Quantum Data Protection

Put the ROI of Deduplication and Replication into a Broader Business Context

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:00:00 -0600

An article that appeared back in 2009 on the Forbes website commented on the questions that executive management teams are asking about proposals that they are receiving from their IT departments. Their uncertainty is probably only heightened when their IT departments bring forward a proposal that recommends a seemingly new process that involves the deployment of lesser understood technologies like deduplication and replication.

The author of this Forbes article attended an Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) panel in April 2009 that featured executives from a number of companies. During the presentation, the executives stated they wanted to see their IT departments present them with proposals that demonstrated a return on investment (ROI). However they were concerned that these proposals included technology that was just a new toy for the IT department and did not have much business value.

While the economic climate appears to be improving in 2010, their concerns about their inability to understand the business benefits of new technology still apply. They recognize they need to innovate but, they want proposals that address two key business concerns:

Solutions must be executed as part of a broader plan. Companies are often facing problems that span across departments and locations. Proposals that just focus on a specific problem without explaining how they fit into a broader context of what the company is trying to accomplish are not prioritized.
Companies are too complex for sweeping changes. Technologies have to be explained in the context of how they can be implemented in the least disruptive way while proving their benefit. To accomplish that, the proposal should include an explanation of how it can transform fundamental, long standing operations in the company while lowering costs, leveraging current investments, and increasing revenue.

These comments provide some insight into how IT needs to respond and position new data protection technologies such as deduplication and replication in their proposals to executive management. These two technologies are now regularly being proposed as they most effectively address both of the aforementioned concerns.

By dramatically reducing redundant data, deduplication allows for more cost effective short-term backup on high performance disk and complements long-term tape based backup by reducing media requirements to achieve optimal ROI. This allows for a gradual change in architecture while improving results.

Secondly, for companies with distributed environments, replication brings it all together by allowing tape replacement in remote sites and consequently reducing costly media and IT staffing requirements. This demonstrates an impact to a company's broader business strategy and will appeal to top level decision makers.

Those who have already implemented these two technologies with products such as Quantum's DXi-Series of deduplication appliances have compelling results to share:

Deduplication has no impact on backup success rates to disk. Backup to disk (whether or not backup data is deduplicated) results in backup success rates that climb to 99% or more with both backups and recoveries occurring more quickly.
Backup data is conducive to deduplication. Backups contain a great deal of duplicate data which makes deduplication especially well suited for backup. This can be even more dramatic when backing up virtualized environments. According to a 2009 survey conducted by Quantum of its DXi-Series customers, those users that deduplicated their data saw real reductions in disk usage of 90% or more. This resulted in them spending 48% less on tape media for long term retention.
Deduplication coupled with replication minimizes the costs and inefficiences associated with distributed backup environments. Many companies face the challenge of having multiple sites with inconsistent and costly backup infrastructures. By deploying deduplication appliances in remote or branch offices and replicating back to a main data center, those challenges are solved.

Companies can then focus their most costly IT staff at the main office and automate backups in other locations. This also eliminates the need for media handling in those locations.

This is why deduplication and replication complement each other so nicely. Since deduplication first reduces the size of the data store, advanced replication solutions such as the Quantum DXi-Series only send changed blocks to the target. This can reduce costly network bandwidth requirements by a factor of 20.

Deduplication and replication demonstrate ROI in multiple ways. This same Quantum survey found that their customers lowered their off-site vaulting costs by 32%, reduced their tape recall costs by 97% and spent 63% less time managing backup. At the same time, these same users increased their backup speeds by 125% and reduced the number of failed backups by 87%.

Organizations can still leverage their investment in tape. Tape's roll in the organization is changing. While disk is assuming this new role of short to medium term protection, using tape for long term storage and to meet compliance requirements in main offices and DR sites is still the most viable and cost-effective method. It also allows organizations to leverage their previous investment in tape as part of a more balanced backup solution.

Executive managers are looking to buy new technologies that show an ROI and improve business processes but they also want to understand what it is they are buying, what benefits it will provide and how they can best leverage what they already own. As they do, they are bound to encounter proposals from providers that promise improved end user experiences and projected savings. Quantum takes that a step further by offering ROI services and content that take the customers specific requirements into account and quantify the benefits and cost savings executive management can and should expect when its solution is deployed.

Quantum Takes on Deduplication Cost and Complexity with Midrange DXi6500

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:45:00 -0600

Deduplication contributes to expedited backups and recoveries, high backup and recovery success rates and frees up IT staff time associated with managing these tasks. Yet in the face of these benefits that deduplication offers, many midsize organizations still continue to use other technology as their backup target, citing cost and complexity as their primary reasons for not adopting deduplication. It is these specific obstacles that the new DXi6500 family from Quantum seeks to overcome.

The exact percentage of organizations that have adopted deduplication vary but is for the most part still relatively low. A recent Computerworld article cites Gartner as saying that only about 30% of organizations have adopted deduplication in any form. Another more recent survey of 403 IT professionals that was conducted by Quantum found that only 22% of those organizations surveyed use deduplication.

What is of note is that in both the Computerworld article and the Quantum survey identify: (1) the upfront costs of deduplication; (2) confusion about how to implement it; and, (3) the complexity associated with managing it as reasons organizations have not yet deployed it.

These reasons for delaying on the deployment of a deduplication solution are certainly understandable in light of how current deduplicating solutions are configured. They can require organizations to make decisions about a number of factors including:

What kind of interface to select - file system (NAS) or virtual tape library (VTL)
Whether or not to buy replication software
How well the system interoperates with backup software
How to integrate tape with the system for long term retention
How deduplication works with VMware servers

This number of variables that they need to evaluate puts organizations in a predicament: even if they do decide to deploy deduplication in some form, they almost have to become experts in deduplication before they can deploy. While some disk-based deduplication solutions are not difficult to deploy once a configuration is decided upon, others require expensive integration services, and arriving the right configuration is anything but an intuitive process. Costs for many deduplication systems are high, extra software licenses can be a hidden charge, as can the need for extra service calls.

To try to help midsize organizations overcome the obstacles that they are encountering bringing deduplication into their environments, Quantum has introduced the new DXi6500 family of deduplicating appliances. Positioned between its DXi3500 and DXi7500 disk solutions, the DXi6500 family is designed to reduce the amount of time that these size organizations spend on evaluating and making decisions about deduplicating appliances and to help keep costs low.

The DXi6500 family provides a NAS interface for each of its five (5) models, which should make them simple to install in the LANs of midsize corporations. Each model is preconfigured and integrates with leading backup software solutions (Symantec NetBackup, CommVault Simpana, etc.) so users don't have to change the backup systems they are using now. For tape support, two of the models provide a fully integrated path to tape that bypasses the media server in specific backup software environments (Symantec NetBackup with OST).

