DavsDisorder

I just shot off a quick email to a prospect who is about to submit an internal review of the backup tools on the market in view of a possible company wide change...trying to get their attention (so as to deliver some consulting for them :)))) I quickly spun together a quick list of current backup players off the top of my head (the list is pretty big these days compared to the 90s!!), so I thought I would share it with you and welcome additions or comments...note that this was not a thoroughly researched email and we as a company certainly do not sell/integrate all of these (probably not even half)...but the majority of them we have either tested or had exposure to in customer environments.

I may consider making this a more formal listing one day complete with known OEM arrangements and licensing model overview. Get in touch if you'd find such a thing useful.

I assume you have surveyed the major Enterprise solutions ?

• Symantec NetBackup (dedupe from PureDisk or external target device)
  
• EMC Networker (dedupe from either Avamar or Data Domain or other external target device)
• IBM Tivoli (dedupe from built in storage pool dedupe or external target device)
• Commvault Simpana (built in dedupe or external target device)
  

But then there are other players...

The fringe Enterprise players?

• CA ArcServe (built in dedupe or from Commvault Simpana (built in dedupe or external target device)
  
• Quest Bakbone (dedupe from external target device or their VTL software)
• Syncsort BackupExpress (dedupe external target device)
  
• Arkeia Network Backup (built in dedupe and from external target device)
  

The SMB Specialists (some which can play in some Enterprise spaces) ?

• Symantec BackupExec (dedupe from PureDisk or external target device)
  
• HP Data Protector (your incumbent I think you said ...?)
• Novastor NovaBackup (dedupe from external target device)
• Amanda Backup (dedupe from external target device)
• Yosemite (now Barracuda - built in dedupe or external target device)
  
  

The service provider/cloud delivered/charge-back-able players ?

• Asigra
• Seagate eVault
• Vembu StoreGrid
  

And then the niche/specialists (usually Windows only or virtual only or imaging only - can be used with other traditional backup tools)

• Veeam
• Acronis
• PHD Virtual
• StorageCraft
• Microsoft DPM
• Druva - Phoenix and Insync (think KPMG already use InSync for Laptop protection)

I refer here to a recent article penned by Tony Pearson of IBM discussing a recent catastrophic failure of an EMC Symmetrix within the State of Virginia's IT environment. Aside from some cheap inter-vendor point scoring, Tony mentions as one of the 'lessons' from this event; "Lesson 4: This can serve as a wake-up call to consider Cloud Computing as an alternative option". There is a faint tinge of irony here in that this post of Tony's was written in Australia in early September. At the end of that month the IT community (and the broader travelling public) witnessed how a 'cloud' provider can be just as exposed to downtime as your now unfashionable internal IT team. Virgin Blue's ticketing and reservation systems were brought offline due to an as yet unidentified systems failure within the storage data path. Virgin Blue do not own/operate their own ticketing and reservation system, but source such a service from Navitaire (disclosure: Navitaire are an old client of my firm). It took Virgin Blue (and I assume Navitaire) almost 7 days to return this service to normal operation. I wont call these observations 'lessons', rather just 'comments;

1. I agree with Tony (and probably every other seasoned data storage professional)...storage systems fail, that's why we have backup systems. These systems in turn are definitely only as good as their last successful test...if regularly testing is too much of a burden then you ought to at the very least audit the environment according to some baseline.
2. Whilst the person in question at the State of Virginia may be a little ashen faced currently, I can assure you that the "service delivery manager" (as they were called in the hey day of outsourcing), at Virgin Blue for the reservation and ticketing system will be feeling the same churning in the lower part of the stomach...his contact at Navitaire probably likewise. Just because a cloud provider is 'big' or ' branded' or, (inserted alarm bells), 'multi-tenanted', does not mean for one second that they can do better/cheaper job of helping you meet your SLAs for service uptime and/or data recovery.

I advise strong governance of how storage systems are used in medium - large organisations, as well as a strict focus on 'recoverability' in governance of backup systems.

In the former instance remember that 'speeds and feeds' as Tony puts it indicate in my experience the 'bleeding edge' of what a product can reliably do...divide by 2 and set that as your peak load. The more complex the data storage layout on a disk array (fragmented RAID  groups, meta-LUNs, concatenated LUNs, etc, etc), the longer your restore/rebuild will be. Remember that in the never ending race toward better storage performance, there is a necessary compromise around recoverability.

