Canvassing data protection technology for noteworthy musings. 
In a statement from CMO Jay Kidd to several media outlets, NetApp confirmed rumors that the company is discontinuing further investment in its NearStore VTL solution. While this revelation fueled a lot of speculation in the media regarding potential acquisition targets for a replacement solution, the question really is, “does NetApp need one?”
Backup applications traditionally wrote data to tape. Integrating disk with backup applications wasn’t very easy several years ago, so emulating a tape device via a VTL to the backup application made tape more seamless to integrate, made more efficient use of disk resources, and kept performance issues to a minimum: users got speedy backup to disk and didn’t have to make many changes to processes or policies.
However, the use of disk as a backup target has matured. Backup applications—newfangled and traditional—started treating disk as disk. Backup applications put a filesystem on the allocated SAN disk volume or leveraged CIFS or NFS in a NAS environment. The disk fragmentation and resulting performance degradation that results from modification, deletion, or expiration of data over time is the only concern.
Another big trend now is to use snapshot capture versus file-level backup. For example, Microsoft VSS snapshot (a point-in-time copy of a volume) is the prescribed method for guaranteeing complete protection for a Windows platform … and VMware has VCB and vStorage APIs. Backup applications, via APIs, can initiate snapshots and manipulate the images to retrieve individual files when needed. ESG research found that 50% of survey respondents are currently using snapshots for data protection and nearly one-quarter plan to this year.
NetApp offers a combination of solutions, such as snapshot and remote mirroring for disk-based backup and recovery in NetApp and non-NetApp storage environments. And native deduplication of NetApp FAS datastores in conjunction with snapshot and mirrored copies is ideal for delivering efficiency in data protection. Deduplicating data at the source system creates end-to-end efficiency and eliminates the need to deduplicate data at the tail end of the backup data path.
So, if NetApp’s current portfolio can overcome users’ backup challenges of cost, performance, and the ability to keep pace with data growth, then why does it need a new VTL?
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Tags: backup, data protection, deduplication, disk backup, NearStore, NetApp, OST, recovery, replication, snapshot, Symantec, VSS, VTL
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Lauren, this is a good post. A couple of quibbles, though, from a guy who lived and worked through backup-to-tape for decades, including 10 years with STK. Your point about backup to disk being ‘hard’ back in the day is not universally true. If you used the right s/w, disk-to-disk was a piece of cake. I was designing disk-to-disk SAN backup in 1998 w/o issue. The reason why VTLs got popular is that many IT orgs didn’t want to change their (old) _processes_, not because backup-to-disk was ‘hard’. IT shops, especially back then, were naturally change-resistant for the most part. Anything that allowed them to keep their process the same, that was good. So, VTLs were born and their backup-to-tape s/w didn’t care, as they didn’t have to change targets to disk.
Finally, snap capture is a great thing, but (to this day!) some shops believe it is a substitute for D/R. It is not. Snap is a great technique but is not a D/R solution, in the sense that the base volume must be intact and readable to use the snap. Or, you convert the snap to a FBC, but again many shops don’t do that. There is a false sense of security in snap. It’s terrific for short-term restore, as long as the base volume exists. Other than that, it isn’t a substitute for site-to-site replication. Remote mirroring – yes for D/R, but not snap for D/R. Slowly, the IT shops are learning that lesson.
Keep posting – you write well. I also agree w/your conclusion that NetApp doesn’t really need a VTL. Neither does Xiotech or any other array (IMHO). If you really want a VTL, there are some terrific upstream VTLs available.
They made not need a VTL, but they DO need a deduped disk target if they want a piece of that market, which continues to grow. And WAFL dedupe doesn’t count. It really only works well when deduping primary data; start sending TBs of backup-formatted data, and it doesn’t come close to what other target dedupe products do.
But as to selling to their own base; sure, their snapshot story is very strong.
Hi Lauren,
I think you’re right here. While VTL will still fill an important role, especially in the very large enterprise that needs to generate thousands of tapes a week, its utility is declining in the face of newer technologies.
There’s still plenty of tape being created in organizations large and small, but when you can integrate low-impact backup to disk with your tape infrastructure, as Syncsort and NetApp have done working together, all defined in a single backup job, you really don’t need a VTL anymore. VTL is a great bridge connecting server to tape, and it’s real purpose is to let you stream more backup jobs at once to shrink your overall backup window and stop you from having to buy endless, expensive tape drives. But if you cut backup data transfer by 90% or more, you can get all your backups done to a disk device on the LAN and you don’t need that expensive, Fibre Channel backup infrastructure dumping bits into a half million dollar VTL.
By the way, Syncsort and NetApp are having a series of joint seminars starting in a few weeks. If you can make it to any of them, we’d love to see you there. You can find the schedule here:
http://www.syncsort.com/virtualization_tour
Peter Eicher
Syncsort
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