Entries categorized under “Continuous Data Protection”

One aspect of data protection that enterprises often overlook is the types of servers and the number of them that they do NOT backup. Enterprises are pretty conscientious about protecting business and mission critical applications (physical or virtual.) It is the rest of their production physical and virtual machines (VMs) which often go unprotected due to the reluctance of organizations to invest in software to back them up. Idera Server Backup 5.0's new licensing model that drives per VM backup costs down to as low as $15 per VM removes these concerns and frees organizations to cost-effectively extend data protection to all of their production servers. (read more)

In the last few years, Quest Software has acquired a number of companies in the data protection space - most notably Vizioncore, with its vRanger product, and BakBone Software, with its NetVault line of products. However, these acquisitions raise questions like: "Where is Quest Software going with these different products lines?"; "What will they look like?"; and, "What level of integration does Quest plan to deliver?" In the final part of my interview series with Quest's Senior VP of Data Protection, Walter Angerer, he answers the questions that are on the minds of many. (read more)

Ever since continuous data protection (CDP) was introduced nearly a decade ago, it has largely been a technology looking for a problem to solve. However in the last few years it is finding a home in the most unlikely of places - social media websites. But maybe what is most interesting is that little known R1Soft CDP has emerged as the early and widely recognized leader in this space. (read more)

"Yeah, we do that." That's the response many software providers of storage virtualization give when asked if they can offer a specific storage function. But that "Can do" attitude reveals the heart of the problem of these providers: they end up acquiring a "jack of all trades, master of none" reputation. Today FalconStor Software still answers, "Yeah, we do that," but now provides a more well articulated service-oriented data protection story to complement its storage solutions. (read more)

A couple of weeks ago I was getting a briefing on Atempo Live Navigator regarding its deduplication and near-CDP features that are specifically targeted for desktops, laptops and file servers. But since that conversation, it struck me that CDP and near-CDP technologies have been around for years which got me to thinking. Why is it that traditional approaches to backup persist even as arguably better approaches to data protection such as CDP and near-CDP struggle to get traction? (read more)

Having come out of the data center and spent many years now as an analyst, it is difficult for me to get overly excited about any new storage technologies that I see at Storage Networking World (SNW.) While these technologies are most certainly "cool," in the stoic world of storage the odds of them going "hot" are often slim. But at this Spring 2011 SNW, the Nimbus Data Systems S-class and HP Data Protector Instant Recovery look to have above average chances of breaking through. (read more)

Few things in the IT industry are truly both push button and fully featured. This adage is so engrained in the community that when a product line breaks that axiom it defies belief. Cofio's AIMstor is designed to do just that. (read more)

Does anyone find it somewhat ironic that backup software providers are spending more time and effort to make sure that the backup and recovery of both physical and virtual machines (VMs) take no time? This is being driven by enterprises who increasingly expect application backups and recoveries to occur without waiting. So to better meet these rising expectations, Symantec NetBackup™ 7.1 got cozier with Symantec's NetBackup RealTime software to provide the near real time backup and recovery functionality that enterprises increasingly want. (read more)

Sometimes it is difficult to put a price tag on "peace of mind" especially as it relates to having the confidence that application data can be recovered regardless of the scope of the disaster. But today more IT administrators are finding that elusive peace of mind. One such individual is Bill Ellis, the IT Infrastructure Manager for the Rug Doctor, Inc., whose confidence in his ability to recover data got a huge boost after testing and implementing the FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP) solution. (read more)

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are rapidly moving towards virtualizing their physical servers using VMware. But as they do so, they are also looking to minimize the cost, complexity and overhead that the backup of VMware servers introduces while increasing their ability to recover their newly virtualized applications. It is these concerns that InMage's new vContinuum software addresses by using a new technique to tap into VMware that provides near zero impact backups with near real time recoveries. (read more)

To say that FalconStor has had some struggles over the past few weeks would probably be a bit of an understatement. Any time that a company's CEO abruptly resigns with "certain improper payments" cited as the reason for his departure, it can leave a company floundering and seeking direction. However having had an opportunity to chat with FalconStor's new CEO, Jim McNeil, at SNW over dinner this past week, he is already helping FalconStor move past the CEO's departure and regroup and refocus under his leadership. (read more)

Over the years storage virtualization solutions have frequently been adapted (CDP, NAS, VTL, etc.) to function in specific ways but until now it really has not been viewed as the perfect fit for any specific application. But now thanks to the rapidly growing adoption of desktop virtualization technologies such as VMware View in organizations, storage virtualization may have finally found its perfect match. (read more)

