March 2015 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter

 

 

Volume 15, Issue III

Hello and welcome to this March 2015 Server and StorageIO update newsletter. Here in the northern hemisphere at least by the calendar spring is here, weather wise winter continues to linger in some areas. March also means in the US college university sports tournaments with many focused on their NCAA men’s basketball championship brackets.

Besides various college championships, March also has a connection to back up and data protection. Thus this months newsletter has a focus on data protection, after all March 31 is World Backup Day which means it should also be World Restore test day!

Focus on Data Protection

Data protection including backup/restore, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), business resiliency (BR) and archiving across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Data Protection Fundamentals

A reminder on the importance of data protection including backup, BC, DR and related technologies is to make sure they are occuring as planned. Also test your copies and remember the 4 3 2 1 rule or guide.

4 – Versions (different time intervals)
3 – Copies of critical data (including versions)
2 – Different media, devices or systems
1 – Off-site (cloud or elsewhere)

The above means having at least four (4) different versions from various points in time of your data. Having three (3) copies including various versions protects against one or more copies being corrupt or damaged. Placing those versions and copies on at least two (2) different storage systems, devices or media if something happens.

While it might be common sense, a bad April Fools recovery joke would be finding out all of your copies were on the same device which is damaged. That might seem obvious however sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. Also make sure that at least one (1) of your copies is off-site either on off-line media (tape, disk, ssd, optical) or cloud.

Take a few moments and to verify that your data protection strategy is being implemented and practiced as intended. Also test what is being copied including not only restore the data from cloud, disk, ssd or tape, also make sure you can actually read or use the data being protected. This means make sure that your security credentials including access certificates and decryption occur as expected.

Watch for more news, updates industry trends perspectives commentary, tips, articles and other information at Storageio.com, StorageIOblog.com, various partner venues as well as in future newsletters.

StorageIOblog posts

Data Protection Diaries
Are restores ready for World Backup Day?
In case you forgot or did not know, World Backup Day is March 31 2015 (@worldbackupday) so now is a good time to be ready. The only challenge that I have with the World Backup Day (view their site here) that has gone on for a few years know is that it is a good way to call out the importance of backing up or protecting data.
world backup day test your restore

However it’s also time to put more emphasis and focus on being able to make sure those backups or protection copies actually work.

By this I mean doing more than making sure that your data can be read from tape, disk, SSD or cloud service actually going a step further and verifying that restored data can actually be used (read, written, etc).

The problem, issue and challenges are simple, are your applications, systems and data protected as well as can you use those protection copies (e.g. backups, snapshots, replicas or archives) when as well as were needed? Read more here about World Backup Day and what I’m doing as well as various tips to be ready for successful recovery and avoid being an April 1st fool ;).

Cloud Conversations
AWS S3 Cross Region Replication
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced several enhancements including a new Simple Storage Service (S3) cross-region replication of objects from a bucket (e.g. container) in one region to a bucket in another region.

AWS also recently enhanced Elastic Block Storage (EBS) increasing maximum performance and size of Provisioned IOPS (SSD) and General Purpose (SSD) volumes. EBS enhancements included ability to store up to 16 TBytes of data in a single volume and do 20,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS). Read more about EBS and other AWS server, storage I/O  enhancements here.
AWS regions and availability zones (AZ)
Example of some AWS Regions and AZs

AWS S3 buckets and objects are stored in a specific region designated by the customer or user (AWS S3, EBS, EC2, Glacier, Regions and Availability Zone primer can be found here). The challenge being addressed by AWS with S3 replication is being able to move data (e.g. objects) stored in AWS buckets in one region to another in a safe, secure, timely, automated, cost-effective way.

Continue reading more here about AWS S3 bucket and object replication feature along with related material.

Additional March StorageIOblog posts include:

Server Storage I/O performance (Image licensed from Shutterstock by StorageIO)

 

 

View other recent as well as past blog posts here

In This Issue

  • Industry Trends Perspectives News
  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Events and Webinars
  • Recommended Reading List
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Server StorageIO Lab reports
  • Resources and Links

 

Industry News and Activity

Recent Industry news and activity

EMC sets up cloudfoundry Dojo
AWS S3, EBS IOPs and other updates
New backup/data protection vendor Rubrik
Google adds nearline Cloud Storage
AWS and Microsoft Cloud Price battle

View other recent and upcoming events here

StorageIO Commentary in the news

StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)
Recent Server StorageIO commentary and industry trends perspectives about news, activities and announcements.

Processor: Enterprise Backup Solution Tips
Processor: Failed & Old Drives
EnterpriseStorageForum: Disk Buying Guide
ChannelProNetwork: 2015 Tech and SSD
Processor: Detect & Avoid Drive Failures

View more trends comments here

StorageIO Tips and Articles

So you have a new storage device or system. How will you test or find its performance? Check out this quick-read tip on storage benchmark and testing fundamentals over at BizTech.

