Entries categorized under “Online Backup”

It can sound so easy to back up to the cloud. Just plug in a backup appliance and it does all of the work. While there is an element of truth to that, there are certain steps organizations should take to ensure they are getting the results they expect when implementing a backup appliance that backs up to the cloud. In this third and final segment of my interview series with STORServer's Jarrett Potts, we discuss best practices for backing up to the cloud and recommend some steps that organizations should take to maximize backup and recovery times while minimizing costs. (read more)

A reality check is going on in enterprises when it comes to cloud backup. While the vast majority recognize its value and are aggressively adopting it at many levels, the intangible issues of recovery and support tend to rear their head and preclude these enterprises from to date adopting a core cloud offering: cloud backup. It is these concerns that IBM and Symantec are teaming up to tackle so that enterprises may confidently do more than backup to the cloud - they can recover their data once it is in the cloud with a process that is supported end-to-end. (read more)

Just because a backup appliance can back up and recover data to the cloud does not mean they all do so equally well. Further complicating the decision process, some companies back up to their own private cloud while others opt to back up and recover from public clouds. In this second part of my interview series with STORServer's Jarrett Potts, we examine how backup to public and private clouds differ and what features a backup appliance needs to offer to meet these different requirements. (read more)

Ready or not, here comes the cloud and, for many organizations, backup to the cloud is squarely in their sights. However backup to the cloud does not mean they should abandon the best of what today's localized backup processes have to offer. By instead taking a hybrid approach to cloud backup such as what Western Digital (WD®) offers, they can get on a secure path to storing data in the cloud without breaking either their backup processes or their budget. (read more)

DCIG is pleased to announce the availability of its inaugural 160+ page DCIG 2012 Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide that weights, scores and ranks over 80 features on more than 60 different backup appliances from 13 different storage providers. This Buyer's Guide addresses the growing demand that organizations of all sizes have for purpose built backup appliances that are specifically designed and tuned to protect consolidated physical and virtual IT infrastructures. (read more)

Many small and midsized businesses (SMBs) are starting down the path of evaluating which cloud-based backup solution to use to meet their data protection needs. As they do, they may look at their total amount of data in their business and compare it to what they have at home and may even find they have roughly the same amount of data in each location. So they ask, "What type of cloud backup solution do I need?" and "Could I possibly use a consumer-focused cloud backup offering for my business?" (read more)

Multiple interfaces, multiple products, and multiple systems to learn and become an "expert" in each one - such is the life of a backup administrator. Every administrator has at times longed for the day when he or she might be able to manage all of their backups and recovery operations, as well as virtual machine and replication snapshots, from a single, integrated interface. That day may be coming sooner than you think. (read more)

The differences between small, midsize and large organizations may be many but when it comes to backup, they all seem to share one thing in common: a desire to speed up and simplify their backups. The challenge is that for each of these organizations to accomplish this they need to take different paths to do so. This universal desire for better ways to do backup was the impetus behind many of enhancements found in today's announcements of Symantec Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup 7.5. (read more)

Using the "cloud" for backup is the primary context in which people think about the cloud when asked about it. Yet if forced to list what features an "enterprise cloud-based backup provider" offers, it is questionable if one could do so. So as DCIG prepares to release its inaugural Buyer's Guide in 2012 on Enterprise Cloud-based Backup products, one of its first tasks was to define what constitutes an "enterprise cloud-based backup" offering. (read more)

"The Cloud" is used in many contexts today though organizations most often associate it with "backup, business continuity, disaster recovery and archiving," in that order. This puts the onus on organizations to select a solution that does more than just "backup" and which is why they should look for cloud service providers (CSPs) that use CommVault® Simpana® software to meet these emerging cloud-based expectations. (read more)

Last week's blog took a look at the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. This week I wanted to step even further back and reflect upon the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 regardless of when they were written as I find this insightful in two ways. It lets me know what information continues to hold the attention of readers on as well as what topics from the past might become new trends in 2010. So while there is definitely some overlap between the two, there are also some entries that appear on this list that knock some of the top 10 blogs from last week off the list. (read more)

This is one of my favorite blogs of the year to write. Even though this is only the second time since DCIG launched its blogging site two years ago that I have had the opportunity to write a blog in this format, I have been looking forward to looking back all year. In case you have not yet figured it out, today I take a look back at the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 on the DCIG site. However this year I am doing a two part series with today's blog examining the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. (read more)

Yesterday and today I am attending the Bare Metal Data Conference in Nashville, TN, which is a small gathering by all accounts (50 attendees). But what I enjoy about this conference is that it is a gathering of a select group of records management providers that provide paper and tape storage along with online backup services to their clients. The invaluable insight that I glean from this conference is a reality check as to the current state of tape. This time it revealed something new: Tape is still doing just fine but for the first time I am detecting genuine concern among the attendees about tape's future. (read more)