Not only is the MSRP of the DXi6500 appliances lower than competitive hardware systems, each model also includes all the software licenses needed in the base price. So there's no extra charge for deduplication, replication, or support for the Symantec OpenStorage (OST) API. The products even include backup software specifically tailored for VMware that gives users a cost-effective and easy mechanism to protect their virtual environments.

Deploying the systems is straightforward since they are installable by the user or a VAR and scaling does not require a service call. The first two models will be available next month with an entry point of $64,000 (MSRP) while the DXi6530, DXi6540 and DXi6550 are scheduled for general availability in Q1 of 2010.

While all of the models share the aforementioned features, there are some differences between each model that are fairly intuitive to understand. For example:

DXi6510. This model is configured as an entry-level model so it only supports 8 TBs of usable capacity and two (2) 1 Gb Ethernet.
DXi6520. This model can start out at 8TBs, but the hardware is pre-configured to support larger capacity and it has 6 GbE ports, allowing it to easily scale up to 32 TBs in 8TB increments.
DXi6530. This model starts out with 24 TBs in usable capacity and is the first model in the DXi6500 series to overlap with the low end of the DXi7500 series by scaling to support 56 TBs.
DXi6540. This model is similar to the DXi6530 in capacity but it adds two (2) 8 Gb FC ports for direct path to tape support.
DXi6550. This model includes all of the features found in the DXi6530 and DXi6540 but adds two (2) 10 Gb Ethernet ports.

Many midsize organizations know they can benefit from deduplication, but they also recognize that there is more to implementing it than just issuing a purchase order, unloading the truck and dropping a deduplication appliance into their backup environment. Quantum's new DXi6500 series of appliances makes significant strides in moving the deduplication decision in the direction of a turnkey approach for midsize organizations.

By making all of the features that midsize organizations want in a deduplication solution available on all of their models, these organizations do not need to agonize over features that probably should be there in the first place. The only information they need in order to make a decision about the DXi6500 are some routine capacity and performance sizing data. Once they have this information in hand, the decision about which of these new Quantum models to select becomes self-evident without becoming either costly or complex.

The State of Missouri Now Gives Organizations 48 Good Reasons to Encrypt Data Stored to Tape

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:00:00 -0600

An organization can come up with any number of reasons why it does not encrypt data stored to tape. Encryption is too hard or expensive to implement. The management of the encryption keys is too complicated. The business does not have the time or manpower to deal with encryption right now. These are all valid excuses for not implementing encryption. However, if storing sensitive data to tape remains a part of an organization's long term data management and retention plan, then the growing list of federal and state regulations means it can no longer ignore the need to encrypt its data.

Even in a challenging economic climate, most organizations will find that they need to encrypt data stored to tape because if they do not, they expose themselves to state and federal penalties that can outweigh whatever upfront and ongoing costs and time is required to implement encryption in the first place. Consider the following:

All organizations store some sensitive data about their employees or clients

"Sensitive data" can take many forms: bank account numbers, credit or debit card numbers, driver's license number, health information and social security numbers are all examples of information that most organizations have in their possession in one form or another.

Storing this type of data to tape as part of an organization's archiving or backup practices does not necessarily mean it has to encrypt this data. However, if it does not, it must account for all of the tapes and the data on them should the organization ever be subject to an audit or review of its tape management practices. Encrypting data can eliminate concerns about lost or stolen tapes.

Most organizations are subject to some federal regulatory guidelines

Banks, brokerage firms, credit unions, doctors' and dentists' offices, hospitals and payment processing firms are subject to the rules issues by different federal regulatory agencies. The problem that emerges is that some of these agency regulations are defined as "required" and others as "addressable".

For instance, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is designed to protect patients' medical records and is applicable to health plans, doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. It has a specific guideline that mentions encryption (pg 29) but it only classifies encryption as "addressable". Specifically it says, "Implement a mechanism to encrypt electronic protected health information whenever deemed appropriate."

It is safe to say that any data that is ever outside of the control or has the potential to be outside of the control of these organizations should be encrypted. It is reasonable to assume storing data to tape would fall within these parameters and should therefore be encrypted.

Almost every organization resides in a state or does business with a state that imposes civil penalties should sensitive data be compromised

The list of states that do not have civil penalties for the accidental, inadvertent or deliberate disclosure of sensitive data is now shorter than those that do. Missouri was the most recent state to join the many states (plus the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico) that require notification when security breaches involving personal information occur. This leaves only five states (Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico and South Dakota) that do not currently have laws on the books.

Even if an organization is located in one of these five exempt states, if it should happen to do business in any of the other states that do have these civil regulations, then it may still be subject to their laws regarding the management of the data that it possesses of the citizens of that state.

The risk that organizations run by not encrypting their data is substantial civil penalties imposed by the state in addition to whatever other legal costs they incur. For instance, the state of Alaska imposes a $500 civil penalty on an organization for each resident that was notified of a breach, up to $50,000.

Making the argument to encrypt data stored to tape compelling is that most states exempt organizations from needing to notify residents if the data on a tape that is lost, misplaced or stolen is encrypted.

When one looks at encryption from these different perspectives, it quickly becomes evident why an organization should encrypt its data stored to tape since it can eliminate much of the financial uncertainty and risk that exists with unencrypted data.

Of course, the big issue around encrypting tape has to do with managing the encryption keys. If you encrypt the data but no one (including you) can decrypt it, encrypting the data makes no sense. The good news is that managing encryption keys no longer needs to be as challenging because of some recent innovations that have occurred in key management appliances.

To help customers achieve that goal, Quantum recently integrated its Scalar Key Manager Appliance with its Scalar libraries so the management of Key Manager Appliance is now done through the Scalar library GUI interface. Using this interface, organizations can set policies that handle both the encryption of the data as it is stored to tape and the ongoing encryption key management. In so doing, it addresses one of the biggest objections to encrypting data stored to tape - the time and risk associated with managing the encryption keys.

It also offers a couple of new features that should further enhance its appeal to enterprise organizations. It is now offered in a highly available configuration so should either the primary or secondary appliance in the HA pair fail, organizations can still encrypt or decrypt tapes since the key database is synchronized between the two appliances.

Another important feature is that is can now import and export the encryption keys. This becomes valuable when an organization needs to send tapes to another facility (either its own site or that of an organization with which it does business). It can export the keys, store them to a thumb drive and send that thumb drive with keys separately from the tape so the keys can then by imported by the appliance at the other site and used to decrypt the data on the tape at the other site.

Organizations may not want to deal with tape encryption, but the addition of Missouri to the list of US states and territories now gives them at least 48 reasons to act sooner than later. The new integration between the Quantum Scalar Key Manager appliance and its Scalar tape libraries now addresses many of the concerns that organizations have around implementing and managing tape encryption. In so doing, Quantum offers organizations a better means to avoid the legal headaches and financial penalties that these new state laws introduce without imposing the internal penalty of having to manage the encryption process themselves.