Keeping with this months theme of data protection including backup/restore, BC, DR, BR and archiving, here are some more tips. These tips span server storage I/O networking hardware, software, cloud, virtual, performance, data protection applications and related themes including:

  • Test your data restores, can you read and actually use the data? Is you data decrypted, proper security certificates applied?
  • Remember to back up or protect your security encryption keys, certificates and application settings!
  • Revisit what format your data is being saved in including how will you be able to use data saved to the cloud. Will you be able to do a restore to a cloud server or do you need to make sure a copy of your backup tools are on your cloud server instances?

Check out these resources and links on server storage I/O performance and benchmarking tools. View more tips and articles here

Various Industry Events

EMCworld – May 4-6 2015

Interop – April 29 2015 (Las Vegas)

Presenting Smart Shopping for Your Storage Strategy

NAB – April 14-15 2015

SNIA DSI Event – April 7-9

View other recent and upcoming events here

Webinars

December 11, 2014 – BrightTalk
Server & Storage I/O Performance

December 10, 2014 – BrightTalk
Server & Storage I/O Decision Making

December 9, 2014 – BrightTalk
Virtual Server and Storage Decision Making

December 3, 2014 – BrightTalk
Data Protection Modernization

Videos and Podcasts

StorageIO podcasts are also available via and at StorageIO.tv

From StorageIO Labs

Research, Reviews and Reports

Datadynamics StorageX
Datadynamics StorageX

More than a data mover migration tool, StorageX is a tool for adding management and automation around unstructured local and distributed NAS (NFS, CIFS, DFS) file data. Read more here.

View other StorageIO lab review reports here

Recommended Reading List

This is a new section being introduced in this edition of the Server StorageIO update mentioning various books, websites, blogs, articles, tips, tools, videos, podcasts along with other things I have found interesting and want to share with you.

    • Introducing s3motion (via EMCcode e.g. opensource) a tool for copying buckets and objects between public, private and hybrid clouds (e.g. AWS S3, GCS, Microsoft Azure and others) as well as object storage systems. This is a great tool which I have added to my server storage I/O cloud, virtual and physical toolbox. If you are not familiar with EMCcode check it out to learn more…
  • Running Hadoop on Ubuntu Linux (Series of tutorials) for those who want to get their hands dirty vs. using one of the All In One (AIO) appliances.
    • Yellow-bricks (Good blog focused on virtualization, VMware and other related themes) by Duncan Epping @duncanyb

Resources and Links

Check out these useful links and pages:
storageio.com/links
objectstoragecenter.com
storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/

storageperformance.us
thessdplace.com
storageio.com/raid
storageio.com/ssd

Enjoy this edition of the Server and StorageIO update newsletter and watch for new tips, articles, StorageIO lab report reviews, blog posts, videos and podcasts along with in the news commentary appearing soon.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Cloud Conversations: AWS S3 Cross Region Replication storage enhancements

Storage I/O trends

Cloud Conversations: AWS S3 Cross Region Replication storage enhancements

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently among other enhancements announced new Simple Storage Service (S3) cross-region replication of objects from a bucket (e.g. container) in one region to a bucket in another region. AWS also recently enhanced Elastic Block Storage (EBS) increasing maximum performance and size of Provisioned IOPS (SSD) and General Purpose (SSD) volumes. EBS enhancements included ability to store up to 16 TBytes of data in a single volume and do 20,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS). Read more about EBS and other recent AWS server, storage I/O and application enhancements here.

Amazon Web Services AWS

The Problem, Issue, Challenge, Opportunity and Need

The challenge is being able to move data (e.g. objects) stored in AWS buckets in one region to another in a safe, secure, timely, automated, cost-effective way.

Even though AWS has a global name-space, buckets and their objects (e.g. files, data, videos, images, bit and byte streams) are stored in a specific region designated by the customer or user (AWS S3, EBS, EC2, Glacier, Regions and Availability Zone primer can be found here).

aws regions architecture

Understanding the challenge and designing a strategy

The following diagram shows the challenge and how to copy or replicate objects in an S3 bucket in one region to a destination bucket in a different region. While objects can be copied or replicated without S3 cross-region replication, that involves essentially reading your objects pulling that data out via the internet and then writing to another place. The catch is that this can add extra costs, take time, consume network bandwidth and need extra tools (Cloudberry, Cyberduck, S3fuse, S3motion, S3browser, S3 tools (not AWS) and a long list of others).
aws cross region replication

What is AWS S3 Cross-region replication

Highlights of AWS S3 Cross-region replication include:

  • AWS S3 Cross region replication is as its name implies, replication of S3 objects from a bucket in one region to a destination bucket in another region.
  • S3 replication of new objects added to an existing or new bucket (note new objects get replicated)
  • Policy based replication tied into S3 versioning and life-cycle rules
  • Quick and easy to set up for use in a matter of minutes via S3 dashboard or other interfaces
  • Keeps region to region data replication and movement within AWS networks (potential cost advantage)

To activate, you simply enable versioning on a bucket, enable cross-region replication, indicate source bucket (or prefix of objects in bucket), specify destination region and target bucket name (or create one), then create or select an IAM (Identify Access Management) role and objects should be replicated.