One of the privileges I get in being contracted to do blogging is that I get to speak to customers to which others rarely get access. One set of customers that I frequently speak with are managed service providers (MSPs) and discuss with them what technologies that they are having success with in their data centers. So this is why I can say with a high degree of certainty that continuous data protection (CDP) is taking over within their data centers and is shaping up to have a high impact as enterprise organizations look to move their applications and application data into the cloud. (read more)

Last week I took a look at the first three factors to consider when choosing a replication software product. This week I wanted to finish my thoughts around that subject and discuss the final four factors that should be part of any evaluation of replication software. (read more)

One of the principle struggles within organizations in the first decade of the new millennium has been solving Windows backup issues. Now that a new decade has arrived the problem has changed as organizations turn their attention to how they can recover their Windows application servers in a time frame and manner that meets their requirements. But to identify such a solution they first need to define what such a recovery solution should look like. (read more)

This has been a bit of a quiet week in terms of blog entries on the DCIG website but I did not want to leave everyone hanging on the Friday before going into the Memorial Day weekend. So for this week's recap blog I opted to reflect on a conversation that I had with Hosting.com's Backup Operations Manager a few weeks ago. In that conversation, he provided some interesting perspectives in terms of how Hosting.com is using R1Soft in its environment. (read more)

One of the key concerns that businesses have is how providers of the cloud will handle and respond to spikes in application demands. It is these questions that InMage's newly announced cloud-optimized infrastructure is designed to answer. (read more)

In this day and age, what organization doesn't want a turnkey disaster recovery and business continuity plan? In fact, a recent 2010 InformationWeek survey published in the February 1, 2010, issue of InformationWeek revealed that 36% of organizations have implemented and regularly test disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plans versus only 28% the year before. (read more)

These days it seems that all someone has to do is use the word "deduplication" in conjunction with a data protection product and that data protection product magically looks "better". But what organizations have to be careful to do is not allow deduplication to color their view of what they hope to accomplish with the implementation of disk-based data protection. Rather organizations need to look at data protection from a different viewpoint that it is not tainted by deduplication and allows them to fully leverage the flexibility that disk-based backup provides. (read more)

There is a perception among enterprise organizations that in order to deploy continuous data protection (CDP) technology, they also need to use high performance disk in conjunction with it. But enterprises probably should re-assess that assumption. The emergence of new and better CDP architectures such as what InMage offers enables organizations to deliver high speed CDP while using slower performing SATA disk drives. (read more)

Here is what determines how much storage a CDP product needs. CDP initially needs an allotment of storage capacity that is equal to the size of the volume on which the data resides that is being protected. This is needed so the CDP product can make a copy of all of the blocks on the production volume. However, the wild cards in how much storage the CDP product requires are based not the size of the production volume but two other variables. (read more)

The introduction of disk and deduplication into the backup process over the last few years has certainly helped to minimize existing backup problems. Organizations using these technologies have found that their backup success rates now approach 100% and that they no longer have to continually troubleshoot backup problems. But while these technologies may fix existing backup problems, they relegate disk to a glorified form of tape and do not serve to fundamentally transform the recovery process. (read more)

Small, mid-sized and large enterprises are not the only ones looking to consolidate and simplify their IT management to create more cohesive management solutions. In the last few years, Symantec has been taking many of the same steps to integrate components of its Backup Exec, Enterprise Vault and NetBackup product suites to deliver solutions appropriate for the different size organizations that it serves. The progress that it has made in delivering on these ideals is reflected in today's Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup 7 product releases. (read more)

Right now on Yahoo finance it is counting down what it considers the top 10 tech trends for 2010. However some of the trends that it is including in its top 10 are so broad in their definition that when it lists 'Data Centers' as its #2 trend and then identifies nearly every technology company in the space as being part of this trend, you have to question just how real this trend is? The list of what I consider the more subtle storage trends of 2010 will be a bit more specific in terms of what features, products, services and/or vendor alliances are taking place that support these theories. (read more)

Small enterprises want to make technology changes but can't afford it. Large enterprises can afford to make technology changes but won't. That leaves it to midsized enterprises that are seeing the benefits, have the resources and are making the changes that are resulting in them emerging as the new IT leaders in 2010. This in a nutshell summarizes the 83-page 2010 State of the Data Center report just released by Symantec. (read more)