Introduction of esXpress Makes Quantum a One-Stop Shop for Protecting VMware Environments

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 05:00:00 -0600

A year ago, companies might have justified the introduction of a disk-based backup system into their backup infrastructure based on its deduplication merits alone. Today that is no longer the case. While companies are again beginning to spend, the feedback I am getting from the field indicates that before a company makes any new technology purchase, the technology must address and solve multiple issues within an organization, not just one.

Just because companies are starting to open up their pocketbooks again does not mean that we are returning to boom times anytime soon. Everyone is working harder than ever to best utilize what they have. If they are looking to make a purchase, they need a solid business case to justify the expenditure.

This change in buying behavior among companies is probably a big motivation behind Quantum's recent announcement to include esXpress backup software with its disk-based DXi-Series backup systems. While most mid-size companies and larger are looking to deploy disk-based backup that incorporates deduplication into their backup infrastructures (which the DXi-Series certainly addresses) it is not always that simple.

Many of these companies are looking to extend disk-based data protection and deduplication throughout their infrastructure. However, as they do so they are finding that they need two components to successfully execute on this strategy:

Companies need a solution that enables them to economically store and then replicate backup data from their remote offices back to their home office. Quantum is already delivering on this objective. Its DXi2500-D includes the four main features that remote offices need to get started with disk-based backup in these offices: deduplication, a file system interface, replication and sufficient storage capacity. Meanwhile the DXi7500 provides the ability to handle the different types of backup and replication loads that companies will have to manage in their main data center.
Companies need backup software. Remote and branch offices sometimes have no backup software or the backup software they are using is out of sync with what the rest of the organization is using. (Even the main data center is not immune from these problems.) So even if an organization wants to deploy disk-based backup and centralize the management of its backup data stores, without backup software or the same backup software across these offices, it is difficult to effectively implement.

The availability of Quantum's esXpress backup software with their DXi-Series changes how companies can view Quantum's portfolio of solutions. Companies putting together a backup solution using Quantum's DXi-Series as the disk-based backup targets no longer have to purchase additional backup software for their remote offices. Instead they can just purchase any DXi-Series disk-based that includes a free license for the esXpress backup software.

This eliminates the need and expense of backup software for these remote offices while enabling the organization to standardize on one backup software product across all of their remote offices and is available from Quantum on any DXi-Series backup systems purchased on or after July 20, 2009. However before you assume all of your backup problems are solved there are some considerations that organizations need to be aware of before implementing this solution.

First, esXpress is designed specifically to protect VMware virtualized server environments and will not protect any servers that are not virtualized using VMware. Taking advantage of esXpress will depend on the degree an organization's infrastructure is virtualized using VMware. However, if an organization is looking to virtualize servers company-wide, it may be able to avoid or minimize its need to purchase backup software in its new virtualized environment using esXpress.

Second, the DXi-Series includes a Professional version of the esXpress software which provides full functionality for up to four virtual backup appliances (VBAs) running on a single ESX server. It also includes free installation support. Additional esXpress Professional licenses cost $950 and also support up to four VBAs each. These licenses can be upgraded to esXpress Enterprise (MSRP $1,850) which supports up to 16 VBAs per ESX server.

Third, esXpress takes an innovative and new approach to protecting VMware ESX servers by creating VBAs on the ESX server. In this way, end users no longer rely on VMware's VCB infrastructure, resolving many VMware administrators' limitations with VCB. Here is how esXpress works on a VMware ESX server:

esXpress enumerates the virtual machines (VMs) on the ESX host
esXpress enumerates the disks (VMDKs) in the VM
esXpress tells the ESX host to snapshot the VM which creates copy-on-write (COW) snapshot files for each VMDK in the VM.
esXpress creates a VBA (or reuses any it already has that are not currently in use)
esXpress attaches the now static/read-only base VMDK to the VBA
esXpress powers on the VBA
The VBA backs up the VMDK to the DXi NAS share
The VBA powers down and returns a success/fail/status message to esXpress
esXpress tells the ESX host to commit the snapshot on the VM.
esXpress enumerates the VMs on the host again to see if any new VMs showed up during the backup process. If any new VMs are found, the above loop starts again for the new VMs.
If there is time left in the configured backup window, esXpress will check if any VMs failed to back up properly and will try them again.
Log file entries are updated and closed, emails sent if configured

Quantum's inclusion of esXpress with any of its DXi-Series backup appliances helps to move Quantum out of the realm of a disk-based backup provider into the realm of disk-based backup solutions provider. While the esXpress solution is admittedly targeted at companies that have virtualized their server environments, what organization today is not looking to virtualize their servers in all of their offices?

By packaging esXpress with the DXi-Series, Quantum has given customers yet another reason to virtualize their environments. As a point solution, esXpress does not replace backup software in the data center, but it does make the DXi-Series a central repository for all backup needs, including virtualization. That's a significant amount of value for a single technology purchase.

Self-help Publishing Company Helps Itself to Deduplication

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:10:07 -0600

A recent study for The Market for Self-Improvement Products & Services estimates the self-improvement market to be about $11 billion strong--seeking "to improve us physically, mentally, financially or spiritually". This market booms of "books, CDs/DVDs, videos, audio books, infomercials, motivational speakers, multi-media packages, public seminars, workshops, holistic institutes, personal coaching, websites and more."

But just like many other markets, the self-help industry must continually search for new ways to improve sales. It's just not about writing a book, cutting a CD, or authoring an audio book. According to the 2007 article, Help Yourself to Opportunity, the self-help industry must vary its sales methods and zero in on developing true audience "communities" to build "big potential in today's digital world".

Hay House, one of the largest publishers of self-help books, is facing this challenge head on by expanding into new media ventures, including six hours a day of online radio and video productions. But, as stated in a recent success story, Hay House Turns the Page with 92% Reduction in Backup Volumes Enabled by Quantum's DXi-Series, coping with explosive data growth proved to be a challenge.

Mike Fishell, Director of Information Technology for Hay House says, "We were getting to the point where we had more and more data and less and less time to back it up. And then there were the increasing expenses of doing the backups. Between time, money and storage space, we needed a new solution."

Hay House found itself in this predicament in a unique way. While it was creating more data that might be used infrequently, it required infrequently accessed data to be instantly accessible. It needed more efficient backup for protection and redundancy, but also needed to have the data available immediately. Fishell says, "I could see that deduplication would increase our ability to archive static data online for fast access and also allow us to keep backups available longer without purchasing more blank tapes."

After choosing to implement Quantum's disk-based DXi-Series backup system, Fishell saw a range of benefits, including:

Restoration of data within minutes rather than hours or days.
A reduction in backup data volumes by 93 percent using the DXI's data deduplication technology (from 40TB to 2.66TB)
Dramatic decline in tape usage (from 6-8 tapes/week to 2-3 tapes/week)
Greater manageability of backups and simplification of the backup process

Hay House continues to be satisfied with this implementation and is continuing to look down the road to their DR site and replication. Fishell says, "Replication is something I'm looking at because we have an office in New York and are looking at methods of backing up that office."