  • Some AWS S3 cross-region replication things to keep in mind (e.g. considerations):
  • As with other forms of mirroring and replication if you add something on one side it gets replicated to other side
  • As with other forms of mirroring and replication if you deleted something from the other side it can be deleted on both (be careful and do some testing)
  • Keep costs in perspective as you still need to pay for your S3 storage at both locations as well as applicable internal data transfer and GET fees
  • Click here to see current AWS S3 fees for various regions

S3 Cross-region replication and alternative approaches

There are several regions around the world and up until today AWS customers could copy, sync or replicate S3 bucket contents between AWS regions manually (or via automation) using various tools such as Cloudberry, Cyberduck, S3browser and S3motion to name just a few as well as via various gateways and other technologies. Some of those tools and technologies are open-source or free, some are freemium and some are premium for a few that also vary by interface (some with GUI, others with CLI or APIs) including ability to mount an S3 bucket as a local network drive and use tools to sync or copy.

However a catch with the above mentioned tools (among others) and approaches is that to replicate your data (e.g. objects in a bucket) can involve other AWS S3 fees. For example reading data (e.g. a GET which has a fee) from one AWS region and then copying out to the internet has fees. Likewise when copying data into another AWS S3 region (e.g. a PUT which are free) there is also the cost of storage at the destination.

Storage I/O trends

AWS S3 cross-region hands on experience (first look)

For my first hands on (first look) experience with AWS cross-region replication today I enabled a bucket in the US Standard region (e.g. Northern Virginia) and created a new target destination bucket in the EU Ireland. Setup and configuration was very quick, literally just a few minutes with most of the time spent reading the text on the new AWS S3 dashboard properties configuration displays.

I selected an existing test bucket to replicate and noticed that nothing had replicated over to the other bucket until I realized that new objects would be replicated. Once some new objects were added to the source bucket within a matter of moments (e.g. few minutes) they appeared across the pond in my EU Ireland bucket. When I deleted those replicated objects from my EU Ireland bucket and switched back to my view of the source bucket in the US, those new objects were already deleted from the source. Yes, just like regular mirroring or replication, pay attention to how you have things configured (e.g. synchronized vs. contribute vs. echo of changes etc.).

While I was not able to do a solid quantifiable performance test, simply based on some quick copies and my network speed moving via S3 cross-region replication was faster than using something like s3motion with my server in the middle.

It also appears from some initial testing today that a benefit of AWS S3 cross-region replication (besides being bundled and part of AWS) is that some fees to pull data out of AWS and transfer out via the internet can be avoided.

Amazon Web Services AWS

Where to learn more

Here are some links to learn more about AWS S3 and related topics

What this all means and wrap-up

For those who are looking for a way to streamline replicating data (e.g. objects) from an AWS bucket in one region with a bucket in a different region you now have a new option. There are potential cost savings if that is your goal along with performance benefits in addition to using what ever might be working in your environment. Replicating objects provides a way of expanding your business continuance (BC), business resiliency (BR) and disaster recovery (DR) involving S3 across regions as well as a means for content cache or distribution among other possible uses.

Overall, I like this ability for moving S3 objects within AWS, however I will continue to use other tools such as S3motion and s3sfs for moving data in and out of AWS as well as among other public cloud serves and local resources.

Ok, nuff said, for now..

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Data Protection Diaries: March 31 World Backup Day is Restore Data Test Time

Storage I/O trends

World Backup Day Generating Awareness About Data Protection

This World Backup Day piece is part of my ongoing Data Protection Diaries series of posts (www.dataprotecitondiaries.com) about trends, strategies, tools and best practices spanning applications, archiving, backup/restore, business continuance (BC), business resiliency (BR), cloud, data footprint reduction (DFR), security, servers, storage and virtualization among other related topic themes.

data protection threat risk scenarios
Different threat risks and reasons to protect your digital assets (data)

March 31 is World Backup Day which means you should make sure that your data and digital assets (photos, videos, music or audio, scanned items) along with other digital documents are protected. Keep in mind that various reasons for protecting, preserving and serving your data regardless of if you are a consumer with needs to protect your home and personal information, or a large business, institution or government agency.

