Entries categorized under “Data Protection”

The announcement in early July that Teneros, a provider of application continuity appliances for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007, selected Hewlett-Packard's (NYSE: HPQ) ProLiant DL380 G5 servers as the hardware on which to base their appliance platform is pretty straightforward on the surface. Microsoft Exchange is one of the most, if not the most, mission critical applications in many companies so it only makes sense for Teneros to use servers from HP in conjunction with their email continuity appliance to support Exchange. In these environments, Teneros wants the highest level of assurance that the hardware and software are compatible with one another and will not experience any unexpected interoperability hiccups after its email continuity appliance is deployed in the field. (read more)

Backup has become a fairly innocuous method for companies to use to test the capabilities of a Managed Service Provider (MSP) and start companies down the path of outsourcing some of their storage services. However the task of selecting an MSP should go well beyond just determining how well it backs up data. Outsourcing backups is likely just the first step for most companies in a larger journey that companies are embarking are towards outsourcing more of their storage management requirements. So it behooves companies to regularly analyze their MSP to determine what steps it is taking to improve the management of its backup data stores and keep its data storage costs down long term. (read more)

However my intent is not to leave readers hanging or fretting as to what storage systems they can select that take this problem into account. The NEC HYDRAstor is one such product that has taken steps to address this issue. HYDRAstor includes a feature called Distributed Resilient Data™ (DRD) that is able to offer more protection than RAID 5 or RAID 6 without their rebuild performance drawbacks. Because HYDRAstor is based on a grid storage architecture, it can by default survive the failure of not only multiple disk drives but also multiple Storage Nodes. The default setting is 3 disk drives or 3 Storage Nodes if multiple nodes are present (based on the video on the HYDRAstor web site, it looks like a company needs at least 12 nodes for a company to have assurance it can recover from the failure of 3 different nodes). (read more)

Here's a question for you to answer. Backup software and continuous data protection (CDP) software: same or different? And if different, is CDP software a replacement kind of different or a complimentary kind of different? This is a critical question for companies to answer as they contemplate the adoption of CDP software in their enterprise because the answer to it influences how companies spend their money and in what circumstances. (read more)

I was first briefed on the NEC D-Series about a year ago and was, at that time, impressed by its breadth of functions and scalability. However it then promptly and curiously disappeared from view (as has happened before with other computing products offered by NEC) such that I largely forgot about the D-Series product line. Then last week the D-Series re-appears out of the blue in conjunction with the announcement of an OEM relationship with RAID Inc. In my mind, this did not make sense. Why does someone like RAID Inc. take a chance with a relatively unknown product in the US storage market when it can partner with any number of existing and established storage system providers? (read more)

The one I want to focus on in this entry is Televaulting's new replication functionality. Replication is a key function in any facet of the storage landscape and, with Asigra adding this feature into its latest release of Televaulting, it becomes an even more robust player in the enterprise space. (read more)

Grid computing is starting to appear in some unlikely places. It is easy to assume that grid computing appears primarily in the world of academia or high tech corporate IT engineering labs. In these environments, computer scientists typically have the time and expertise to engineer complicated, high performance, low cost computing solutions that can perform tasks like mapping out the human DNA or identifying possible new sites to drill for oil. But applying grid computing to address a low-tech problem like backup and recovery? That almost seems like a misnomer. (read more)

At recent storage conferences (Storage Decisions, Storage Networking World, etc.) replication has emerged as a hot topic of discussion among end-users. In talking with these different users and listening in on a number of end-user panel discussions, there are a number of factors that they attribute to their increased interest in using replication as part of their company's overall disk-based data protection strategy. (read more)

David: The Data Collectors can do an automated discovery of new VMs by connecting to either individual VMware ESX servers, XenSource servers or a Virtual Management Center, which stores and organizes data about physical hosts and VMs. The Data Collector provides a GUI that displays the new VMs that require backup so all an administrator needs to do is select the VM from the Televaulting management interface to initiate backups on those VMs. (read more)

Backup to disk is now seen as "The" solution for any company looking to solve its backup problems. Factor in deduplication as part of the disk-based backup solution and it is easy for companies to believe that they are well on their way to solving their backup problems. To a certain degree, that's true. Introducing disk almost always solves the immediate corporate pain of failed backups while shortening their backup windows. In fact, I am only aware of a few, isolated instances where that is not the case. (read more)

Part of the reason companies are reluctant to go forward on enterprise-wide business continuity solutions is the complexity associated with implementing them. Enterprise-wide business continuity solutions typically rely upon a conglomeration of point products to protect and recover data. Backup software, host and storage system-based replication software and application specific replication software, among others, are just some of the software products that companies use. The trick is configuring, managing and monitoring these point products in such a way that they work together in a cohesive, unified manner. Not only is this nearly impossible to do, the cost and complexity of performing these tasks can quickly escalate when trying to manage and recover multiple applications across the enterprise at the same time. (read more)