The self-help industry is facing the same challenges that other industries in America are facing right now: trying to innovate and meet the changing habits of their clients while also keeping their own costs under control. Hay House's use of Quantum's deduplication and replication exemplifies how more companies need to think about technology and leverage it in the current economic climate in which we find ourselves.

Granted, Hay House first used Quantum's deduplication to reduce its backup stores and is now looking to take advantage of its replication. But more importantly Hay House sought to solve multiple problems in its environment using Quantum's technology. In this case, Hay House addressed its backup problems, made infrequently accessed data instantly available, and set the stage for replication of data from remote offices. This is the type of thinking and innovative use of technology that is setting apart the winners and losers in this day and age.

Quantum DXi2500-D Cuts to the Chase as to What Mid-size Organizations Need in a Deduplication Appliance

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:00:00 -0600

"We need cheaper and simpler backups and recoveries for our remote and branch offices." That statement is repeated more often by mid-size companies as they seek solutions that take the pain and management overhead associated with backup and recovery out of their remote offices without breaking the budget or requiring heroic efforts to implement. This is exactly the type of scenario that the recently announced DXi2500-D appliance and version 3.0 of Quantum Vision™ Software from Quantum is designed to address.

Mid-size organizations are exactly that - mid-size - so the types of backup and recovery problems that they encounter are symptomatic of both small and large organizations. On the "small" end of the spectrum, mid-size companies only have a few IT staff that must support the entire data protection infrastructure in all offices from deploying the backup software to managing the recoveries. On the other end of the spectrum, the amount of data that they need to protect requires the skill sets, hardware and software that are more typically found in large organizations.

This is the gap that the DXi2500-D was designed to bridge. The DXi2500-D is sized with the capacity to easily handle sites with as little as a couple of hundred GBs of primary data to sites that have as much as 1 TB of data. It offers the right core technology features that are most likely to meet the needs of short-handed, cost conscious mid-size organizations. Using the DXi2500-D in conjunction with the Quantum Vision software, the can meet these needs in the following ways:

A price point and feature set that makes disk-based data protection for remote and branch offices almost a no-brainer. Talk about features all you want, the first thing IT managers in midsize organizations want to know is, "What does it cost?" To cut the chase, the list price for the DXi2500-D is $12,500. This includes 1800 GB of disk, a NAS interface, deduplication, replication and Symantec's OpenStorage (OST) API software. That works out to about $7/GB raw or just under 35 cents/GB when the backup data is deduplicated assuming a 20:1 ratio. Further, because deduplication and replication are included with the DXi2500-D, organizations can frequently continue to use their existing WAN connections without needing to upgrade to send deduplicated data back to the home office.
Simple to deploy. IT staff at midsize organizations understand and know how to manage Ethernet networks. So by making the DXi2500-D a NAS-only appliance, Quantum makes the upfront installation and setup of these appliances simple and easy for organizations to accomplish as it integrates with their existing networks.
Near 100% backup and recovery success rates. No one (including me) can guarantee that just by installing the DXi2500-D that an organization's backup and recovery will be 100% successful. But that said, I have never spoken to an organization where its success rates have dropped after it has implemented disk as a backup target. The almost universal response is that their success rates always improve and whatever problems remain after they implement disk are now much more manageable.
Consolidated management across remote offices. Deploying DXi2500-Ds across branch offices brings these benefits to an organization, but they still require management that must be done with existing IT staff. Quantum's Vision software enables these organizations to centrally manage all their Quantum systems while at the same time providing detailed reports across time and sites on items like capacity utilization, deduplication ratios, system performance, system status and replication throughput.

Mid-size organizations are acutely aware of the pain associated with managing backups in their remote and branch offices but are also just as aware of the costs to fix their backup problems. The Quantum DXi2500-D now provides them a viable, cost-effective means to address their tactical backup and recovery problems while Quantum's Vision software addresses their ongoing management concerns by centralizing and consolidating the management of DXi-2500-D's and the data that they contain.

IT managers need fewer heroes and more solutions that work as reliable processes across their enterprise. The DXi2500-D coupled with Quantum Vision software solves these issues while laying a foundation that centrally and more easily manages their backup data and the appliances that host it going forward.

New Considerations for Using Disk-based Solutions for Outsourced Data Protection

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:00:00 -0600

Back in March I received a call from a records management provider in the upstate New York area who was inquiring, "How do I get started in providing disk-based backup for my current clients?" This records management provider currently only stores paper and tape in his company's facilities but rightly recognizes that there is a growing trend towards disk-based backup and did not want to be left out in the cold. But he was wondering what options were available in the market that he could offer his prospective clients.

In talking to this individual, he first described what he had done so far to enter this space as well as some of his concerns. He said he was already looking at a backup software solution that would deduplicate and replicate the data to his site. However his concerns with using this backup software were two-fold. First, he had to convince his clients to swap out their current backup software with his backup software; and, two, he figured he would need someone at least part-time if not full-time to manage this part of his operations.

Since backup to disk would be new ground for his company, he did not have a lot of technical expertise on-hand and it would require him to hire someone to support this initiative. So this meant he was looking at a fairly significant investment even apart from the purchase of the technology. Then even if he made the jump, he was not sure he wanted to support his backup software in these environments should problems arise.

These concerns were all understandable so I probed a little deeper and asked what he preferred to do and what technical expertise he had. He explained that he would prefer to just install a disk solution at the customer site and then replicate that backup data back to his facility. This way he would be pretty much out of the day-to-day hassles of trying to troubleshoot backup problems or making sure that the backup software worked with specific applications. He could instead leave that to his client's IT staff.

I then told him about some of the different disk-based appliances options in the market and he perked up when I told him about some of the features of the Quantum DXi series. It turns out this individual had some background in IT and was familiar with terms like partitioning and virtualization. In fact, he noted that many of the technologies that he saw coming back to the forefront today were technologies that he had worked with in the past but were now coming back in vogue again.