Why World Backup Day and Data Protection Focus

By being protected this means making sure that there are copies of your documents, data, files, software tools, settings, configurations and other digital assets. These copies can be in different locations (home, office, on-site, off-site, in the cloud) as well as for various points in time or recovery point objective (RPO) such as monthly, weekly, daily, hourly and so forth.

Having different copies for various times (e.g. your protection interval) gives you the ability to go back to a specific time to recover or restore lost, stolen, damaged, infected, erased, or accidentally over-written data. Having multiple copies is also a safeguard incase either the data, files, objects or items being backed up or protected are bad, or the copy is damaged, lost or stolen.

Restore Test Time

While the focus of world backup data is to make sure that you are backing up or protecting your data and digital assets, it is also about making sure what you think is being protected is actually occurring. It is also a time to make sure what you think is occurring or know is being done can actually be used when needed (restore, recover, rebuild, reload, rollback among other things that start with R). This means testing that you can find the files, folders, volumes, objects or data items that were protected, use those copies or backups to restore to a different place (you don’t want to create a disaster by over-writing your good data).

In addition to making sure that the data can be restored to a different place, go one more step to verify that the data can actually be used which means has it be decrypted or unlocked, have the security or other rights and access settings along with meta data been applied. While that might seem obvious it is often the obvious that will bite you and cause problems, hence take some time to test that all is working, not to mention get some practice doing restores.

Data Protection and Backup 3 2 1 Rule and Guide

Recently I did a piece based on my own experiences with data protection including Backup as well as Restore over at Spiceworks called My copies were corrupted: The 3-2-1 rule. For those not familiar, or as a reminder 3 2 1 means have more than three copies or better yet, versions stored on at least two different devices, systems, drives, media or mediums in at least one different location from the primary or main copy.

Following is an excerpt from the My copies were corrupted: The 3-2-1 rule piece:

Not long ago I had a situation where something happened to an XML file that I needed. I discovered it was corrupted, and I needed to do a quick restore.

“No worries,” I thought, “I’ll simply copy the most recent version that I had saved to my file server.” No such luck. That file had been just copied and was damaged.

“OK, no worries,” I thought. “That’s why I have a periodic backup copy.” It turns out that had worked flawlessly. Except there was a catch — it had backed up the damaged file. This meant that any and all other copies of the file were also damaged as far back as to when the problem occurred.

Read the full piece here.

Backup and Data Protection Walking the Talk

Yes I eat my own dog food meaning that I practice what I talk about (e.g. walking the talk) leveraging not just a  3 2 1 approach, actually more of a 4 3 2 1 hybrid which means different protection internals, various retention’s and frequencies, not all data gets treated the same, using local disk, removable disk to go off-site as well as cloud. I also test candidly more often by accident using the local, removable and cloud copies when I accidentally delete something, or save the wrong version.

Some of my data and applications are protected throughout the day, others on set schedules that vary from hours to days to weeks to months or more. Yes, some of my data such as large videos or other items that are static do not change, so why backup them up or protect every day, week or month? I also align the type of protection, frequency, retention to meet different threat risks, as well as encrypt data. Part of actually testing and using the restores or recoveries is also determining what certificates or settings are missing, as well as where opportunities exist or needed to enhance data protection.

Closing comments (for now)

Take some time to learn more about data protection including how you can improve or modernize while rethinking what to protect, when, where, why how and with what.

In addition to having copies from different points in time and extra copies in various locations, also make sure that they are secured or encrypted AND make sure to protect your encryption keys. After all, try to find a digital locksmith to unlock your data who is not working for a government agency when you need to get access to your data ;)…

Learn more about data protection including Backup/Restore at www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/ where there are a collection of related posts and presentations including:

Also check out the collection of technology and vendor / product neutral data protection and backup/restore content at BackupU (disclosure: sponsored by Dell Data Protection Software) that includes various webinars and Google+ hangout sessions that I have been involved with.

Watch for more data protection conversations about related trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions as well as read more about Backup and other related items at www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/.

Ok, nuff said

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Part II Until the focus expands to data protection – What to do about it

Storage I/O trends

Part II – Until the focus expands to data protection – What to do about it

This is the second of a three-part series (read part I here) about how vendors are keeping backup alive, however what they can and should do to shift and expand the conversation to data protection and related themes.

Modernizing data protection and what to do about it

Building off of what was mentioned in the first post, lets take a look at what can be done including expanding the conversation around data protection in support of business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), high availability (HA), business resiliency (BR) not to mention helping backup to actually retire (someday). Now when I backup retire, I’m not necessarily talking about a technology such as hardware, software or a service including clouds, rather when, where, why and how data gets protected. What I mean by this is to step back from looking at the tools and technologies to how they are used and can be used in new and different ways moving forward.

