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ENDING THE BACKUP NIGHTMARE

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 12, Issue 02 - July 2012

WHAT ARE THE ISSUES AND CHALLENGES THAT END USERS OF STORAGE ARE HAVING TO FACE AND EMBRACE WHEN IT COMES TO DEPLOYING BACKUP SOFTWARE? BRIAN WALL HAS BEEN FINDING OUT

Backup software - mention this to many organisations and they shudder. Why? Because their experiences of using it have often proved less than happy. Indeed, for some it's the stuff of nightmares. Time, then, to take a look at some of the latest techniques and technologies available and how these can help organisations to tackle their backup software challenges.

Before discussing the issues relating to the deployment of backup software, it's first important to examine what people have done in the past. In the majority of cases, organisations have already implemented backup software of some sort, so does it therefore make sense to introduce a whole new system or simply enhance the existing one?

According to Stéphane Estevez, senior product marketing manager EMEA & APAC, Quantum, the traditional solution is a three-step one, with varying levels of commitment. "The shift from the 'classic' physical backup deployment to hybrid setups incorporating both physical and virtual machines has resulted in changes in infrastructure for many organisations. The first step, and a widely accepted and pragmatic approach to accommodating these changes, is to back up virtual machines as if they were physical machines, because not only does it work, you can also use existing software and procedures"

THREE-STEP APPROACH
Eventually, he says, you're faced with the question: does it make sense to deploy new software or enhance what you have? "Step two involves finding something that works with your existing backup software deployment, allowing you to capitalise on the infrastructure already in place and investments made in training staff. It can work to 'just upgrade' existing backup software, but it's better to have a solution optimised for virtual machines that can work with existing software to reduce the impact on processes and costs. There are solutions which can do this, which work with virtual machines and know how to talk to existing backup software, providing accelerated backup, restore and disaster recovery protection in virtual environments, while reducing IT costs simultaneously.

"The reality of today's economy of limited budgets means adopting a high-cost 'rip and replace' solution that requires additional future expenses cannot be justified," adds Estevez. "Therefore, the third and final step of replacing everything and starting again is more likely to be employed once budgets are more freely available or after you have used steps one and two to buy you enough time to implement a more comprehensive strategy."

WORRYING STATS
David Blackman, general manager of Northern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Acronis, points out some worrying statistics when it comes to backup. "Eighty-six per cent of businesses experience one or more instances of system downtime, which on average equates to 2.2 days a year and costs $366,360 a year. This results in lost revenue, missed opportunities and lost productivity. Imagine what you could otherwise invest this money in. You could actually hire four more senior members of staff.

"It's also about being able to recover all the data. In certain industries including the financial, legal and public sector, organis- ations have to adhere to strict regulations such as the Freedom of Information Act, whereby data needs to be stored securely and safely for the long term. Losing data could result in penalties, including in some cases a serious monetary fine." Blackman suggests IT managers should think about breaking down the amount they want to spend, versus the long-term cost-savings made, to show the board the potential benefits. "Calculate what extra storage you would need and how much it would cost, if you didn't have a cloud solution. Propose the additional IT projects you could focus on with the time and money saved."

IT mangers should also look at the bigger picture and consider the implications of constantly adding new solutions to their IT infrastructure. "Research shows that 53% of businesses are using separate backup solutions for their physical and virtual environments, which is one of the reasons companies do such a poor job of backing up and why budgets are not being used wisely."

Blackman singles out budget and IT resources as the main barriers to successful backup and DR. "When thought through logically, data is quite possibly a company's most valuable asset, after its people - if this is lost, a business is effectively obsolete. IT does not operate in a silo from other departments; it underpins the whole business."

TAKING A SNAPSHOT
Organisations often deploy a number of products to solve backup and restore issues, while seeking to also improve archive and storage resource management capabilities. CommVault believes that snapshot technology can certainly help to tackle shrinking backup windows "and de-duplication is proven to reduce the amount of data being stored for at least short-term backups," it states. "Source-side dedupe can minimise network and data activity, and archiving is still one of the best ways to reduce the amount of old data on primary cost stores".

While these technologies alleviate the problem, implementing solutions from multiple vendors can, in turn, create inefficient data silos that are difficult to manage. "Most importantly, perhaps, they don't address the bigger problem of too much data being processed too many times, or being stored for the wrong period of time on the wrong media," CommVault point out.

According to analysts IDC, the quantity of digital archive data being created is growing at an alarming rate - 4 x the current volume to retain and search in three years - so, if businesses want to be in a position to efficiently overcome the backup challenges of tomorrow, they need to take a different approach today. For CommVault, the answer to the Big Data challenge is that, instead of looking for short term band-aids for existing solutions, companies should consider a converged process for backup, archive and reporting.

"By only reading and/or moving data once, this unified approach to data management can eliminate redundant processes and speed up operations; reducing storage costs and simplifying management policies. A single data policy enables organisations to scan, copy, index, analyse and store data once. It also enables data analytics to be performed, classifying the data and automatically supplying archive policies for data tiering that will ultimately reduce the total cost of ownership."

IMAGE-BASED BACKUP
When it comes to solutions, one that has gained rapid market acceptance of late is image-based backup technology, leading many IT organisations away from established file-based backup solutions. "Using an 'infinite incremental' approach, image-based backup offers many advantages, states Bennett Klein, senior director, product marketing, CA Technologies. These include: faster backups to meet backup windows; higher backup frequency to reduce risk of data loss; reduced impact on production servers; lower storage requirements and decreased data transmitted across the network-whether it involves the LAN, or across the WAN or Internet to an MSP or cloud facility for offsite protection. "With the wide adoption of virtualisation technologies, administrators should consider backup solutions that can protect both physical and virtual server environments, as they can reduce cost, complexity and management challenges compared to having separate solutions," he adds. "And whether virtual servers are protected at the machine or host level, organisations can achieve fast backup and still have granular restore capabilities to speed recovery."

IT organisations are also adding continuous data protection (CDP) technologies to their backup strategy to further reduce data loss. "In some cases, real-time continuous replication captures byte-level changes and then a data rewind feature is used to 'rewind back' to a known good point in time before the damaging event occurred. This powerful technology
is used with critical file, application and database systems," says Kelin.

Regardless of backup technology deployed, many organisations rely on data deduplication technologies to help reduce storage requirements and costs. "Some deduplication solutions perform client-side (source) deduplication while others perform server-side (target) deduplication, and there are pros and cons to each approach. Ultimately, deduplication users claim up to a 95% reduction in storage requirements, which enables organisations to choose to keep more backup online or reduce storage expenditures."

NO SHORTCUTS
With organisations producing 60% more unstructured data every year, there's one area where IT spending can't be cut short - and that's storage, says Bill McGloin, practice leader for storage and data optimisation, Computacenter "Although optimisation solutions, such as virtualisation, data deduplication and compression are helping IT departments increase storage virtualisation, there is no avoiding the upward spiral for both data volumes and costs," he McGloin points out. "Virtualisation, however, is the king pin here and the introduction of virtualisation on servers has meant significant changes to the storage subsystem. Integrating storage virtualisation into a corporate network has to focus on the flexibility to meet rapidly changing demands."As well as generating more data through media rich applications and multiple end user devices organisations also have to store data longer to meet regulatory obligations. "As a result, virtualisation is proving particularly powerful for meeting compliance," McGloin adds. "Whilst it is true that server virtualisation can make the system administrator's life easier and lower out-going costs, it will also add complexity in a number of notable areas. As a result, virtualisation is vital to monitor and manage virtualised storage and to avoid sprawl."