Here are some of the specific features of the DXi Series that he found of specific interest for his environment:

Leverages deduplication to reduce bandwidth requirements. Without deduplication it is extremely unlikely that replication will work over a WAN, especially considering the large amount of backup data that he would need to move. Since Quantum's solutions first deduplicate data and then check to see if a block of data exists at the target site before sending it, it would minimize the size of the WAN links he would need between his site and his clients' sites and can typically reduce bandwidth requirements by 98% or more.
Different size disk-based appliances with upgrade paths. He found this feature appealing since he could put right-size the appliance according to his customer's infrastructure and budget. Then as his or his customers' backup data stores grew, Quantum provides an upgrade path for them to larger solutions.
Both NAS and VTL options. He is not sure what network interface requirements his prospective customers might have. Since the DXi Series offers both NAS and VTL interfaces, it took that concern off the table.
No need to hire someone. This individual wanted a fairly low maintenance approach to offering disk-based backup without the need to hire someone. Since he did have some IT expertise, he could do some work initially and on an ongoing basis. The DXi series could allow him to offer this service without increasing his staffing levels.
A scalable solution that could partition his customer's data. This feature really appealed to him. The DXi series would allow him to install the appropriate size appliance at his client sites but a larger, more scalable solution at his facility. In this way, he would only need to put one DXi7500 at his site and then, using its partitioning feature, keep the data replicated from each client's site on separate logical partitions but he could still keep all of client's data on the same physical box. Further, he could leverage the DXi7500's deduplicating capabilities to deduplicate data from all his clients across the entire DXi7500 since the DXi7500 could globally deduplicates data across all of the partitions or shares of his different clients.
It supports both disk and tape. This feature he really liked because getting the initial copy of backup data from his client site to his site could be problematic using only replication and a network connection - especially if there was a large amount of data to move. Using the DXi7500, he could receive existing customer tapes and import the data into the DXi7500. This solves the problem of the initial data move of the data from the customer site to his site and then he only needs enough bandwidth to receive the smaller amount of data that is transmitted on a daily basis. Further, if his customer did have a disaster and needed to recover the data, he could easily export the customer data back to tape and send it to them to recover.

By the end of the call, this individual requested that I put him in touch with Quantum so he could do a deeper dive with the Quantum team to see whether or not the DXi solution would work in his environment. However, the concerns this individual raised regarding the use of backup software were ones I had not previously considered from either a support or implementation perspective. In these environments with providers with these types of concerns, one can certainly understand why some providers would only want to use disk-based backup solutions such as Quantum's DXi Series as their preferred solution.

Server Virtualization Piles on the Savings But Watch Out for Those Costs

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:00:00 -0600

Everyone is quick to tout the cost-savings that server virtualization provides - less server hardware, lower heating and cooling costs, smaller data center footprints, better utilization of existing hardware. In many respects, it's like a dream come true from a cost savings perspective for many organizations. But successfully implementing server virtualization is another story as it requires organizations do more than just remove the shrink wrap on the software, install it and then watch the savings pile up.

Server virtualization addresses many of the current operational costs that data centers face. But VMware's ESX server and Microsoft's Hyper-V server virtualization OSes are anything but plug-n-play, especially when it comes to protecting data in these environments.

Quantum's Product Marketing Manager, Mike Sparkes, cautions that organizations have to avoid the temptation to just look at the upfront cost savings in reduced hardware and software costs. The temptation can be to just calculate the cost saving by looking at the benefits that an organization will derive by virtualizing "x" number of existing servers now using a "y" number of servers.

What that "y" number can fail to account for are the performance bottlenecks and licensing costs associated with protecting the data created by the virtualized servers. "Once you create a virtualized environment, there are better and easier ways to manage backup performance and software licensing than what organizations experience with their current physical servers," says Sparkes.

Protecting the data in virtualized environments requires companies adopt some new approaches that both reduce the amount of data they backup as well as offload the overhead associated with backup. A couple of data protection options that organizations should look to adopt and implement server virtualization include:

Deduplicate redundant data. Virtualized environments can contain large amount of redundant data so when this data is backed up, the same data is stored multiple times. They also contain a lot of allocated but empty disk space. Deduplicating the backup data and storing it to disk, reduces the footprint of the backup data to a minimum which saves on storage capacity and energy costs while expediting backups and recoveries.
Use native backup tools found in VMware's ESX Server and Microsoft's Hyper-V OSes. Both of these server virtualization operating systems provide base line data protection tools that minimize or eliminate the need for agents on each virtual machine (VM) that it hosts.

The VMware ESX includes the VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) feature which creates a snapshot of a VM so that the backup of a VM can occur using a backup server without incurring a performance penalty on the hosting ESX server. This eliminates the overhead associated with the backup. Microsoft Hyper-V is similar in that it also creates snapshots of either individual VMs or the entire Hyper-V server.

Unlike VMware, however, Hyper-V uses the Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) Writer found in Microsoft OSes which gives it a slight edge over VCB in Windows environments since it can create application consistent snapshots of virtualized Windows OSes. The backup of the snapshot is then accomplished in a manner like in a VCB environment by using a proxy server. (For further information on Hyper-V backups, a blog recently appeared on Microsoft's Technet website that examines this subject.)

The problem that organizations run into is that both of these options introduce new costs and complexity into the equation. To deduplicate data means the introduction of disk into the backup process. Further, organizations may not be using backup software that can make these specific calls to VMware's VC B or Hyper-V's VSS Writer that generate the snapshots and then do the off-host backups of the data. Because of this, organizations suddenly find themselves looking at new expenses associated with protecting this environment - the cost for disk and the cost for backup software and proxy servers that supports these new snapshot features plus the time needed to implement the solution.

No one argues that server virtualization can significantly reduce data center costs but as organizations factor in the costs and complexity associated with protecting this data, the appeal of server virtualization can lose some of its luster. It is because of this that we are starting to see more product offerings that bundle deduplicating disk storage systems with data protection software to minimize the expense and complexity associated with implementing data protection in these virtualized environments. In an upcoming blog entry, DCIG will take a look at a new entrant in this space.

Server Virtualization is Turning the Data Protection Model Upside Down

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:00:00 -0600

Organizations tend to give insufficient thought to the protection of an application before it is deployed. Too often it is only after the application is developed or purchased and put into production that the organization takes the time to consider the protection of the application's data and, even then, it is usually not a major problem to implement. As organizations look to virtualize more of their physical machines that are hosting these applications, waiting until the application is in production before deciding how to best protect it creates new sets of problems.

Over the last decade or so, most organizations have adopted the approach of assigning every application its own server. This was done to expedite the deployment of applications as well as keep administrative costs low since organizations found one administrator could cost-effectively manage tens or even hundreds of application servers and problems could be dealt with after the fact.

Adopting this approach resulted in applications only using a small percentage of each host server's resources (CPU, memory, network bandwidth and storage). This left ample resources on the server for it to run other applications like performance monitoring and backup software. In the case of backup jobs, since they ran in the evening and/or during off-hours, organizations just assumed that there would be sufficient processing power and network bandwidth available and that backup problems would not surface.

According to Mike Sparkes, Quantum's Product Marketing Manager, the problem that starts to surface is that as companies consolidate and virtualize servers each physical machine will host multiple virtual machines, each with its own application. As a result, the resources of the physical machine are now shared among the numerous virtual machines and the applications that it hosts. Sparkes says, "Virtualization can make better use of server and storage resources but since backup runs on every virtual machine, virtualization can be disruptive to existing data protection processes."

Organizations will tend to analyze the mix of existing and/or new application servers before they consolidate and virtualize them on a single physical machine. However they can forget to consider the load that the backup jobs that run on each of these virtual machines introduces on the underlying physical machine.

