Entries categorized under “Replication”

A single software product that can deliver continuous data protection (CDP), replication and automated application recovery for heterogeneous open system environments is still an anomaly in today's world. Most software that does CDP, replication or application recovery may do one of these functions well but rarely can it do all three well or deliver the breadth of functionality that enterprise IT managers desire. However today's announcement that Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) will co-brand and resell InMage System's Scout as part of its worldwide storage solutions offerings is a tip-off that such a solution exists and is ready for prime time in enterprise midrange shops. (read more)

"We were getting to the point where we had more and more data and less and less time to back it up", says Mike Fishell, Director of Information Technology for Hay House. "And then there were the increasing expenses of doing the backups. Between time, money and storage space, we needed a new solution." (read more)

Recent feedback from InMage Systems' existing customer base indicates that 100% of them use its Scout software for disaster recovery. That probably comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with Scout or its heterogeneous recovery capabilities. But what may come as a surprise to some is that nearly 40% of these existing Scout users are seeing a 200% return on investment (ROI) in Scout because of how it can be used in multiple ways in a company's IT infrastructure. (read more)

The impact of virtualization on the IT Infrastructure has shaken IT at its core. Virtualization is changing the current model of assigning one physical server for each application by effectively consolidating multiple servers onto one piece of server hardware and then optimizing its resources. Despite these benefits, virtualization initiatives can prove challenging. For example, deploying certain components of the IT infrastructure with backup and recovery is one area where there can be unanticipated challenges in the support of virtual infrastructures. (read more)

Most organizations recognize that the introduction of disk into the data protection process is fundamentally changing the landscape of how data is protected. But what organizations are failing to entirely grasp is how disk fundamentally alters how applications can be protected and recovered. Disk can minimize the impact of data protection on production applications while providing shorter recovery times and improving recovery reliability. It is as organizations come to this realization that they also begin to grasp how recovery can displace backup as the next IT headache. (read more)

"We need cheaper and simpler backups and recoveries for our remote and branch offices." That statement is repeated more often by mid-size companies as they seek solutions that take the pain and management overhead associated with backup and recovery out of their remote offices without breaking the budget or requiring heroic efforts to implement. This is exactly the type of scenario that the recently announced DXi2500-D appliance and version 3.0 of Quantum Vision™ Software from Quantum is designed to address. (read more)

Bounce the phrase "consolidated recovery" off of most individuals in IT and you are just as likely to get a blank stare as a good answer as to what it means or how to accomplish it. Most IT staff keeps so busy on a day to day basis just managing their assortment of backup, clustering and replication products that they never get much beyond focusing on the protection and recovery of each application. So for them to contemplate the consolidation of protection and recovery using just one methodology has more than likely not even crossed their minds. (read more)

Deduplication has emerged as "the" quick fix for the myriad of problems associated with enterprise backups. Deduplication enables organizations to shrink backup windows, minimize their reliance on tape, and more easily and cost effectively replicate their backup data to an offsite location. But as deduplication has grown in popularity, so has the number of ways that organizations can chose to implement it in their environment. (read more)

Synchronous replication may be viewed by users as the "Gold' standard when it comes to achieving the highest levels of application availability for business continuity and disaster recovery. But as I previously discussed, using synchronous replication for business continuity and disaster recovery can actually take longer and cost more for organizations to remotely recover applications than if they use asynchronous replication. Now organizations can use asynchronous software like InMage Systems Scout to deliver the same or better results as synchronous replication at a substantially lower cost. (read more)

By now most enterprise backup users have heard about Symantec's new Open Storage (OST) API that was included as part of the Veritas NetBackup 6.5 release in August 2007. However the full benefits of OST are still largely unknown mostly because so few users are taking advantage of them. Now that more systems have added this feature, Symantec recently held a round table discussion during which it shared some of the progress that has occurred around OST with one early adopter on the call sharing a pretty amazing story about the performance gains that he has seen in his production environment using OST. (read more)

Gone are the days when the sole purpose of storage resource management (SRM) software was to report on file ages and sizes, storage utilization and server-to-storage LUN assignments. Those functions are still important but not nearly enough to meet the demands of today's progressive enterprise data centers. These organizations are demanding faster, easier deployments of SRM software that grant them more insight into their increasingly virtualized environments as well as better reporting and management of their replication processes that are becoming so critical in today's data centers. It is this void that APTARE StorageConsole 7.0 seeks to fill. (read more)

Synchronous replication is a technology that organizations often view as synonymous with the highest levels of application availability. In fact, a SearchStorage article entitled WAN Mirroring and Replication written a little over a year ago even makes the assertion that organizations using synchronous replication can achieve recovery point objectives (RPOs) that remain near zero with recovery time objectives (RTOs) typically on the order of minutes. But is this assertion about synchronous replication really true and under what circumstances? And is it possible that asynchronous replication can actually deliver better RPOs and RTOs over a WAN for disaster recovery (DR) than synchronous replication? (read more)

Backup software is, if nothing else, a "Me-Too" space with each vendor adding new features to each release of its product to try to match what its competitors are doing as well as trying to add a few new twists of their own to differentiate themselves from the crowd. Today's CA announcement of ARCserve r12.5 continues this trend. To remain competitive, r12.5 adds data deduplication as a core component of ARCserve, improves users' abilities to recover guest VMs on virtual server operating systems and more tightly integrates ARCserve with popular applications. CA seeks to differentiate ARCserve from competitors with new native SRM reporting capabilities and providing assurance that organizations can restore their deduplicated backup data. (read more)

