Kris Lee E.

Oira
Chapter 4 - Questions and Cases
1. Answer the question in Applying Concepts no. 35. on page 151.
2. Answer the questions from Real Cases titled "Better Storage for our Best Friends" on page 154.

2.
THINKING ABOUT THE CASE

1. What were the data backup problems when Petco used tapes?
Petco used magnetic tapes to back up data every few hours, but the approach was far from
ideal. Tape backup is reliable, but the latency of a few hours posed a risk. If electric power was lost, so
was several hours of data that could not be recorded. Also, recording on tape is labor-intensive, because
tapes must be manually mounted and dismounted. Rewinding tapes is time-consuming, and therefore
delays availability of new tapes for recording.

2. What were the data backup problems when Petco used mirroring?
Petco tried mirroring. In disk mirroring, the entire disk is automatically copied to a backup disk.
While this reduces labor and makes data available immediately from the mirror disk, it also presents a
problem. If the original disk is corrupt, such as infected with a virus, so is the mirror disk.

3. What are the disadvantages of using DAS, and how are these disadvantages compounded when
a company grows?
Another issue with data storage was that the company used the DAS (direct-attached storage)
approach: each computer backed up to its own magnetic disk. The data could not be shared by all
computers. This created two problems. Many of the disks were underutilized; much more space-up to
50 percent- was never used. As the company grows, the total underutilized disk space grows as well. In
addition, sharing the stored data was challenging.

4. What benefits did Petco acquire when adopting the current technology for backing up
warehouse data?
Benefits of using this technology was that the system could not be installed without interruption
to warehouse operations.