So as each virtual machine's backup job executes, typically during the same time window, it competes for that physical machine's resources. This can overload the server's CPU, congest that server's network connections and result in failed backup jobs. Worse, while the backup jobs are running, it can impact applications executing on other virtual machines running on that same physical server.

Of course, organizations can monitor each backup job on each virtual machine and schedule them so the jobs occur sequentially. This minimizes the impact on the underlying physical server by giving each backup job access to more of the physical server's resources. But, again, the problem with this approach is that it requires administrators to schedule and constantly monitor each backup job on each virtual machine, verify the backup job completes within its designated backup window and verify all of the backup jobs complete before the next day's production activities begin again. The only way to effectively do this is do it in real-time which is not a viable or practical option in most environments.

Server virtualization is turning the traditional data protection model upside down as it can no longer remain an afterthought in organizations. Rather organizations now need to put as much thought into planning data protection in a virtualized environment as they do planning for the virtualization of the applications.

Organizations are now changing how they bring application servers into their environments by first looking to virtualize them instead of dedicating a server to host each application. But as they do so, organizations need to make a similar change in approach in how they approach the protection of data in their new virtual environments.

Data protection can no longer remain an afterthought in virtualized environments. Installing a backup agent on each virtual machine and then protecting data like they have in the past is no longer a reasonable or even a viable solution in many circumstances. Rather organizations need to make planning for the protection of data as much a part of the planning for virtualizing an environment as planning to virtualize the application servers. To do so, they need to look at new ways to automate data protection in their virtual environment by keeping solutions simple and cost-effective to deploy, configure and manage.

The good news is that the resulting consolidation of resources opens the door to consolidated backup solutions with new approaches to reducing space, power, cooling and cost. In an upcoming blog entry, I'll examine some ways that organizations can deliver on those objectives as well as some of the pitfalls that they can encounter as they do so.

Cracking the Oracle RMAN Code Delivers 4-5X Improvements in Deduplication Ratios

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:00:00 -0600

IDC recently announced in its report, "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011", that the digital universe is bigger and growing more rapidly than originally estimated. The research showed an annual growth rate of 60% and stated that the digital universe will grow to a projected 1.8 zettabytes by 2011. While a lot of this data is in an unstructured format, you can rest assured more than a fair share of it will end up in corporate databases. With this explosive rate of data growth, many database and storage administrators will have their hands full managing backup and recovery windows.

Since Oracle has a commanding lead in the database market, it only makes sense to talk about how deduplication can help in an Oracle environment. From a historical perspective, it's interesting to step back and see just how Oracle backups have progressed from exports or cold backups, advancing slowly into hot backups and eventually to the adoption of RMAN (Recovery Manager). Each of these stages was often met with criticism, caution, and a bit of confusion. Regardless, Oracle's RMAN utility has been around quite a while and has become the near de facto standard for initiating backups, restores, and recoveries of an Oracle database.

The amount of data in databases has long been a target of data reduction techniques, most notably compression--and some database files compress very well. But applying data deduplication to database files has been more problematic with most dedupe systems not providing much additional reduction beyond compression (which is usually part of the dedupe process).

The issue with deduplication is that the repeated patterns that deduplication finds can be scrambled or obscured in a dynamic database file by metadata (section markers, end of file tags, etc.) that backup applications insert when they process the backup. If a deduplication system can differentiate this metadata from the underlying content, deduplication rates can be increased dramatically.

The folks at Quantum recently announced that they had cracked the code for Oracle RMAN, allowing their DXi deduplication appliances to screen out the metadata in RMAN files and greatly increase their dedupe results - early installations are showing 4 to 5X increases - although the rate will obviously vary based on the amount of changed data between backups. Quantum tells us that the efficiency works for RMAN when it is being used as a primary application, and it has verified similar results when RMAN is used as part of the backup in several other backup applications, including Symantec NetBackup, Oracle Secure Backup, and CommVault products when CommVault Simpana is used in its Single-Instance mode.

Deduplication is emerging as a critical capability for customers who need to effectively store, manage and protect databases. The Quantum initiative to crack applications that backup our Oracle databases is highly needed to reduce the amount of data that organizations need to store and free up network traffic between source and remote sites while providing a complete solution that matches the backup needs of Oracle within the data center.

Dedupe Gets Smarter in New DXi7500 Release

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:00:00 -0600

While storage system vendors initially promoted the importance of deduplication to reduce disk capacities, more recent product releases show that their understanding of the value of deduplication is evolving to help address a broader set of data protection concerns that face IT departments in distributed environments. Yesterday's launch of version 1.1 of the Quantum DXi7500 provides a great example of this.

In this 1.1 release of the DXi7500, 1 TB SATA disk drives are now standard, increasing the DXi7500's capacity by 22% on a per shelf basis. However 1 TB drives also increase the risk of data loss should not one but two drives fail before the rebuild of a first failed drive completes. Quantum appropriately incorporates RAID 6 technology into this release of the DXi7500 to provide dual parity and protection against data loss in the event a second disk drive fails during a rebuild. Each shelf has 16 drives with two RAID 6 sets (6+2 and 5+2) plus a global hot spare that is available for use by either of the RAID 6 sets on that shelf.

But probably of more interest is how Quantum is improving its software in this release. Here are the software features that specifically caught our eyes:

Replication at the cartridge/file/directory level. As systems, and backup jobs, increase in size, it can make sense to give people access to replicated data without having to wait for the entire backup and replication job to finish. In this release, Quantum provides granular control over the replication process so as individual virtual cartridges, files and directories are deduplicated at the source, they can be replicated and available for restore on the target. This allows restores of the backup data to occur at the secondary site even while the backup job continues at the primary.
Advanced support for Symantec NetBackup OpenStorage API (OST). Quantum has signed on as a supporter of Symantec's OST program since Symantec announced it over 2 years ago but with 1.1, Quantum delivers products to bring that support to end users. The DXi7500 platform's OST option means that users of NetBackup can now directly track replicated backup data on DXi7500 systems in multiple locations. This specifically comes into play for organizations that are replicating backup data between DXi7500s in different locations so they can manage independent retention policies for the primary and secondard sites through their NetBackup Media Server.You can read more about Quantum's support of Symantec's NetBackup OpenStorage API in a recent blog on Symantec's website.
Optimized RMAN support. At a high level, what makes this feature so interesting is that for those environments that protect Oracle database, it can improve data reduction ratios for Oracle backups by significant amounts, as much 3 - 4X are reported in early deployments. This is a feature that DCIG views as an important development and plans to do a deeper dive into in an upcoming blog.
Expands support for application managed tape creation. Using the NDMP protocol, the DXi can automatically copy backup data from disk to tape for long-term storage and keep the backup application appraised of this secondary copy of tape. While Quantum has supported this feature in conjunction with Symantec NetBackup, Quantum has now extended support to EMC NetWorker which has recently added a direct NDMP path-to-tape option in the latest NetWorker release. The quick support for the new NetWorker feature suggests close cooperation between Quantum and EMC.

