Entries categorized under “Virtual Tape Libraries”

No one disputes that enterprise backup has changed significantly in the last decade with the introduction of disk as a backup target and deduplication being the largest contributors to that shift. But in the last few years, array-based snapshots are emerging as the next big wave in how enterprise data protection will be done. As that shift occurs, it becomes more critical than ever for organizations to understand the right role for disk-based backup solutions to play in today's new world of array-based snapshots. (read more)

The mainframe and virtual tape libraries (VTLs) are linked in ways in which most of the open systems world has never really experienced. While both mainframe and open systems have and continue to use VTLs as part of their respective backup and recovery strategies, mainframes may also store less frequently accessed data on VTLs using its hierarchical storage management (HSM) software. EMC's introduction of synchronous replication on its new DLm8000 means mainframe environments may continue and even expand their use of HSM while still achieving the same levels of availability to which they are accustomed on their Tier 1 storage systems. (read more)

Disk-based backup and deduplication have been godsends for many organizations looking for a fast, effective way to protect and store their growing amounts of data. However Oracle DBAs still sometimes feel like these two technologies have come up short in ways that have not adequately been addressed. SEPATON's new DBeXstream technology changes this by giving Oracle DBAs access to these two technologies with the corresponding increases in throughput and deduplication ratios that they were originally led to believe they would see. (read more)

DCIG regularly talks to organizations that are confronted with continuing data growth, ongoing tape problems, saturated WAN links and overworked IT staff who recognize that changes to their existing backup environment are needed. However non-profits such as the Daughters of Charity Health Systems (DCHS) with limited funding for new technology purchases are particularly challenged as they have no margin for error. (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 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)

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)

Some seem to think that virtualization for the sake of virtualization is the proper business objective because of how it helps reduce server and storage footprints, utilize physical resources more effectively or ultimately lower costs. Certainly these are proper short term goals but the real end game of virtualization is not simply to create a virtualized data center environment. It is to create one that fully automates IT operations. (read more)

I am playing the role of road warrior this week by attending two conferences. The first two days of this week I was attending Storage Networking World (SNW) 2010 in Orlando, FL, and then today I hopped on a direct flight Las Vegas to catch one day of the Symantec Vision conference. (read more)

It is 2010 and time to deduplicate, at least that's what 60% of the respondents in a recent IDC survey had to say. However once an enterprise has said it is going to deploy deduplication is the easy part. It gets a little tougher to find a deduplication solution that meets their diverse needs of affordability, high availability, scalability and simplicity. It is these enterprise hot buttons that the new SEPATON S2100-MS2 seeks to hit. (read more)

Maybe it is just me but 2010 has, up until now, seemed pretty slow on the news front. Or maybe it is just that much of the news released did not really pique my interest. Regardless, the last two weeks a number of news items jumped out at me that I wanted to spend a little time commenting on today in my weekly Friday recap blog. (read more)

It is hard to believe it is approaching the end of 2009 already but what a year it has been. While 2009 has arguably been one of the toughest economic years in anyone's recent memory (and I for one am not convinced the economic slump is by any means approaching an end), from a storage technology perspective it has been one of the most innovative and exciting in recent memory. Deduplication has gone main stream, cloud storage is on every organization's radar screen and all organizations (storage end-users and providers alike) are beginning to grasp just how disruptive solid state drives (SSDs) are going to be. (read more)

In the last year or so a number of articles and blogs have appeared on the topic of inline and post-processing deduplication in an attempt to answer the question, "What is the best approach for deduplicating data during disk-based backup?" Unfortunately what these pieces fail to quantify is, "What objectives are enterprise organizations looking to accomplish with disk-based backup and recovery?" The problem this creates is that without first establishing these objectives, it makes it very difficult to arrive at any sort of meaningful conclusion about how to best proceed with deduplication. (read more)

The lines between NAS and VTL have started to blur. More NAS solutions can now scale to hold more than one petabyte of deduplicated data, deliver sustainable aggregate throughputs of more than one TB/hour and handle multiple concurrent backup loads. This combination of features may make it seem like a face-off between upper end NAS and VTL solutions is looming in enterprise environments. (read more)