Back in March I received a call from a records management provider in the upstate New York area who was inquiring, "How do I get started in providing disk-based backup for my current clients?" This records management provider currently only stores paper and tape in his company's facilities but rightly recognizes that there is a growing trend towards disk-based backup and did not want to be left out in the cold. But he was wondering what options were available in the market that he could offer his prospective clients. (read more)

Replication software is increasingly entering the conversation as the logical replacement for backup software in client environments. Yet replicating data is really the easy part. Integrating the replication software so it becomes part of the fabric of a company's infrastructure is a far more difficult task. It is also one of the reasons that replication software has, to date, made so little headway in terms of displacing backup software for enterprise wide data protection. But as replication software matures, that will change. (read more)

In a previous blog, Dr. James Tu, the Information Security Officer at a real estate services company, discussed how he had sought out an affordable and workable enterprise-wide disaster recovery solution from an uneven landscape of replication products and found one that met his needs right under his nose. By turning on a feature in InMage Systems' Profiler which he had previously obtained to measure data change rates on his application servers, he converted it into InMage Systems' fully functioning replication software, Scout. But now he still had to assess how well Scout would fit into his existing infrastructure and then build the business case to justify it. (read more)

The road to recovery is a journey that more organizations are embarking upon as they start to look beyond just successfully backing up their data and instead focus on cost-effectively recovering their business. Yet as organizations begin this journey, they find that that the road to recovery is strewn with obstacles and is neither well-traveled nor well-marked. This was the dilemma that recently confronted Dr. James Tu, the Information Security Officer at a real estate services company, who was seeking to carve out an affordable and workable enterprise-wide disaster recovery solution from an uneven landscape of replication products. (read more)

A little over two years ago, an article appeared on the Smart Computing website that provided some tips for how to select the appropriate backup software for your PC. Of the tips it suggested, one of the more interesting was its recommendation to select backup software that stored data in a native format. Storing data in its native format eliminates the need to use backup software to recover it since any computer can access and recover the data. But this article was written for PCs. So the question that companies now need to ask is, "What do they need to consider before selecting a product that will allow them to store replicated data of its enterprise production servers in its native format?" (read more)

If you happened to attend any recent conferences or trade shows then you know that most of the discussions center on driving costs out of storage environments. In the current yo-yo economy we live in, most IT Directors are looking for new and unique ways to solve their storage dilemma as storage capacity continues to grow. One way enterprise IT organizations are tackling this problem is thru deduplication using a disk-based backup solution. Though this is definitely a good approach of tackling data growth and cost savings in the backup space, it does nothing to alleviate the burden of data growth on primary storage since backup solutions do not remove and archive aging production data. (read more)

One of the more critical pieces of information that organizations need as they put together a disaster recovery plan is how much data they have in their environment and how quickly it is changing. The reason this information is so important is that without it, organizations often have no way to effectively size how much or what type of capacity they need to protect and recover their production data. In fact, I was astonished at how little information this was available about this topic or the fact that there were so few good articles on the subject. (read more)

It is common for users to tell me they are just going to add some SATA disk trays to their existing primary storage while others have said they are going to just purchase the cheapest possible JBOD system that they can. There are a couple of concerns I have with either of these two approaches. In these examples, they are way too focused on the short-term cost savings that JBOD offers and they fail to fully consider the protection and preservation of their archived data over the long-term. If enterprises really did not need the archived data, then they are better off directing their IT staff to just completely remove the data from their environment anyway. (read more)

I regularly write about the inner workings of current and new technologies and how they can benefit organizations from a technical and financial perspective. But when talking to individuals out in the field who are actually using these products, it provides me with an entirely different perspective as to what specific benefits they glean from using them. In fact, when I recently chatted with InfoReliance's John Chirhart, a consultant to the US Government, he said that after he completed his recent testing of CommVault's Simpana Replication and Backup/Restore, he had to re-examine what data protection strategy that he should recommend to his clients and how they should manage data protection going forward. (read more)

As small and midsize businesses (SMBs) take a look at the worsening economic crisis and begin to understand how it impacts them, reality is starting to set in. A recent survey reports that nearly 80 percent of SMBs are not convinced the U.S. government's $700 billion financial bailout will help them. Furthermore, SMBs' purchasing power is being drastically altered, which will undoubtedly cause ripple effects throughout the economy. Case in point, the reluctance and abrupt spending halt of SMBs has impacted SAP -- causing SAP's third-quarter earnings to tank. This has already prompted SAP to implement financial help and discounts on its software that is explicitly intended for SMBs. (read more)

For the vast majority of the IT Directors and CIOs one of the more elusive questions that that they need to answer is, "Will the useful life of the infrastructure I just acquired match up to my depreciation cycle?" This is a slippery financial slope that anyone in IT management has to constantly be concerned about. If the useful life estimate is three years of depreciation and the equipment lasts only two, then you and your company are stuck with an extra year of depreciation on the books, as well as an extra year of maintenance you didn't really need. Conversely, if it lasts four years, you end up depreciating too much up front and not extending the depreciation out over the appropriate period of time. (read more)

Deduplication is rapidly becoming the new battleground in corporate backup and no technology vendor can afford not to enter this fray. Yet until recently, Dell, the world's third largest supplier of servers--and a leading supplier of data storage solutions - lacked any native disk-based backup appliance that was capable of deduplication. That changed earlier this month with its announcement that it will develop its own line of disk-based backup appliances that will use Quantum's software, of which deduplication and replication are primary features. (read more)