In the latter instance, just 'think' in terms of recovery, not 'did it get backed up'...build backup systems that focus on the process of data restoration (we talk only of data availability here, compute availability is a whole different story). It is far better to have a backup run for 8-10 hours, complete, validate and be easily restorable than a backup that runs in half that time but require multi-step, error prone recovery procedures.

Similar to a post from a few weeks back, I found this little summary amongst some old client correspondence which you may find useful.

8 Steps to Effective DR Planning and Budget Requisition

1. Use the term Disruption Recovery rather than Disaster Recovery.
2. Ensure you currently have some kind of DR/BCP management framework no matter how rudimentary. Show business management that there are current documented processes, metrics and testing that can be optimised. Technology supports the business insurance requirements, it doesn’t necessitate it. You need to show that DR planning is an ongoing process not a point in time flight of fancy.
3. Engage the right people in your organisation. Applications support and owners, facilities management, and of course, when ready, financial and executive management.
4. Conduct a joint Business Impact Analysis or Risk Assessment. What are we insuring/protecting against...delineate the actual dangers. Threats = Impacts = $$.
5. Then proceed to a ‘costs of downtime’ calculation. Dependency mapping of all business applications is the starting point for this. This is never a clean cut equation but, the revenue that a particular application or ecosystem of applications support is the dividend, downtime impact is the divisor and roughly speaking then the cost of downtime is the quotient (which should align roughly with a budget!)
6. Position a DR investment as having some competitive market value – ROI. Present ‘best-in-class’, industry peer data. – Reputational loss, client retention may be affected.
7. Develop a DR services catalogue...align costs to system criticality (RPO/RTO). Relative costs vs. Absolute costs wherever possible. Suggest chargeback to Bus etc.
8. Align DR investment with other IT budgets. Try and link the technologies used in providing DR services to other areas of IT ‘spend’. EG Data centre consolidation, server consolidation (virtualisation), and utilising DR infrastructure for development or test purposes.

Just saw earlier today, amidst a rain downpour in Sydney, a courier from a well known tape media offsite storage firm drop his case of tapes on the foot path, hurriedly shove them back in the case and pop them in the truck!!

Hope that organisation has a reliable 2nd tier backup.

I refer to the article Data backup vs. data archiving: Is data backup closing the gap? published on TechTarget's SearchDataBackup.com by Ron Scruggs.

I am amazed that still, after almost 60 years of data storage and backup on electro-magnetic media, people are still confused as to what a "Backup" is and what an "Archive" is. Before I pass on my very simple explanation let me just say that the article by Scruggs is relevant for those wanting to understand the 'vendor-speak' around backup and archive. It is focused on the differences between vendor's individual 'backup' and 'archive' products...but as I am sure you all know vendors are sometimes given to bluring lines, and likewise drawing strict demarcation lines, between technologies and technical practices where they ought not really exist (practically speaking)!

Ok, are you ready...this is the difference between a 'Backup' and an 'Archive'...drum roll:

A backup is a copy of a primary source of data, whereas an archive is an immutable primary source of data

Did you get it?

You see, people and organisations create data for all sorts of reasons. Think about your own 'personal data space'. You own note pads, photo albums, Foxtel IQ, white boards, phone directories, property deeds, etc, etc. Each of these pieces of data has characteristics you assign to it...hopefully you are getting the picture here...a photo album is an archive (i.e you would not wish to have the data contained therein changed in the future...unfortunately for some that is problem!), whereas a  phone directory is 'live data' (i.e it is suspectible to change...your friend may move house and get a new phone number...or you might even make a new friend heaven forbid). You would like to protect both forms of data I would assume?

You'll notice that another dynamic is entering the discussion here...archives need to be backed up...that discussion is for another time. Suffice it to say here that most IT departments have backup of 'live data' on their lists of "expected duties" and by-in-large the task is well understood. The decision to 'archive' data is generally not in the hands of IT departments; it should be treated as a business governance and workflow issue. Firm that understand DMS (Document Management Systems) probably already know this, for others out there please don't let vendors hoodwink you into buying a backup product simply because it archives nor an archive product simply because it backs up data too.

Consider the role of the humble 'archive bit', a file attribute common to most all file systems in existence. This switch indicated whether a file's contents have changed and thus whether a backup product should make another copy of that file. If the file had not changed, then the Archive Bit is turned off. If you (or your business stakeholders) are happy for that bit to forced to 'off' (i.e the file cannot be changed) then it ought to live in an archive and hence attract different consideration to you 'live data'.