People convergenceStorageIO people convergence
Converged people and technology teams

All to often I see where new technologies or tools get used in old ways which while providing some near-term relief, the full capabilities of what is being used may not be fully realized. This also ties into the theme of people not technologies can be a barrier to convergence and transformation that you can read more about here and here.

Whats your data protection strategy, business or technology focused?

expand focus beyond tools
Data protection strategy evolving beyond tools looking for a problem to solve

Part of modernizing data protection is getting back to the roots or fundamentals including revisiting business needs, requirements along with applicable threat risks to then align application tools, technologies and techniques. This means expanding focus from just the technology, however also more importantly how to use different tools for various scenarios. In other words having a tool-box and know how to use it vs. everything looking like a nail as all you have is a hammer. Check out various webinars, Google+ hangouts and other live events that I’m involved with on the StorageIO.com events page on data protection and related data infrastructure themes including BackupU (getting back to the basics and fundamentals).

data protection options

Everything is not the same, leverage different data protection approaches to different situations

Wrap up (for now)

Continue reading part three of this series here to see what can be done (taking action) about shifting the conversation about modernizing data protection. Also check out conversations about trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions (e.g. www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/).

Ok, nuff said

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

 

Welcome to the Data Protection Diaries

Updated 1/10/2018

Storage I/O trends

Welcome to the Data Protection Diaries

This is a series of posts about data protection which includes security (logical and physical), backup/restore, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), business resiliency (BR) along with high availability (HA), archiving and related topic themes, technologies and trends.

Think of data protection like protect, preserve and serve information across cloud, virtual and physical environments spanning traditional servers, storage I/O networking along with mobile (ok, some IoT as well), SOHO/SMB to enterprise.

Getting started, taking a step back

Recently I have done a series of webinars and Google+ hangouts as part of the BackupU initiative brought to you by Dell Software (that’s a disclosure btw ;) ) that are vendor and technology neutral. Instead of the usual vendor product or technology focused seminars and events, these are about getting back to the roots, the fundamentals of what to protect when and why, then decide your options as well as different approaches (e.g. what tools to use when).

In addition over the past year (ok, years) I have also been doing other data protection related events, seminars, workshops, articles, tips, posts across cloud, virtual and physical from SOHO/SMB to enterprise. These are in addition to the other data infrastructure server and storage I/O stuff (e.g. SSD, object storage, software defined, big data, little data, buzzword bingo and others).

Keep in mind that in the data center or information factory everything is not the same as there are different applications, threat risk scenarios, availability and durability among other considerations. In this series like the cloud conversations among others, I’m going to be pulling various data protection themes together hopefully to make it easier for others to find, as well as where I know where to get them.

data protection diaries
Some notes for an upcoming post in this series using my Livescribe about data protection

Data protection topics, trends, technologies and related themes

Here are some more posts to checkout pertaining to data protection trends, technologies and perspectives:

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Part II: EMC Evolves Enterprise Data Protection with Enhancements

Storage I/O trends

This is the second part of a two-part series on recent EMC backup and data protection announcements. Read part I here.

What about the products, what’s new?

In addition to articulating their strategy for modernizing data protection (covered in part I here), EMC announced enhancements to Avamar, Data Domain, Mozy and Networker.

Data protection storage systems (e.g. Data Domain)

Building off of previously announced Backup Recovery Solutions (BRS) including Data Domain operating system storage software enhancements, EMC is adding more application and software integration along with new platform (systems) support.

Data Domain (e.g. Protection Storage) enhancements include:

  • Application integration with Oracle, SAP HANA for big data backup and archiving
  • New Data Domain protection storage system models
  • Data in place upgrades of storage controllers
  • Extended Retention now available on added models
  • SAP HANA Studio backup integration via NFS
  • Boost for Oracle RMAN, native SAP tools and replication integration
  • Support for backing up and protecting Oracle Exadata
  • SAP (non HANA) support both on SAP and Oracle

Data in place upgrades of controllers for 4200 series models on up (previously available on some larger models). This means that controllers can be upgraded with data remaining in place as opposed to a lengthy data migration.

Extended Retention facility is a zero cost license that enables more disk drive shelves to be attached to supported Data Domain systems. Thus there is a not a license fee, however you do pay for the storage shelves and drives to increase the available storage capacity. Note that this feature increases the storage capacity by adding more disk drives and does not increase the performance of the Data Domain system. Extended Retention has been available in the past however is now supported via more platform models. The extra storage capacity is essentially placed into a different tier that an archive policy can then migrate data into.

Boost for accelerating data movement to and from Data Domain systems is only available using Fibre Channel. When asked about FC over Ethernet (FCoE) or iSCSI EMC indicated its customers are not asking for this ability yet. This has me wondering if it is that the current customer focus is around FC, or if those customers are not yet ready for iSCSI or FCoE, or, if there were iSCSI or FCoE support, more customers would ask for it?

