Data Protection Perspectives

Making Downtime a Thing of the Past

Lauren Whitehouse — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:00:22 +0000

The east coast of United States took another beating over the weekend, with record-breaking October snowfall which caused widespread power outages. Sometimes it takes “disasters” like this to instigate action for companies without an IT continuity plan. In what would seem like a perfectly timed announcement, Axcient, a backup/recovery (and now business continuity) service provider, introduced its Axcient Cloud Continuity solution.

Until recently, Axcient has focused on delivering a hybrid backup Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution on a pay-as-you-grow, capacity-consumption model. Subscribers back up data to a local storage appliance and it is automatically sent to Axcient’s secure cloud. If a server fails, the local device can be used as a failover system to run a virtual copy of the server … until the primary system can be recovered or replaced.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)—many that don’t have a second site for failover purposes—can now extend their recovery strategies to one where downtime can be minimized or eliminated. If an interruption in IT services occurs at the primary location, subscribers can continue to make their applications and data available by launching Axcient cloud-based servers via the Axcient Cloud Continuity service. Axcient’s cloud platform enables businesses to maintain uptime and access business applications and data from any Internet-enabled device.

Axcient’s approach is not new. There are many IT organizations today executing cloud-based IT continuity services. Many of them are home grown, leveraging popular cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services. The difference here is that Axcient has taken all of the guesswork out of its solution. SMBs subscribe, have an Axcient box installed, and start moving data to the cloud. There’s no upfront CapEx investment and no fancy programming that needs to be completed to integrate backups with cloud services. SMBs short on financial capital and IT professionals—and downtime tolerance—can, for a monthly service fee and a few mouse clicks, make downtime a thing of the past.

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SNW Report: Backup-as-a-Service

Lauren Whitehouse — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:38:31 +0000

My second video blog from SNW:

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SNW Report: Dedupe Feedback from the Front Line

Lauren Whitehouse — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:47:33 +0000

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Pass the PAS, Please

Lauren Whitehouse — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:33:30 +0000

Virtualization is an abstraction of reality; turning physical assets into a pool of independent logical assets or de-coupling utilities and services from physical infrastructure. Today, we virtualize everything from servers, to storage, to networks. Heck, we virtualize people when you think about it … removing the physical limitations of location to deliver services. Who knew the concept would have such far-reaching effects on everything in IT?

Yesterday, Actifio announced it is virtualizing data management in its Protection and Availability Storage (PAS) platform. Here’s why it matters:

Companies maintain production data. As an insurance policy, we make one or more copies of that data. Then we make another copy and send it offsite, just in case there’s a disaster and anything happens to the site where the production data and first backup copy are stored. Making one copy per day may not be enough to meet RPO requirements, so we make multiple copies during the course of a day. If data is very critical (i.e., no downtime can be experienced), we may mirror data for IT/business continuity purposes (I’ve already lost track of how many copies we’re up to). And that’s just for data protection. In parallel, there may be copies made for test/development or business intelligence/mining purposes. There also may be copies kept long-term for archive/records retention, e-discovery, or compliance purposes. You get the gist. Lots of copies equal lots of data. What a mess.

What if we could make logical copies from a physical copy and apply it to all of the aforementioned use cases? What if we could, in essence, virtualize data management by decoupling the management of data from storage, server, and network infrastructure? Then we could eliminate the multiple silos of data, simplify infrastructure requirements, and reduce storage requirements. This would drive down costs—significantly.

Actifio’s Virtual Data Pipeline (VDP) appliance captures unique data once and repurposes it for various business requirements that need a copy. Users only have to worry about policies for each workload—specifically, the service level agreements (SLAs) associated with application/data sets. Simple.

PAS is a radical departure from the status quo, and yet it makes so much sense. As virtualization takes hold in more pockets of IT, many organizations may be asking to “pass the PAS, please.”

