The ability to store server data off-line or near-line, for access when needed, grew (for the video industry) in part out of the need for greater amounts of drive space storage, at a time when the costs of adding large expanses of drives meant complicated and expensive interfaces. The majority of the media stored on the facility video server were commercial spots or interstitials, and the mode of operation was to keep the servers as full as possible never deleting anything unless space was needed to air the day's (or in some instances, the hour's) commercial inventory for revenue purposes.

In the mid-90s, few broadcast facilities had reason to install a digital tape based server archive. Two years ago, around early 1998 99, it began to make sense to make a digital tape backup. Today, automation, archive and mass storage of both program length content and the commercial inventory makes even more sense. The solutions for an archive library include a variety of tape formats and a small, but growing number of alternative optical devices.

As the new kid on the block, network storage architectures, come on line, we may see the storage/archive farm concept take shape, providing a user with short- or long-term storage with reasonable access for recovery and reload. For the data-centric environments, there are already non-site commercially operated storage alternatives that package the transport and the physical storage for the customer. Connecting your off site storage over a network, eliminating the need to...