With the new Data Domain protection storage systems EMC is claiming up to:

  • 4x faster performance than earlier models
  • 10x more scalable and 3x more backup/archive streams
  • 38 percent lower cost per GB based on holding price points and applying improvements


EMC Data Domain data protection storage platform family


Data Domain supporting both backup and archive

Expanding Data Domain from backup to archive

EMC continues to evolve the Data Domain platform from just being a backup target platform with dedupe and replication to a multi-function, multi-role solution. In other words, one platform with many uses. This is an example of using one tool or technology for different purposes such as backup and archiving, however with separate polices. Here is a link to a video where I discuss using common tools for backup and archiving, however with separate polices. In the above figure EMC Data Domain is shown as being used for backup along with storage tiering and archiving (file, email, Sharepoint, content management and databases among other workloads).


EMC Data Domain supporting different functions and workloads

Also shown are various tools from other vendors such as Commvault Simpana that can be used as both a backup or archiving tool with Data Domain as a target. Likewise Dell products acquired via the Quest acquisition are shown along with those from IBM (e.g. Tivoli), FileTek among others. Note that if you are a competitor of EMC or simply a fan of other technology you might come to the conclusion that the above may not be different from others. Then again others who are not articulating their version or vision of something like the above figure probably should be also stating the obvious vs. arguing they did it first.

Data source integration (aka data protection software tools)

It seems like just yesterday that EMC acquired Avamar (2006) and NetWorker aka Legato (2003), not to mention Mozy (2007) or Dantz (Retrospect, since divested) in 2004. With the exception of Dantz (Retrospect) which is now back in the hands of its original developers, EMC continues to enhance and evolve Avamar, Mozy and NetWorker including with this announcement.

General Avamar 7 and Networker 8.1 enhancements include:

  • Deeper integration with primary storage and protection storage tiers
  • Optimization for VMware vSphere virtual server environments
  • Improved visibility and control for data protection of enterprise applications

Additional Avamar 7 enhancements include:

  • More Data Domain integration and leveraging as a repository (since Avamar 6)
  • NAS file systems with NDMP accelerator access (EMC Isilon & Celera, NetApp)
  • Data Domain Boost enhancements for faster backup / recovery
  • Application integration with IBM (DB2 and Notes), Microsoft (Exchange, Hyper-V images, Sharepoint, SQL Server), Oracle, SAP, Sybase, VMware images

Note that Avamar dat is still used mainly for ROBO and desktop, laptop type backup scenarios that do not yet support Data Domain. Also see Mozy enhancements below).

Avamar supports VMware vSphere virtual server environments using granular change block tracking (CBT) technology as well as image level backup and recovery with vSphere plugins. This includes an Instant Access recovery when images are stored on Data Domain storage.

Instant Access enables a VM that has been protected using Avamar image level technology on Data Domain to be booted via an NFS VMware Dat. VMware sees the VM and is able to power it on and boot directly from the Data Domain via the NFS Dat. Once the VM is active, it can be Storage vMotion to a production storage VMware Dat while active (e.g. running) for recovery on the fly capabilities.


Instant Access to a VM on Data Domain storage

EMC NetWorker 8.1 enhancements include:

  • Enhanced visibility and control for owners of data
  • Collaborative protection for Oracle environments
  • Synchronize backup and data protection between DBA and Backup admin’s
  • Oracle DBAs use native tools (e.g. RMAN)
  • Backup admin implements organizations SLA’s (e.g. using Networker)
  • Deeper integration with EMC primary storage (e.g. VMAX, VNX, etc)
  • Isilon integration support
  • Snapshot management (VMAX, VNX, RecoverPoint)
  • Automation and wizards for integration, discovery, simplified management
  • Policy-based management, fast recovery from snapshots
  • Integrating snapshots into and as part of data protection strategy. Note that this is more than basic snapshot management as there is also the ability to roll over a snapshot into a Data Domain protection storage tier.
  • Deeper integration with Data Domain protection storage tier
  • Data Domain Boost over Fibre Channel for faster backups and restores
  • Data Domain Virtual Synthetics to cut impact of full backups
  • Integration with Avamar for managing image level backup recovery (Avamar services embedded as part of NetWorker)
  • vSphere Web Client enabling self-service recovery of VMware images
  • Newly created VMs inherit backup polices automatically

Mozy is being positioned for enterprise remote office branch office (ROBO) or distributed private cloud where Avamar, NetWorker or Data Domain solutions are not as applicable. EMC has mentioned that they have over 800 enterprises using Mozy for desktop, laptop, ROBO and mobile data protection. Note that this is a different target market than the Mozy consumer product focused which also addresses smaller SMBs and SOHOs (Small Office Home Offices).