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Loss of a Storage Visionary

Lauren Whitehouse — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:01:28 +0000

This week has been tumultuous for me and for many others whose lives and careers were impacted by one individual. ReiJane Huai, former CEO of FalconStor, my former colleague and often mentor passed this week. The circumstances surrounding his death are well documented and, rather than dwell on the tragic end to his life, I prefer to reflect on the positive aspects of this visionary leader in the storage industry.

Since the news broke earlier this week, I’ve had the opportunity to re-connect with the greater Cheyenne family via social media, phone calls, and e-mails. While many of us have moved on to new phases of our careers (or, for some, retired), we are inextricably linked by a Camelot-like experience at Cheyenne made possible by ReiJane Huai. My friend Jim McNiel, current CEO of FalconStor, remembers Rei in his blog post.

I remember Rei as impatient; he didn’t like to waste time. He was so brilliant that he usually reached conclusions far faster than others. ReiJane’s pace was a difficult one to keep up with. I always wondered, “Does the man sleep?” (Although he could be caught power-napping in a meeting or two during the day, especially if the lights were dimmed). It’s these qualities that made him a visionary and market-maker.

He was also a fierce competitor with a tremendous work ethic … one that became contagious with the rest of his crew. Cheyenne would regularly serve dinner to dozens of employees who put time in after hours. My friend Pam Leeds commented,

“His ethos and drive permeated the culture like a heartbeat. It’s the only job I’ve ever had where I didn’t mind leaving the office at 10pm … every day. I used to think, I can still make it home for Seinfeld if I rush.”

No matter how many hours we put in or how hard we worked, we never tired. The pace was frenetic, but the ride was so worth it.

ReiJane’s generosity should also not go unnoticed. Rei was extremely giving … especially in the selfless way he cared for and nurtured his team. He inspired us to be invested in what we were trying to accomplish … and we were. Cheyenne was one of the few companies where I felt the impact of my contributions every day.

Rei was inspirational and a strong leader, as proven by the two companies he was instrumental in creating and the thousands of professionals whom he not only led, but served with side-by-side. Most of the Cheyenne alumni I spoke with this week reflected on the role ReiJane played in their careers, how much they learned from him, and how much we were able to achieve as a team lead by him. He will be remembered fondly by all of us. His legacy is not only in his entrepreneurial endeavors, but in what he fostered in those who were privileged to have worked with him.

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Strained or Broken?

Lauren Whitehouse — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:36:27 +0000

I’m a klutz. In one of my more embarrassing moments, I tumbled down the steps at a Manhattan eatery last week. In high heels. Luckily I didn’t fall too far before grabbing the handrail, but the damage was done. My feet and ankles got twisted and turned in the process. My fall resulted in my first ambulance ride and a broken foot.

I didn’t think I actually broke anything. Initially I was more concerned that I was flashing Morton’s patrons as I sat on the stairs in my disheveled dress. My football player-sized colleague, Amahl, tried to help me up; however, putting pressure on my now ballooning foot proved too painful. I thought, “It’s not that bad. It’s probably just a sprain.”

After a few x-rays and closer examination, I learned that it was worse than I thought. It’s broken. All of the repercussions of that news now hit me. How will I get home to Massachusetts? Can I drive in a fracture boot? And when can I start wearing heels again?

I share my misadventure because it’s a metaphor for my other activities last week. I attended TechTarget’s Storage Decisions event in New York where I had the opportunity to engage with attendees at the sessions where I presented, as well as in one-on-one discussions. My takeaway from the many discussions I had with IT professionals is that we know that backup/recovery challenges spell trouble for most organizations, but upon further inspection, it’s broken. Really broken.

All of the well-known causes were mentioned: too much data, not enough time; virtualization implementations creating new issues to deal with; diminishing downtime tolerance; and more. The delegates that I spoke with were in pain. Just like me after my fall, they were laughing through the stress of what they were dealing with, but they were also at a loss to figure out where they go from here. How do they get back on their feet?

My session topics were “21^st Century Backup” and “Snapshot Can Be Backup.” In each, I discussed new techniques, technology, vendors, and consumption models. In theory, implementing one or more of the approaches or solutions I shared SHOULD fix things up. The truth is that much of it, for many in the audience, would be just a band-aid.