Determining backup performance has consistently been extremely difficult for customers to rationalize, seeing as there is no real meter or benchmark to look at. Just take a second and think of all the moving parts inside your backup and recovery environment (media servers, clients, databases, email, network, SAN, disk, tape, offsite vaults) - you name it, there is a laundry list of things to look at when trying to determine accurate performance metrics. (read more)

The proclivity of vendors to emphasize jumps in performance is almost as commonplace as the proclivity of IT veterans to view such claims in performance gains with high degrees of cynicism. So when a system administrator recently went on the record during a recent round table and said that he experienced a 4 - 5x improvement in testing and a 2x improvement in his production environment using Symantec's OpenStorage (OST) API for backup, it caught my attention. (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)

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)

It's easy for organizations to believe that disk will solve their backup problems. But some organizations are starting to discover that while disk solved some of their backup problems, they are still not realizing the full reductions in backup times and improved performance rates on their application servers that they may have initially expected. If an organization finds itself in this predicament, then it probably behooves them to take a closer look at their backup architecture and determine exactly how much backup traffic is going across their corporate LAN. (read more)

In this final entry in a three-part series, I finish my conversation with Deepak Mohan, Symantec's Information Management Group SVP, as he takes a look at some of the current gaps in data protection and recovery today, tape's evolving role in enterprises and why Symantec still views tape as a viable technology and why large enterprises in general and healthcare IT specifically can benefit from Symantec's suite of products. Mohan provides some specifics on data protection and recovery gaps in different market segments, why the transition from tape to disk is going to occur gradually and why enterprise organizations need an enterprise software solution that addresses all of the needs of today's organizations from the end-user to the data center. (read more)

Many of the clients I work with are taking a closer look at their data protection solutions. Currently much of their focus is on trying to decide between purchasing additional storage (disk or tape), replication licensing, or deduplicating virtual tape library (VTL) technologies. The trouble is there are so many data protection products that the selection process becomes extraordinarily complex. So while companies may think of data protection as a singular function or strategy, companies will employ multiple strategies, staff and point products in order to attain a form of universal data protection. (read more)

One of the more elaborately crafted illusions that deduplication vendors have created over the last few years is that deduplication appliances are simply a "plug-n-play" proposition. In one respect, this is true. Companies can often introduce a deduplication appliance into their backup environment without substantially changing their existing backup configurations. Where the slight of hand comes in is when it comes to the vendor appropriately sizing the deduplication appliance for the client's environment. If it is too small or undersized, companies end up with a deduplication appliance that does not perform as anticipated; if it is too large, companies end up with an oversized appliance that costs them too much money. (read more)

As 2009 approaches, the traditional benchmarks for enterprise backup software such as the management of physical tape libraries, support for multiple operating systems and SAN backups are yesterday's news. Instead support for backup to disk, continuous data protection (CDP), protection for laptops and desktops and a common repository where protected data is stored, deduplicated and available for rapid access and search is how enterprise data protection software is now defined and measured. Yet even when one factors in these new benchmarks for enterprise data protection, how products such as Atempo Time Navigator play in this rapidly evolving space, and in which verticals they best play, are less than intuitive to the untrained eye. (read more)

When I recently attended VMworld 2008, I had the opportunity to get a closer look at NEC's latest HYDRAstor release, the HS8-2000, and some of its features. Of course at a trade show all you generally have the time and opportunity to do is take a quick look at some of the product's hardware and software features. But in this case there was a feature on the HYDRAstor that struck me just from the short time I spent evaluating it: the ability to create a 256 petabyte (PB) or larger file system. (read more)

Have you ever looked at a technology solution that left you wondering why a specific technology matters? I often look at a technology solution and take note of its many features but then may walk away thinking it was a slick presentation but wonder why I should care about it? So when I evaluate a technology solution, I first look to see if it solves a real problem. This can include making me more productive, addressing a key operational pain point or in some way reducing operational costs. (read more)