EMC Mozy enhancements to be more enterprise grade:

  • Simplified management services and integration
  • Active Directory (AD) for Microsoft environments
  • New storage pools (multiple types of pools) vs. dedicated storage per client
  • Keyless activation for faster provisioning of backup clients

Note that EMC enhanced earlier this year Data Protection Advisor (DPA) with version 6.0.

What does this all mean?

Storage I/O trends

Data protection and backup discussions often focus around tape summit resources or cloud arguments, although this is changing. What is changing is growing awareness and discussion around how data protection storage mediums, systems and services are used along with the associated software management tools.

Some will say backup is broke often pointing a finger at a media or medium (e.g. tape and disk) about what is wrong. Granted in some environments the target medium (or media) destination is an easy culprit to point a finger to as the problem (e.g. the usual tape sucks or is dead) mantra. However, for many environments while there can be issues, it is more often than not the media, medium, device or target storage system that is broke, instead how it is being used or abused.

This means revisiting how tools are used along with media or storage systems allocated, used and retained with respect to different threat risk scenarios. After all, not everything is the same in the data center or information factory.

Thus modernizing data protection is more than swapping media or mediums including types of storage system from one to another. It is also more than swapping out one backup or data protection tool for another. Modernizing data protection means rethinking what different applications and data need to be protected against various threat risks.

Storage I/O trends

What this has to do with today’s announcement is that EMC is among others in the industry moving towards a holistic data protection modernizing thought model.

In my opinion what you are seeing out of EMC and some others is taking that step back and expanding the data protection conversation to revisit, rethink why, how, where, when and by whom applications and information get protected.

This announcement also ties into finding and removing costs vs. simply cutting cost at the cost of something elsewhere (e.g. service levels, performance, availability). In other words, finding and removing complexities or overhead associated with data protection while making it more effective.

Some closing points, thoughts and more links:

There is no such thing as a data or information recession
People and data are living longer while getting larger
Not everything is the same in the data center or information factory
Rethink data protection including when, why, how, where, with what and by whom
There is little data, big data, very big data and big fast data
Data protection modernization is more than playing buzzword bingo
Avoid using new technology in old ways
Data footprint reduction (DFR) can be help counter changing data life-cycle patterns
EMC continues to leverage Avamar while keeping Networker relevant
Data Domain evolving for both backup and archiving as an example of tool for multiple uses

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

EMC Evolves Enterprise Data Protection with Enhancements (Part I)

Storage I/O trends

A couple of months ago at EMCworld there were announcements around ViPR, Pivotal along with trust and clouds among other topics. During the recent EMCworld event there were some questions among attendees what about backup and data protection announcements (or lack there of)?

Modernizing Data Protection

Today EMC announced enhancements to its Backup Recovery Solutions (BRS) portfolio (@EMCBackup) that continue to enable information and applications data protection modernizing including Avamar, Data Domain, Mozy and Networker.

Keep in mind you can’t go forward if you can’t go back, which means if you do not have good data protection to go to, you can’t go forward with your information.

EMC Modern Data Protection Announcements

As part of their Backup to the Future event, EMC announced the following:

  • New generation of data protection products and technologies
  • Data Domain systems: enhanced application integration for backup and archive
  • Data protection suite tools Avamar 7 and Networker 8.1
  • Enhanced Cloud backup capabilities for the Mozy service
  • Paradigm shift as part of data protection modernizing including revisiting why, when, where, how, with what and by whom data protection is accomplished.

What did EMC announce for data protection modernization?

While much of the EMC data protection announcement is around product, there is also the aspect of rethinking data protection. This means looking at data protection modernization beyond swapping out media (e.g. tape for disk, disk for cloud) or one backup software tool for another. Instead, revisiting why data protection needs to be accomplished, by whom, how to remove complexity and cost, enable agility and flexibility. This also means enabling data protection to be used or consumed as a service in traditional, virtual and private or hybrid cloud environments.

EMC uses as an example (what they refer to as Accidental Architecture) of how there are different group and areas of focus, along with silos associated with data protection. These groups span virtual, applications, database, server, storage among others.

The results are silos that need to be transformed in part using new technology in new ways, as well as addressing a barrier to IT convergence (people and processes). The theme behind EMC data protection strategy is to enable the needs and requirements of various groups (servers, applications, database, compliance, storage, BC and DR) while removing complexity.

Moving from Silos of data protection to a converged service enabled model

Three data protection and backup focus areas

This sets the stage for the three components for enabling a converged data protection model that can be consumed or used as a service in traditional, virtual and private cloud environments.