Every week I talk to a lot of people within the storage industry - end users, other analysts, resellers, public relations, CEOs, storage engineers, etc. While none of the news I pick up is necessarily enough to substantiate a blog on its own, when aggregated it becomes interesting and noteworthy. In fact, I was talking to Don Jennings at Lois Paul and Partners (LPP) about this yesterday and he suggested that I weekly post a blog that recaps what I hear and do on a weekly basis. Since Friday's are typically a slow day during the summer months and anyone who is anyone is always looking to cut out a little early on Fridays anyway, I thought I'd give everyone a reason to check out the DCIG website before they do. (read more)

Data protection is a ubiquitous need that cuts across all size organizations and has resulted in dozens of products with specific features to address these needs. In fact, one can easily wonder why any vendor even thinks it stands a chance to compete by coming to market with new backup software. But still they do and part of the reason is that backup problems still persist; so much so that backup redesign has topped the list among end-users for three (3) years running as they struggle to meet new backup requirements. (read more)

Enterprise data protection software is experiencing a fundamental shift in terms of what organizations expect it to deliver and the amount of distributed structured and unstructured data that it needs to protect. As recently as a few years ago, the expectations of enterprise organizations were relatively modest - support for most major operating systems, integration with major applications (MS Exchange, Oracle, etc.) and tape library support - as compared to today's standards. While some of those requirements still hold true today, more has changed than has stayed the same. This is putting a great deal of pressure on data protection products to swiftly evolve. (read more)

Most businesses small and large have many IT needs but one that they continue to focus on as they move into a completely paperless world is data protection and, more specifically, data recovery. They know their current in-house backup and recovery processes are often less than adequate so when they ask hard questions like, "How long can I afford to be without my data?" and "What does losing that data mean to the company and the company's public reputation?", they don't like the answers. But what IT managers are surprised to learn as they look to move to a SaaS offering based on a cloud-based computing architecture for their backup and recovery services, they find there are many options from which to choose. (read more)

Right now the economy may be sick but if the recent results of Symantec's annual State of the Data Center survey are any indication, enterprise IT budgets look surprisingly healthy for 2009. 84% of enterprise companies with 5,000 or more employees responded that they plan to keep their current IT budgets intact and a full 50% plan to increase them to 2009. Adding to the validity of the report, Symantec's research was performed by a third party firm (Applied Research) that spoke to1600 enterprise companies (5000 employees or more) in 21 countries. (read more)

To say that organizations are approaching 2009 with more than just a little apprehension would be an understatement. Scandals are rocking the financial markets on an almost daily basis. There is the looming threat of new legislation in 2009 which will make it more expensive to conduct business going forward. And, in the US, nearly 700,000 individuals in the private sector lost jobs in the month of December alone - Yikes! That leaves those left in organizations trying to figure out new ways to deliver the same amount of value and services with less money and people and nothing is more clearly in the sights of businesses than lowering their IT costs and keeping them under control. (read more)

However as the number of MSPs proliferate, the decision about which MSP to dial up gets harder, not easier, since more and more VARs are jumping on the SaaS bandwagon to offer Managed Backup Services. Further, companies need to quantify their own needs and expectations as they select an MSP. Below are some examples of questions that they need to ask and answer internally and externally before making this important decision. (read more)

Any storage architect or administrator that has ever dared to accept the challenge of engineering or re-designing their company's backup and recovery environment has undoubtedly discovered that he or she has had to sacrifice functionality or features based on the practical limits of their budget. Reasons for this vary from vendor to vendor, but mostly it comes down to how many backup and recovery software options are they willing to pay for? Most vendors offer reasonably good licensing for the core software, but once you step outside of that realm, some of the most basics features are not included. (read more)

Anyone who works as an end-user is continually confronted with crafting SLAs for various infrastructure components. Aggravating the situation, once SLAs are signed-off on, it is nearly impossible to make changes without completely rocking the boat so it is extremely important to get it right from day one. (read more)

When server and storage managers out there hear the "A-Word" (Agents) come up in a conversation with a software vendor, they typically cringe, and think to themselves, "Oh great, another set of agents that I have to not only deploy but that I have to manage and track." In the server world, some agents are unavoidable, like performance/security monitoring, virus and worm detection and prevention etc. (read more)

Knowing how long to keep copies of production data in backup repositories is a problem that companies only give scant attention to now. When companies back up production data to tape, they tend to only invest minimal time and effort managing the data after it is backed up. The backup data remains on the tape until the data is overwritten during the next backup job; or the tape, and data on it, is simply discarded when the tape wears out. Besides, taking a more proactive approach to managing backup data on tape is time consuming, difficult to implement and has, to date, shown minimal return on investment (ROI). (read more)

Backup to disk is fundamentally changing corporate perceptions about backup and recovery. Using disk as a primary backup target has solved long-standing corporate backup problems including successfully completing backups within designated backup windows and expediting recoveries while deduplication is resolving the cost and capacity issues associated with storing backup data on disk. But before companies breathe a collective sigh of relief and think that disk has officially solved their backup problems, they need to think again. The immediate crisis may be over but longer term problems still remain. (read more)