Quantum's strategy is to deliver multi-tier data protection across multiple sites, technologies and time with products that support the multiple types of small, remote, mid-size and enterprise data centers that exist. This 1.1 release shows Quantum's commitment to remain backup software neutral while better integrating with leading enterprise backup software products like EMC NetWorker and Symantec NetBackup to deliver better options for backup data management, movement and recovery (better integration is also touted for TSM, HP Data Protector, and CommVault Galaxy).

But maybe what this release of the DXi7500 most aptly demonstrates is that for users to get the full value from deduplicating disk libraries is that they need to look beyond the feature of deduplication. Deduplicating backup data is now only a starting point. New features that focus on management--of multiple units, of replication, of tape creation, etc--and better integration with backup applications--including specialized apps like RMAN--are increasingly vital for deduplication to take its place in a multi-site, multi-tier data protection environment.

Murphy's Law and Continued Innovation Ensure Enduring User Interest in Tape

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0600

Recently a blog entry appeared on the Byte & Switch website that asks the question if tape will be cancelled due to a lack of customer interest. In short, the author of the article, George Crump, postulates that customers are losing interest in tape partly because tape manufacturers are taking more interest in selling disk than tape. As a result, more innovations are occurring in disk libraries while tape libraries languish. But has tape in fact outlived its usefulness?

While I can see Crump's point and agree that a great deal of innovation is occurring in disk libraries, I have heard enough customer stories and seen enough new technologies emerge to convince me that tape will outlive forecasts for its ultimate demise though its role is certainly going to change.

As anyone who follows the data protection space at any level probably knows, disk and deduplicating disk systems are on their way to replacing tape as the primary backup target in many shops. The most often cited reasons for this change include:

Larger capacity disks and deduplication put the cost of disk on par with tape
Faster backup and recovery times
Reduced backup windows
More efficient use of disk (deduplicating disk systems)
Facilitates offsite data replication

But why will tape survive, and possibly even thrive, in spite of these obvious benefits of using disk? Here are a few stories and tidbits of information that I have picked up over the last year as to why tape will continue on.

Murphy's Law. Most of us are familiar with the short version of Murphy's Law that states, "If anything that can go wrong, it will." However, there is another version of it that goes along the lines of "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible time and in the worst possible way." I only bring this up because last spring that I was attending a conference (sponsored by a disk vendor no less) where a user was extremely relieved that he had copied his production data from disk to tape.

It turns out this individual had two data centers - a production data center in the New Orleans area and a DR site in the Houston area - and they were both hit by hurricanes within the space of a month and he had to shut down both of them at the same time. Thankfully he had copied all of his production data to tape so he could move it to yet a third data center and recover his production applications.

It is because of circumstances like this that companies like Quantum are hearing from conversations with its customers that tape continues to hold a strong role in disaster recovery and long term data retention in its customer accounts. Its customers are also seeing a growing role for managed, near-line archives of indexed, tiered file data.

Innovation in tape continues. Granted, tape library vendors are giving more attention to disk-based backup solutions but that does not mean innovation in their tape libraries has stopped either. Instead, they are currently putting a greater focus on the data management software found on tape libraries, but that innovation does not occur overnight.

The customer requirements associated with the emerging use models for tape are primarily about software. There are some needs around traditional hardware, but the most important needs are about data movement and data and media management. The ability to tune these elements together is key to creating a complete answer for the customer. You'll continue to see enhancements in drive technology and automation, but the big news going forward will be how tape library vendors use the drives and the automation - in conjunction with disk - to solve real customer needs and integrate them.

We now see similar types of innovation occurring in products like the Quantum DXi7500. It can already manage the movement of data from disk to tape and back again since not every company has a secondary location or second disk system to which it can replicate data. Already the DXi7500 works with enterprise data protection software such as EMC NetWorker and Symantec NetBackup which can track the movement of backed up data.

Even assuming all innovation in tape technology stopped today, I sincerely doubt companies would stop using tape. Evolutions in storage take years if not decades to occur (I am still aware of banks that use reel-to-reel tape systems and innovation in that technology ended eons ago). In addition, with the increasing focus on energy efficiency in data centers, tape is arguably the most efficient means for storing archive data that must be saved for compliance reasons, but may never see the light of day again. So to declare that tape is dead when innovation is occurring is just downright irresponsible.

Neither disk nor tape technologies, when viewed outside of the context of how companies are using them to solve problems, are very interesting of and by themselves. It is only when they solve real world problems and how companies utilize them in those capacities that companies perk up and take notice. So just because tape is no longer used as the primary target for backup doesn't mean that tape is dead, it just means that it is evolving to solve new sets of corporate problems. As those specific problems become better understood and documented, expect the products that support tape to experience similar forward movements in innovation.

Quantum DXi7500 Express and QuikFit Sizing Bring Deduplication and "Plug-n-Play" Together for SMEs

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0600

One of the more elaborately crafted illusions that deduplication vendors have created over the last few years is that deduplication appliances are simply a "plug-n-play" proposition. In one respect, this is true. Companies can often introduce a deduplication appliance into their backup environment without substantially changing their existing backup configurations. Where the slight of hand comes in is when it comes to the vendor appropriately sizing the deduplication appliance for the client's environment. If it is too small or undersized, companies end up with a deduplication appliance that does not perform as anticipated; if it is too large, companies end up with an oversized appliance that costs them too much money.

Quantum's recent November 19, 2008, announcement of the new DXi7500 Express addresses the initial concern of small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) - creating a "plug-n-play" experience with an enterprise caliber deduplication solution at a price point they can afford. The DXi7500 Express integrates the hardware and software needed for midrange environments and includes licenses for deduplication, VTL and NAS interfaces at an MSRP of $98,250. The solution then functions as a "turnkey" version of Quantum's enterprise class DXi7500 model so that SMEs can expeditiously deploy the DXi7500 Express into their environments.

The DXi7500 Express does differ from the DXi7500 in that it only provides adaptive deduplication (as opposed to policy-based deduplication) and support for up to 7 TB of deduplicated data. However the good news is that companies can upgrade a DXi7500 Express to a DXi7500 and still gain access to its higher capacities, full tape creation capabilities, replication and a full suite of management options without replacing it.

In terms of helping customers appropriately size the DXi7500 Express for their backup environment, Quantum had to do some innovation and make some changes on their side. Quantum has found that customers can fairly accurately estimate how many servers they own and how much data they backup, but customer estimates as to the rate of data change and annual data growth in their backup environments tend to err on the conservative side. Couple these errors with incomplete information on the backup methodologies they use for specific applications and how long they retain data creates a scenario where appropriately sizing a deduplication appliance for the customer environment becomes a roll of the dice.

