Entries categorized under “Data Protection”

Continuing (dare I say exploding?) data growth in small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) is forcing these size organizations to confront an issue that was primarily confined to larger organizations: data archiving. Chief among these issues, the question as to what media to store archival data on is one that needs to be answered. While many may assume that tape is best positioned to assume this role, there is a growing body of evidence that disk may be the most appropriate media for SMEs to use when archiving their data. (read more)

The idea that a company - any company - can just "plug-in" a backup solution into their virtual environment and expect it to work sounds far-fetched to any IT administrator accustomed to setting up and configuring backup software. But as more companies move from measuring their IT administrators by how effectively they setup new software to how effectively they manage their virtual machines (VMs), backup solutions by necessity are shifting to 'plug-n-play.' As that transition occurs, Symantec's Backup Exec 3600 exemplifies what enterprises should expect from this emerging class of 'plug-n-play' backup solutions. (read more)

Yesterday I had the opportunity to join Wikibon's Dave Vellante, VMware's Director of IT Technical Operations, Drew Kramer, and ICI's President Brad Maltz at VMworld 2011 as part of a four person panel discussing some of the challenges and trends associated with VMware backup. (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)

Buried in IBM's Q4 2010 earnings report were two factoids that reveal the key role that the mainframe continues to play in enterprise environments today - IBM reported a 58% increase in MIPs growth and a 69% increase in mainframe sales. These increases clearly signal that the mainframe is alive and well but it also means that the mainframe continues to generate data that needs to be accessed, protected, stored and recovered in ways unique to the mainframe. It is these specific needs that EMC's new Disk Library for the mainframe, the DLm6000, addresses even as it puts the squeeze on the use of tape in mainframe environments. (read more)

Over the past 15 or so months DCIG has released a multitude of Buyer's Guides on topics ranging from Midrange Arrays to Virtual Server Backup Software to Small Enterprise Storage Arrays to Midrange Array Snapshot Software. As DCIG has done so, it has learned a great deal about what it has done right and areas where it can improve. But the general feedback is that the Buyer's Guides provide users valuable insight into different technologies and help them understand the market landscape. So today DCIG is announcing the topics for its Buyer's Guides that it plans to release for the remainder of 2011 and the first half of 2012. (read more)

This weekend I was at the Minnesota State Soccer tournament that my 15 year old son was playing in and inspiration for this article presented itself. It was a hot day (114F heat index) and people were downing Gatorade and water by the gallon which also meant many many trips to the porta-potty in response. (read more)

As DCIG and SMB Research put together the DCIG 2011 Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide, we became aware that Arkeia was up to something special with its deduplication technology. Arkeia had in late 2009 acquired Kadena and was in the process of absorbing and incorporating its technology into its core Arkeia Network Backup solution. Now that the release of Arkeia v9 is official, it takes the best of what deduplication has to offer and makes it better in the form of Progressive Deduplication™ technology. (read more)

You may be wondering what a backup website, a WAN optimization technology and a blog entry have in common. Under normal conditions, probably nothing. But on a rather slow news week and me finally being in the office for more than two consecutive weeks in about 3 months, I finally had a chance to catch up with both Quantum and a new company called Infineta regarding some recent announcements from both of these companies. (read more)

When companies discuss their backup strategy, disk and tape are almost always part of that conversation. But in a recent interview that I did with Matt Jorgensen, the system administrator at Neumont University, we did more than talk about how the value of the Overland Storage's SnapServer N2000 and NEO 2000e in its backup strategy. We also discussed the critical role that the SnapServer N2000 plays in supporting the two different backup products in Neumont's environment. (read more)

It is no secret that virtualization is changing everything about how organizations think about and manage their data centers. But perhaps one of the more dramatic changes in thinking that still needs to take place is in how they should approach disaster recovery (DR). The odds of this shift in thinking occurring sooner rather than later just got a boost as a result of the announcement of a new replication software solution from a new company called Zerto that emerged from stealth mode this week. (read more)

Backup redesign continues to be one of the hottest topics among end users for three years running with blog entries on that topic on DCIG's website consistently being among the most read. The problem is that many backup redesign offerings turn out to be just a rehash of the way backup has always been done which is inadequate when it comes to protecting growing virtual server environments. (read more)

Desktop and laptop protection has been at most a blip on the radar screen of IT priorities. But with these devices increasingly being used to store more critical enterprise data, organizations are putting new emphasis on backing up data stored on these devices for reasons ranging from increasing productivity to corporate compliance and data security all the way to business intelligence. (read more)

The introduction of the vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) VMware vSphere 4 contributed to making virtual machine (VM) backups easier to accomplish. But vendors are just starting to tap into VADP's restore capabilities. Evidence that is beginning to occur appeared again a couple of weeks ago when EMC announced the ability for Avamar 6.0 to do faster VM recoveries as well as better leverage Avamar's integrated file system to do file level restores from VM image-based backups. (read more)

As part of his opening remarks during his keynote on Tuesday morning, Symantec's CEO Enrique Salem shared a comment that was made to him by a Symantec user, "We are in the middle of a time of profound meaningful change." Truer words were never spoken as enterprises of all sizes are facing a broad spectrum of technology changes that are unequaled in this modern era of computing. (read more)

In the past few weeks I have probably heard the phrase "instant gratification" uttered more times than I care to admit. But what is more interesting is that I have heard that phrase used more frequently in the context of deploying and supporting applications like backup software in enterprise environments. (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)

The "cloud" appears to be the future of backup but that has not eliminated the need for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) or enterprises to perform fast, local recoveries for business critical applications. If anything, backing up to the cloud has put new pressure on some organizations to put this type of solution in place as recovering the data for these applications from the cloud can take hours or even days to complete. Those in this situation should then appreciate yesterday's newly announced ability of Symantec System Recovery to transform a USB device into a bootable Symantec System Recovery Disk device. (read more)

Over the last few months I have been talking to a number of end-users about their implementations of deduplication technology. In the process of doing so, they have provided me with valuable insight into how they are implementing deduplication when using disk-based targets that deduplicate data. Based upon that feedback it appears that most are adhering to the following five guidelines as they implement deduplication in their environments. (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)

Every backup software provider emphasizes support for virtual machine backup so it is no surprise that enhanced support for VMware backup and recovery is a major focus in today's Symantec NetBackup 7.1 release. But as anyone acquainted with virtual machine backup knows, the differences between just "supporting" virtual machine backup and supporting it well can be substantial. It is in this area Symantec NetBackup 7.1 differentiates itself. (read more)

One of the more interesting but overlooked tidbits of information that came out of EMC's "Mega" event on January 18, 2011, was EMC's new support for the IBM i backup to EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems. While that might seem insignificant when compared to some of the other news that EMC announced that day, it means something to the hundreds of thousands of IBM i users looking for a better, faster way to back up their data. But what they may not know and will be encouraged to find out is that the IBM i and deduplication are literally made for one other. (read more)

Right here, right now, it's time to state what may sound preposterous to some and obvious to others. Disk has officially forever replaced tape as the primary target for backup software. But the reasons for this go much deeper than disk just now being cheaper, faster and easier to manage than tape. (read more)

When DCIG released its first ever Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide in December 2010, it created some controversy when it became public that CommVault® Simpana® had achieved the highest score and was ranked #1. But just over a month later when another analyst firm Gartner positioned CommVault in its "Leaders" Quadrant for Enterprise Disk-Based Backup/Recovery, the silence was deafening. (read more)