Entries categorized under “Data Management”

In my many conversations with backup software vendors, I definitely get the sense that if they hear how great disk-based deduplication appliances are one more time, they will explode. Of course, part of the reason that deduplication appliances are getting under their skin while winning the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of many end-users is for one simple reason: turnkey deployments. But that option of turning primarily to disk-based backup providers for deduplication starts to change as today's joint announcement from Dell and CommVault makes plain. By bundling the CommVault® Simpana® software suite with the Dell PowerVault DL2000, companies can now purchase a single solution and get everything they need to protect their environment - data protection software, file deduplication and storage capacity. (read more)

No matter where one works anymore (public or private sector), the line between what data organizations should keep classified and what data they should expose or make public is becoming more convoluted. Laws like the Freedom of Information Act coupled with recent changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) are forcing organizations to re-evaluate their data management practices so they can differentiate between what data they should keep private versus what data they should expose or make available to comply with these acts. However to meet the specifications of these laws requires data management software that easily gives companies the flexibility to access and manipulate their data to meet these new requirements. (read more)

The reliance that organizations have upon electronically stored information (ESI) is phenomenal. Not only is ESI the life-giving blood that courses through corporations, ESI is becoming more important in safeguarding and reducing risk as organizations deal with increased litigation. eDiscovery is the process of searching, locating, and securing ESI that is used as evidence in litigation. Any company not complying with a request to perform eDiscovery can incur costly and potentially disastrous side effects. (read more)

That is what puts today's announcement from CommVault® Systems that it is now a member of The Green Grid in some perspective. From a simplistic perspective, there is no reason for a software company to necessarily promote "Green" hardware because it sells zero hardware. However by taking the initiative to join The Green Grid, it provides further evidence that companies are starting to take more variables into account when measuring "Green" and that the trend towards green computing is more than just buying the newest hardware. (read more)

There are many reasons why a company or individual may switch from one backup software product to another. Sometimes there is a need for the backup software to integrate with specific applications like Microsoft Exchange or Oracle. Sometimes it is because their environment has outgrown their backup software and they need a more robust backup software package. And then sometimes it is a combination of all of these factors such that switching to new backup software not only improves the success of the backups, it improves the individual's quality of life. (read more)

Every year at every trade show, it always seems some vendor comes up with some gimmick or give-away that captures every one's fancy. A couple of years ago, flashing blue pens were all the rage - as I recall it was 3PAR who started that craze. Click a button, it flashed blue; click it again, it flashed faster; click it a third time and it thinly provisioned blue ink (I'm kidding about the thinly provisioned part). At another conference, another vendor made it a point to give away the most offensive orange colored T-shirts that I have ever seen to everyone at the conference in the hopes that everyone would remember their company. Well, I remember the T-shirt but obviously their strategy backfired because both the company and the T-shirt shared the same fate. (read more)

The State of Texas recently passed H.B. No. 2833 stating you must hold a license as a security services contractor if you "engage in business activity in which a license is required." The law then outlines that a company acts as an "Investigations Company" under Section 1702.104, (4) (b) "...includes information obtained or furnished through the review and analysis of, and the investigation into the content of, computer-based data not available to the public." Investigation is a key word in the statute and appears to be broadly defined and it has lead to confusion and controversy. (read more)

There is a growing perception among those who are intimately involved with information management that the discipline of information management is changing. The fact that it is changing comes as no surprise to anyone as everyone knows that a change has to occur. The question is, "Is this just an evolutionary change or is a paradigm shift in information management about to occur?" (read more)

Hard-disk drive storage is taking center stage as the preferred media for enterprise archiving, data protection and information recovery needs. But as the shift to using disk for long term data storage needs occurs, companies are coming to realize that the software that they have relied on for years is, in many instances, poorly equipped to deal with the management of hard-disks as part of their larger data management scheme. Optimizing the placement of data on hard-disks, replicating data to disk storage systems at different sites and then recovering the data are new challenges that companies face as they introduce larger capacity hard-disks into their environment. (read more)

Storage resource management (SRM) software is probably one of the more "on again, off again" storage technologies that I cover. In the many years I have been intimately involved with and covering storage, no one (standards boards, analyst firm, or vendor) has yet arrived at a definition of SRM that everyone agrees upon. If anything, this lack of an industry standard has done more to hurt the adoption of SRM software by end-users since it can leave users confused as what they are actually going to get from SRM; if and when they actually go to purchase it. (read more)

One of my favorite shows to watch is nightly reruns of Jim Cramer's Mad Money on CNBC. Aside from his crazy antics and "They Know Nothing" sound effect, he provides some good laughs just before I call it a night. Part of the reason that I find him so entertaining is that he is not necessarily in a position where he has to be politically correct - though some might argue he no longer has to be a good stock picker either, but that's a topic for another day. (read more)

One of the toughest aspects of being a storage administrator is finding reliable information that one can use to make decisions about competitive storage hardware or software products, especially when it comes to making decisions about newer technologies like Single Instance Storage (SIS). Even when data does become available, it is often too generic or not applicable to their situation so the individual is left in the position of either trusting the vendor's literature or doing some level of testing. In the case of Blessing Hospital's Technical Support Analyst II, Doug Barry, he opted for the latter. (read more)

