The consulting group at Cambridge Computer has authored a number of white papers on data storage and related technologies. The papers listed below are freely available to prospective customers on request. Please use our request form to request white papers.

Disk-To-Disk Backup and Disk-Based Secondary Storage
Disk-To-Disk or D2D backup is a hot topic in the press, and as usual there is a need to separate fact from fiction. The reality is that a well-designed tape backup system will out-perform a poorly designed disk backup system. In other words, it's not as simple as "plug in a cheap disk array and your problems go away." The good news is that D2D is for real, and with a little forethought and a relatively small budget you can get awesome results. This paper explores the breadth of software technologies that leverage inexpensive disk for backup systems and secondary storage.

Comparative Tape Technologies
Comparing tape drives is not as easy as reading the spec sheets and comparing similar line items. Tape drives behave differently under different circumstances and in different environments. It's possible for a "slower" drive to outperform a "faster" drive. It's even possible for two drives to be slower than one. This paper explains the ins and outs of the leading mid-range tape drives: AIT-3, DLT-8000, LTO-2, SDLT-320, and SAIT.

Compression Considerations for Network Backup
Data compression in backup systems is a regular point of confusion. Many of the tape hardware vendors factor in some compression ratio when they advertise tape capacities and performance. This can be a dangerous assumption. Will you get this kind of compression on your data? Do you even want hardware compression in the first place? What about software compression? This white paper examines the issues surrounding compression in network backup systems and will help system administrators make appropriate and effective compression choices for their own backup systems.