For example, I sat down with an administrator from a state agency who is in the midst of a multi-phase virtualization initiative. Budgeting issues have prevented the organization from upgrading to the latest VMware hypervisor. New systems get “virtualization first” treatment with the latest and greatest version of the hypervisor. However, the complication is that the agency cannot standardize on one backup strategy since their backup vendor’s VMware implementation is dramatically different depending on which version of the hypervisor is in place. The situation has created management headaches and introduced vulnerability since their backup success rates are pitifully low.

This and other conversations were reminders that theory is different than practice. While people like me can outline prescriptions, oftentimes, due to other factors, remedies can’t always be fully implemented. Like me, IT organizations will have to limp along—without their high heels.

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Dumbing Down for VMware

Lauren Whitehouse — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:34:27 +0000

What’s the expression … success breeds envy? Veeam is on a hot streak right now. The company has been rapidly growing—posting impressive revenue growth and expanding its coverage—and introducing new features, including support for Hyper-V in its Veeam Backup & Replication solution as well as announcing upcoming support for vSphere 5, and improvements in scale and performance. It has captured the attention of prospective customers, potential investors … and the competition.

In a recent blog post, I called out Veeam and Quest for their take-it-to-the-Twittersphere quibbling over who’s number one in VMware backup/recovery. What I didn’t expect is for the more traditional backup/recovery players to give their approaches credence. It seems that the cachet of Veeam and Quest spawned a trend: vendors supporting physical and virtual backup/recovery in a single solution are now “dumbing down” their products to be virtual only—to better compete head to head with VMware best-of-breed offerings.

The small and medium-sized business (SMB) market has always been price sensitive. Keeping it simple and low-cost while being highly effective are key themes, which is probably why server virtualization has an allure for this audience. Server virtualization, in particular, can introduce considerable cost savings while introducing capabilities (especially on the BC/DR front) that may otherwise have been unreachable. So, when shopping for a backup/recovery solution for virtualized environments, why should anything be different?

Vendors are picking up on these cues from customers … and getting aggressive about the perceived threat from the likes of Veeam and Quest. For example, this week Acronis announced vmProtect 6, a backup, recovery, and disaster recovery solution aimed at vSphere 4 and later environments. Installed as a virtual appliance, it backs up unlimited virtual systems on the physical machine where installed. Acronis is targeting SMBs that typically have limited IT resources and appreciate a streamlined solution that can install in minutes and be configured in a few mouse clicks. The $499 per CPU price tag will be appealing to SMBs … and helps Acronis compete with VMware-specific backup solutions. This move is similar to IBM’s. IBM introduced Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments (TSM for VE) earlier this year (see my blog post)—a solution dedicated to protecting VMware environments (vSphere 4 and 4.1). TSM for VE offloads backup from an ESX/ESXi server to a physical or virtual vStorage backup server. The solution can be licensed on a per-capacity basis or their traditional client/server basis.

Another trend has been a change in licensing models. I summarized several popular approaches in a blog post earlier this year. The net-net is that vendors are responding to VMware user requirements and simplifying licensing for virtualized environments—oftentimes reducing pricing in the process.

It’s surprising to me that reducing functionality in a product makes vendors better able to compete. Especially since ESG research indicates the preference is to use a single solution to back up and recover virtual and physical workloads. Since organizations with 100% virtualization is far from the norm, it seems apparent that dumbing down solutions is less about envy and more of a tactic to compete solely on price.

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When Your DR Plan is Starbucks …

Lauren Whitehouse — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 23:21:05 +0000

I should be at VMworld right now. Unfortunately, Hurricane Irene hit the East coast, pounding my home outside of Boston with wind and rain. The damage? A few downed tree limbs in my yard and loss of power—both at home and at the office. No problem. I can re-book my flight to Vegas and find a table with free WiFi and a power supply at my local Starbucks to check e-mail and get a few things accomplished before I leave. Ha! Easier said than done.