Ms. DeNovio tells me that it is not uncommon for enterprise companies to have one or more Oracle DBAs dedicated to creating and managing RMAN scripts. Part of the reason this turns into a time consuming task is that as Oracle releases new versions of its database, the RMAN scripts need to be modified to include the new and improved RMAN features. (read more)

The last enterprise company at which I worked used at least five different products to do backup and there may have been more. This amalgamation of backup products occurred over a period of years and mostly by happenstance. Acquisitions of and mergers with other companies; internal consolidations; specific backup requirements for certain applications; and, as often as not, the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing, contributed to the company ending up with a menagerie of backup products to manage. (read more)

CommVault took an important step in differentiating how CommVault Simpana protects Oracle databases from other backup and software products. Though the Simpana suite also supports multiplexing, the underlying Simpana architecture works more efficiently to handle data and avoid the need to multiplex at all - and still keep the tape devices spinning as fast as possible. (read more)

This situation peaked my interest because it was an email archiving product for gmail. Specifically, the application is an end user archiving product called g-archiver. The product works by accessing a users gmail.com mailbox account and copying all their email to a local device. In order to copy the email from gmail.com the product requires that a user input their username and password. (Note: Here is the URL to download the product - www.brothersoft.com/g-archiver-58027.html) (read more)

Randy: We learned that CommVault hit a strategic area for Microsoft back in 1998 - heterogeneous data management. Simply put, Microsoft didn't like UNIX managing its data. Making matters exponentially easier was the fact that I worked for years with a key decision maker and visionary at Microsoft in charge of all Windows products, Jim Allchin. We sat down, discussed where CommVault could go, what Microsoft could benefit from and, a few months later, Microsoft became a significant equity investor in CommVault. (read more)

The challenge that APTARE faces, however, is the same challenge that every other SRM vendor faces. Keep SRM software relevant in the face of declining storage capacity prices. This factor alone often makes it far too easy for companies to throw more storage capacity at the problem as opposed to trying to monitor and proactively manage it. Regardless of whether or not APTARE has the right architecture, they need to help break users of their storage consumption habit (read more)

Randy: I hope the first thing that customers will appreciate is that CommVault® Systems and Microsoft are speaking the same language, one that enhances and embraces the Microsoft operating system and applications. After that, I hope they realize our development teams are in close communication which is a key reason why CommVault is so often a launch partner for major Microsoft releases - like Windows 2000, Server 2003, Server 2008, 64-bit computing, Exchange 2000, 2003 and Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint, and so forth. We get involved with their early adopters and often it is their early adopters who give us suggestions for our solutions. (read more)

Can APTARE's StorageConsole remain relevant in 2008 and beyond? That was a question that weighed on my mind as I met with Rick Clark, APTARE's President and CEO, a couple of weeks ago. The purpose of the briefing: receive an update on what steps APTARE is taking to keep its StorageConsole 6.5 product alive and growing as the data protection space evolves. Of course, the particular challenge that StorageConsole needs to address now and in the coming years is managing the growing use of disk in data protection and start to wean itself off of managing tape-based backup. (read more)

Randy: Microsoft introduced and endorsed the CommVault/Sun partnership for the key reasons they chose to partner with CommVault back in 1999. CommVault utilizes Windows and other Microsoft technologies as the platform to provide heterogeneous data management with key granular management of Exchange and SharePoint. CommVault learned many years ago how critical it was to offer granularity for the recovery and management of items like Exchange messages, SharePoint items and Active Directory objects/attributes. We used that early granular management foundation as a base for enabling today's content specific search capability. (read more)

Steven: The global storage market is currently a $45 billion a year industry and it is anticipated to grow to $50 billion a year by 2010 with archived storage forecast to increase from $9 billion in 2007 to $23 billion in 2010. Of the data that is currently stored to disk, 80% of that data is fixed content data that is rarely accessed and can be preserved in archives. We offer companies a third tier of storage that looks and acts like disk, has the properties of tape, and uses policy based software to manage data retention and compliance. Companies are looking very closely at the benefits of the technology. Plasmon archive solutions with UDO meet long term retention requirements at a cost businesses need. (read more)

When a specific product receives recognition or an award from an independent third party, it is always a cause for celebration. Both NEC's HYDRAstor and CommVault's Galaxy received Storage magazine and searchstorage.com's Gold award in their respective 2007 Product of the Year "Backup and Disaster Recovery Hardware" and "Backup and Disaster Recovery Software" categories. However it was much more than a "win" for either of these a products; rather it was a validation of years of research and hard work to deliver products that met the tactical needs of today's businesses and are also designed to meet their more strategic needs of backup and disaster recovery going forward. (read more)

Right now we are at the inflection point in companies where archiving is a board room issue and companies are looking for cost-effective means to keep their data accessible and secure. While there is software out there that does archiving, Plasmon offers a solution that archives and manages long term retention of data via policy. So if you want to make an archive environment look and act like disk but have tape's lower acquisition, power costs and longevity, you would end up with the unique capabilities found in Plasmon UDO (Ultra Density Optical) archive solutions. (read more)

The list of enterprise data management software that can be sold to work with any type of storage hardware is very short. Yes, Symantec is on the list but many channel organizations report dissatisfaction with their overall relationship with Symantec: it's a reputation that persists regardless of whether or not it is deserved. So while resellers and users may wish they could stay with Symantec, they crave a new choice in data management software that is built around a suite of products rather than a portfolio of point products. In this software void CommVault's Simpana® software suite has emerged as a viable option. (read more)