So to help take some of the uncertainty out of this initial sizing exercise, Quantum now provides its resellers with a new QuikFit sizing program. This process is intended to help resellers gather needed information from their customers so they can more precisely size and configure deduplication appliances. Examples of customer information that resellers now gather include:

Annual data growth
Anticipated period of on-disk retention
Backup methodology (differentials, incrementals, fulls, frequency, etc.)
Data compressibility
Frequency of tape rotation
Full backup windows

Responses from their customers are entered into an online form and then compared against a sizing tool that matches the customer's requirements to an appropriate size model of the Quantum's DXi-Series deduplication solutions. Quantum anticipates that the creation of this new online portal and accompanying sizing tool will enable its resellers to provide on-the-spot appliance sizing and rule of thumb prices for their clients.

Customers and vendors alike are discovering that the reality of implementing deduplication appliances rarely match the "plug-n-play" illusion that everyone wants to believe that deduplication appliances offer. However vendors are not giving up on trying to deliver on this ideal and SMEs and their resellers are starting to see some of the fruits of these efforts. The recent announcement of Quantum's DXi7500 Express and QuikFit program brings SMEs one step closer to seeing turnkey deduplication appliances delivered to their door and implemented in their backup environment with minimal setup and configuration required.

Quantum and Dell Team to Create New Backup Appliance Choices while Standardizing Software Functionality

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:00:00 -0600

Deduplication is rapidly becoming the new battleground in corporate backup and no technology vendor can afford not to enter this fray. Yet until recently, Dell, the world's third largest supplier of servers--and a leading supplier of data storage solutions - lacked any native disk-based backup appliance that was capable of deduplication. That changed earlier this month with its announcement that it will develop its own line of disk-based backup appliances that will use Quantum's software, of which deduplication and replication are primary features.

Dell's November 3, 2008, announcement parallels what a few other hardware vendors have done to date: build its own backup appliance with a separate vendor providing the key deduplication and replication technology. In Dell's case, its forthcoming system will be completely built according to its own hardware specifications and then leverage Quantum's deduplication and replication software.

One key area that makes this forthcoming Quantum-enabled Dell appliance truly unique is that Dell can more fully leverage its existing relationship with EMC. Like Dell, EMC's DL3D and 3D4000 disk libraries also utilize Quantum's software to perform deduplication as well as replication. This presumably will give companies the flexibility to choose from any of these three hardware providers and create a data protection solution that can deduplicate at multiple locations and replicate data between products from any of these vendors. So as Dell approaches enterprise accounts, it can offer companies a choice of different data protection solutions with a common deduplication foundation that allows broad replication compatibility.

But what makes this announcement of further interest is what it may mean for companies as they select backup appliances now and into the future. Currently when companies purchase a disk-based backup appliance, they are generally tied to that hardware vendor longer term since if they start to use that platform's deduplication or replication features, choosing another platform becomes more difficult. This puts them in a position where they need to purchase all of their hardware from a single vendor even if that vendor may not offer all of the configuration and support options that they may need for their different office locations.

The apparent decision of Quantum, EMC and Dell to cooperate by using common deduplication and replication software across platforms takes a great deal of uncertainty out of an end user's decision. Yes, companies can still purchase all of their disk-based backup solutions from one vendor if they so choose. But now they have the option to choose hardware configurations and support options from other vendors that may better match their particular needs. This especially holds true in enterprise organizations with remote and branch offices that may independently have existing relationships with Dell, EMC or Quantum and want to continue using those suppliers and resellers.

Most administrators are very loyal to a brand and may become even more so as they start to use a specific hardware platform's software features and get them installed and operational in their environments. But this cross-vendor approach to compatibility sets up the potential for a more open industry standard to deduplicate and replicate data which bodes well for the IT community as a whole.

New Green Grid Metrics are Bringing Changes to Data Center Designs

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0600

The focus of cost controls in the data center is often centered on easily identifiable and quantifiable items such as servers, infrastructure and personnel. But for those who track the data center's steadily growing electric and gas bills, these costs have become a much larger cause of concern. Granted, energy costs have abated somewhat in recent weeks but companies cannot assume that trend will continue. Besides, some parts of the country already report that the availability of power to meet their current data center demands is restrained and that is without even beginning to address their future power requirements.

Gartner Group projects that 50% of data centers have insufficient power to meet their current needs and that by 2009 the costs associated with cooling data centers will become the second highest operating cost in 70% of data centers worldwide. It is no wonder that companies are clamoring for technologies that can immediately help them meet this immediate and pressing need by making their data centers more energy efficient.

This is part of the motivation behind the creation of the Green Grid consortium that is dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. As part of its efforts, it is giving a great deal of attention to deduplication and products like the Quantum DXi-Series that simultaneously solve the problems of data storage and protection while also creating greener data centers. Deduplication is one of the technologies that the consortium promotes because it can help companies reduce data center power consumption in two key ways:

It reduces the disk needed for storage. As companies transform their data protection strategy from a tape only to either disk based, or a hybrid disk/tape storage environment, they may see an increase in rack space and power consumption. Although tape is a more energy efficient means of storing data, companies are looking to overcome some shortcomings that a tape only solution has when doing backups. This has led companies to seek out deduplicating, disk-based storage as a means to shrink their backup windows. Deduplication stores more data on fewer disks and, by reducing the number of disks in the data center, power needs are also reduced.

It reduces data center space requirements. The days of traditional server storage, which expands rack space, increases hardware costs and consumes needed energy, are slowly disappearing. Deduplication consolidates and reduces storage requirements thereby lowering the amount of rack space needed which reduces data center footprint and may lead to the need to heat and cool less space.

To help companies document these energy savings, the Green Grid consortium provides metrics that measure their overall Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Data Center Efficiency (DCE). The PUE Metric takes Total Facility Power and divides it by the IT Equipment Power. So for example, if the PUE is 3.0, that means the datacenter power demand is three times greater than what is necessary to power the IT equipment. DCE is the reciprocal of PUE and tells you how much power IT equipment is consumed in the data center. These metrics are rapidly evolving into standard benchmarks that are being adopted by companies globally with the Data Center Code of Conduct in Europe providing proof that substantial changes to data centers are coming down the pike.

Higher energy costs and limited availability to power are not eliminating the other growing problem that companies face: the need to protect growing amounts of corporate data and keep it readily available and protected. Deduplicating disk systems such as the Quantum DXi-Series provide a balanced approach to managing tape backup and disk-based deduplication backup and storage. Quantum allows companies to have a viable solution that balances enterprises existing tape solutions, and address this three prong problem of higher energy costs, limited power availability and exploding data growth. Measuring power usage through standard metrics and using deduplication products not only reduces your datacenter storage footprint, but lays the foundation for companies to create more efficient datacenters that are better positioned to meet decrease energy demands, lower costs and put them in strong competitive position.