EMC three components of modernized data protection (EMC Future Backup)

The three main components (and their associated solutions) of EMC BRS strategy are:

  • Data management services: Policy and storage management, SLA, SLO, monitoring, discovery and analysis. This is where tools such as EMC Data Protection Advisor (aka via WysDM acquisition) fit among others for coordination or orchestration, setting and managing polices along with other activities.
  • Data source integration: Applications, Database, File systems, Operating System, Hypervisors and primary storage systems. This is where data movement tools such as Avamar and Networker among others fit along with interfaces to application tools such as Oracle RMAN.
  • Protection storage: Targets, destination storage system with media or mediums optimized for protecting and preserving data along with enabling data footprint reduction (DFR). DFR includes functionality such as compression and dedupe among others. Example of data protection storage is EMC Data Domain.

Read more about product items announced and what this all means here in the second of this two-part series.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Are your analyst, blogger, media or press requests being read?

Storage I/O cloud virtual and big data perspectives

Are you a marketing or public relations, press or analyst relations or social media expert and your email messages, notes, updates or requests get overlooked? Are you in the first paragraph or couple of sentences indicating who you are representing, what the info or request is about as well as what call to action you are looking for? If you are doing what is done in many of the requests for coverage or meetings or even announcements, you may be getting overlooked resulting in a missed opportunity, that is unless your goal is to simply gauge how many requests you send out.

Now do I have your attention?

Time for some tough love.

Almost every day (not as much on weekends) my email inbox gets filled up with notes from vendor marketing and public relations (PR) firms organizations telling about an announcement, requesting a briefing, giving heads up for something that will be occurring, pitching a story, idea or looking for coverage.

Being an analyst, author, advisory consultant, blogger among other roles, getting all of those emails as well as phone calls or other messages comes with the territory. However to get to the point or, the point of this post, most of those notes or messages I receive do not get to the point. More importantly I’m noticing on an increasing basis that many of the request for meetings, coverage, or introductions to announcements are not passing the quick scan test.

Storage I/O cloud virtual and big data perspectives

The trend that I have noticed for a couple of years now is that what is being announced or what the topic is or worse, who it is about gets lost in the paragraph or two or three or more of content. Thus for those who get lots of messages a day, get to the point, save the prose and sample article or content for later, unless that is what you are sending.

In other words, tell the reader who you are representing (e.g. the company), product or focus area, what the news is about, why relevant, and call to action. Skip the long intro citing marketing research or testimonials and what read like mini articles, not to mention mentioning other vendors that might cause a quick scan to confuse the message about them vs. you or your client.

The other day I received one of many announcements or briefing and meeting requests and this one stood out. In fact it stood out so much not for what was actually being announced or by whom or what it pertained to (all of which are relevant btw). It stood out because it did what most are not doing these days. It got to the point and in about the time required for a sip of coffee, I new what I needed to know as opposed to a trip to the coffee pot to refill to read the piece.

The note impressed me so much that I asked Melissa Kolodziej who sent it to me if I could repost her note here as an example of how to do it.

Subject: News: Attunity Enhances Big Data Replication Solution for Data Warehousing & Cloud Initiatives

Dear Greg,
Good morning. I wanted to share with you the exciting product news we announced regarding  Attunity Replicate 2.1. This latest release of our high-performance data delivery solution now features several new enhancements for data warehousing and the cloud. One key optimization is the addition of Attunity  TurboStream CDC, an innovative feature designed to significantly enhance delivery performance of changed data. This proprietary technology stages source data, consolidates changes, and delivers data in parallel to the target, optimizing change data capture (CDC) for high-volume and low-bandwidth scenarios. The enhanced Attunity Replicate solution is ideal for strategic initiatives including Big Data analytics and business intelligence typically seen in data warehouse and cloud environments.

Please review the release below and contact me at your earliest convenience (Tel. 781-730-4073) to set up a time to interview Matt Benati, Attunity’s VP of Global Marketing. He is available for briefings this week and next.  I would also appreciate hearing back from you if you plan to cover this news.

Thank you for your time and best regards,

Melissa Kolodziej
Director of Marketing Communications, Attunity
Tel. 781-730-4073
melissa.kolodziej@attunity.com

I thought about showing an example of what not to do, however for now, lets leave sleeping dogs lay where the rest. Although I will say make sure you put a name in the name field for your email blasts vs. receiving Dear <Name_Goes_Here> or using the wrong name. The wrong name I’m used to however I may respond and have some fun at your expense so that you don’t forget ;).

Kudos and nice job Melissa for doing what should be common knowledge or basic best practices however what I now see as the exception vs. the norm from many public relations firms or vendors.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Spring (May) 2012 StorageIO news letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Spring (May) 2012 News letter

Welcome to the Spring (May) 2012 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) news letter. This follows the Fall (December) 2011 edition.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

Click on the following links to view the Spring May 2012 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the news letter page to view previous editions.

You can subscribe to the news letter by clicking here.

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Nuff said for now

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved