.

In addition, EDLM is integrated with Quantum’s StorNext Storage Manager to provide automatic data copies if EDLM determines the users’ data is at risk. So customers that use both products can automate the entire data protection process.

While EDLM launched this week, we’ve been talking about it for a while. It was the main topic of conversation with customers at NAB and EMC World earlier this year; feedback from those attendees was extremely positive. Overall, I have yet to speak with a tape user who didn’t find value in conducting health checks on their archive/DR data.

For this reason, I believe conducting health checks on archive/DR data is something that will become commonplace within the next year or so. While it is not a full DR test, these checks go a long way to ensuring that your DR strategy will succeed. For archive environments it helps ensure your data retrievals execute as needed, and lessens the chance of having to recreate lost data. So, take a look at adding proactive health checks to your archive/DR systems with EDLM – and avoid the pain associated with not knowing if your archived/DR data is safe.