The power outage in Massachusetts is pretty widespread—500,000 outages were reported as of Sunday, August 28, 2011. According to news reports, it could take a week to restore power to those affected. I have depleted my flashlight batteries (those D batteries don’t hold much of a charge) and I am rapidly burning through all of my candles. The food that didn’t fit into my cooler is spoiled and the laundry is piling up. I am getting creative with cooking on my gas-fueled barbeque … oatmeal anyone?

When Monday arrived and I knew I wouldn’t be traveling, my plan was to get out to re-charge my appliances’ batteries and escape my dimly lit home. I visited a total of six Starbucks locations in my area before I found one with power. Unfortunately, 100 of my closest friends and neighbors all had the same idea. It was packed. I purchased a latte and waited like a vulture eyeing nearly-dead prey to pounce on a table or power outlet … whichever came first. Luckily, two Starbucks refreshments later, I scored a table with two outlets. Yay! My laptop and phone could both be re-charged and I could find out what was going on in the world.
The good news is that my flight tomorrow is expected to depart on time. The bad news is a 5:15am pick-up to get to the airport … ugh, too early to use the gym’s facilities to blow dry my hair. For those of you I see at VMworld, my likely tired (and limp-haired) appearance tomorrow can be blamed on Irene. But if a bad hair day is all I can complain about, I count myself very lucky.

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Local Backup Today … Centralized Tomorrow?

Lauren Whitehouse — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:10:22 +0000

In spite of survey results that point to greater IT centralization in ESG’s Remote Office/Branch Office Trends research report, most companies perform local backup at the remote office/branch office (ROBO). However, that doesn’t mean that centralizing backup/recovery won’t catch up.

The report indicates that the majority of IT services and applications are centrally hosted, with ROBO-based users accessing them over the WAN. However, many of the challenges for ROBOs are WAN-related. Monitoring, managing, and/or prioritizing WAN traffic is a big networking challenge. The user experience at ROBOs is also not ideal as poor application performance is causing dissatisfaction with users. And then there’s the cost of bandwidth … another pain point.

Backing up data over a WAN is no picnic, either, which is likely the reason behind the dominance of backup to local devices and media. Further, the recovery aspect could also be a contributor since transferring bulk amounts of data from a headquarters location to the ROBO will stall recovery efforts. However, the introduction and adoption of deduplication technology, which reduces the impact on bandwidth, have contributed to a change in this dynamic over the past few years. Since ESG’s 2007 ROBO survey, the prevalence of a centralized backup strategy has quadrupled.

Looking forward, centralized backup is expected to expand, with 40% of respondents anticipating taking up the approach over the next 24 months—likely fueled by the upgrade of networking technology and WAN optimization technology such as deduplication.

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VMware Backup Vendor Landscape

Lauren Whitehouse — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 22:26:32 +0000

With VMworld in Las Vegas just around the corner, many IT practitioners and solution providers may be thinking infrastructure, including solutions for improving application service levels and virtual infrastructure availability. If data protection is top of mind, then the recently published ESG market landscape report, Navigating VMware Backup and Recovery Approaches and Solutions, may be of interest.

The data protection market continues to be influenced by virtualization and cloud, triggering changes in buying patterns and behavior among IT consumers. There are many approaches available to back up and recover VMware virtual machines, and dozens of vendors and solutions. The market landscape report examines the trends impacting VMware backup and recovery, categorizes the market’s vendors and solutions, and provides guidelines for purchasing considerations.

While many of the vendors have remained the same (except for a few newer entrants that have backup and recovery purpose-built for VMware), virtualization is fueling competitive displacements. With the introduction of vSphere 4 and VMware’s vStorage APIs for data protection, the level of differentiation for backup and recovery has been minimized. The hypervisor enhancements enable traditional backup to be more easily retrofit to support virtualized infrastructure. It should be interesting to see how this impacts purchasing over the next few months and years.

The report is available to ESG premium subscribers. Qualified IT and business professionals can register to gain free ESG website access.

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