In this entry, David explains why an appropriately configured Data Collector is so important to data protection and information recovery and what features Asigra has introduced into Televaulting in time to ensure its Data Collectors are appropriately configured in order to optimize the management and placement of data long term. David also shares his views on the use of removable media in data protection and information recovery. (read more)

Hard-disk drive storage is taking center stage as the preferred media for enterprise archiving, data protection and information recovery needs. But as the shift to using disk for long term data storage needs occurs, companies are coming to realize that the software that they have relied on for years is, in many instances, poorly equipped to deal with the management of hard-disks as part of their larger data management scheme. Optimizing the placement of data on hard-disks, replicating data to disk storage systems at different sites and then recovering the data are new challenges that companies face as they introduce larger capacity hard-disks into their environment. (read more)

Storage managers are regularly put in a position where they need to replace a component of their computing infrastructure. But if you ask them about their druthers as to what they would prefer to replace - hardware or software - almost to a person they would say the computer hardware. However which is older in technology terms - the three year old hardware or the ten year old software? Looking at it this way can suddenly change one's opinion about which of the two is due for a swap-out. (read more)

One of the more agonizing choices that some companies face when looking to implement the same deduplication scheme across the enterprise is quantifying which version of deduplication to use: inline or post-processing. From a purist's viewpoint, inline (deduplicating data as it is ingested) is sometimes viewed as the best approach since data is deduplicated immediately as it is ingested. (read more)

"CommVault® Systems has transformed from a backup company into an information management company." That statement by Marcus Muller, CommVault's Intellectual Property Counsel, encapsulates how CommVault Systems currently views itself as a company. Muller justifies his position by pointing to CommVault's innovative efforts around its Simpana® Software suite and how these have resulted in patents that helped CommVault transform itself into an information management company while giving it an edge up on its competition going forward. (read more)

In the face of these fundamental shifts among corporate data centers in server data protection and virtualization, data protection software needs to do more than just adapt. It needs to embrace backup-to-disk and server virtualization in order to transform data protection software into an information recovery platform. That is exactly what today's 8.0 release of Asigra Televaulting brings to the table in the following ways: (read more)

SharePoint Portal Sever was generally unprotected from 2003 through 2007 and couldn't be effectively supported in a disaster recovery/business continuity scenario. Thankfully Microsoft resolved that issue in SharePoint Portal Server 2007 by releasing a VSS writer for Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. Earlier this year I explained what a VSS Writer did and how VSS works in a two part series Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for Continuous Data Protectio (Part 1) and Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for Continuous Data Protectio (Part 2). (read more)

InMage addressed the challenge of system recovery through replication. To do this they needed to be forward thinking about how they would replicate the data. InMage DR-Scout uses two data protection agents. The VX Agent manages volume/block based continuous data protection. Their FX Agent manages file based continuous data protection and works as the scheduler within the InMage system. (read more)

Once Energy XXI's IT Director Andrew Schaefer had determined that a traditional tape backup system was not going to fit the needs of Energy XXI long term, he began to explore the possibility of using a hosted third party backup and recovery solution. Driving this decision was a number of factors. (read more)

InMage has been protecting document management systems for many years. The challenge with protecting document management systems is similar. InMage must support a Microsoft SQL relational database and a file server component. At first glance it would seem that recovering these systems would be challenging because there are at least two components that must be backed up and recovered in tandem. (read more)

Last week I saw a first-of-its-kind announcement in an April 9th press release from Asigra. What specifically caught my eye in the press release were some comments that Energy XXI had found that using disk in place of tape still proved too slow and unreliable while lacking offsite capabilities. Disk's inability to send data offsite came as no big surprise but the references in the press release to disk being too slow and unreliable when used in backup caught me a bit off-guard. (read more)

Should there be a "Use more, pay more" fee for Internet use? Should the cost of sending a text message to Grandma about junior's birthday party be the same as the cost of sending the entire video of junior's birthday party? How much of the Internet is a person or company entitled to? These were some of the questions that CIO magazine's Gary Beach recently attempted to address in a video commentary, Net Neutrality: Why the Internet Can't Remain Free, which recently appeared on CIO magazine's website. (read more)

I apologize to those of you who expected this SNW recap last Thursday or Friday. Wednesday ending up being busier than I expected and anyone who was flying last week knows about the challenges associated with air travel due to all of the grounded American flights, spring break, and ATA going bankrupt. Though I left on Thursday flying out on Midwest Airlines, the Midwest flight before mine to Milwaukee was canceled and my flight to Kansas City was delayed an hour due to a series of nasty storms going through the Midwest. (read more)

InMage Systems' DR-Scout is sometimes lumped in with other replication software products. However to do so is a mistake since not all replication software products are created equal. If anything, companies need to exercise more caution than ever when selecting replication software because of how its use is evolving in companies. While it was once primarily deployed as a means for failover and near-real time recovery of only mission-critical applications, it is becoming part of the everyday backup and recovery of all application data across the enterprise. (read more)