Tag: "Data Protection Advisor"

Storage Switzerland


One of the more thoughtful analysts in the industry, in my opinion is George Crump from Storage Switzerland.  (I like the name and George is as independent as you can get in

this business.)  Yesterday I had the pleasure of briefing George on EMC's Data Protection Vision.  I like talking with George for a couple of reasons.  First, he gets it.  What does that mean.  Read his material.  He is genuinely trying to educate IT folks on what is really important in the data center and how to address these challenges.  Next, he keeps the 'pay for', 'vendor spin' to a minimum.  George works hard to just talk about the facts of a product or industry and talk about how products can help without selling.  The reality is, we live in a great technological time.  The problem with IT is that only 50% of the problems are technology related.  The other 50%  is psychological.  IT can't just implement new technology because its cool or even because it really does solve a problem.  Sometimes new technology is too expensive to implement or the solution that is currently in place had a three year amortization and your only two years into your product life.  Or, more importantly, the new technology may be the greatest technology at the right price but it doesn't fit into the current IT priorities.  These are all things IT needs to work through when considering whether or not to invest in new technology.  The other thing George and I spoke about was the fact that it gets difficult to be 'strategic' in IT especially given certain economic times.  A lot of times IT just needs a band-aide or quick fix to move on to more important issues that really drive the business.  I talk about this  a lot, especially when it comes to backup.  Lets face it, it may not be what we all want to hear but backup is not strategic to most environments.  The applications that drive the business are most important.  Backup is about risk mitigation and information availability if everything else fails.  Right, 'if everything else fails', and IT typically invests in technology in the front end in an effort to have as little failure as possible.  Meaning, IT doesn't just buy JBOD with no RAID if they think the environment shouldn't be put at that kind of risk.  So IT is  already investing in some risk management up front which drives the spend on the back end for data protection.

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Aug 18, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

A Data Protection Tribute to Michael Jackson


I was walking through the data center the other day when I heard one of my colleagues, MJ “Scream”, “I wish I had some ‘Morphine’”.  Well, I have to say I was “Speechless”.  I walked over to where MJ was standing, near the tape library, and when I asked him what was wrong, he replied “there was another backup tape ’Jam‘.”  MJ told me he had been “Working Day and Night” on a major backup problem and he was now bouncing “Off The Wall”.  He told me he was sick of dealing with traditional backup tools and just wanted to get rid of tape.  I told MJ that it was “Human Nature” to feel “Bad” in a time like this but I also told him, “You Are Not Alone”.  I said MJ, “’Keep The Faith’, we all ‘Remember The Time’ when backups ran like a ‘Speed Demon’ and were ‘Unbreakable’, but that is ‘HIStory’, tape isn’t that fast any more given the amount of data we now have.  I also told him that “We are Backup Administrators, we are ‘Invincible’ and ‘Heaven Can Wait’ for us, and while we may not have our issue fixed at the ‘Break Of Dawn’, we would ‘Come Together’ to ‘Heal The World,’ or at least the datacenter’ (I chuckled).  I proceeded to tell him about a revolutionary new backup concept utilizing source-based deduplication technology.  It’s “PYT”, a pretty young thing, but  more importantly it’s here to stay.  EMC  offers it with a product called Avamar , the most efficient variable block,  source-based, deduplication technology on the market that:

  • Helps to eliminate tape all together
  • Is perfect for VMware environments
  • Protects remote offices most efficiently
  • Stems the tide of data growth on NAS platforms
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Jul 07, 2009 | 6 comments View Post

Accelerating Backup Efficiency


EMC's announcement on accelerating your backup efficiency hits some very important concepts to help users make significant progress in solving some key backup challenges.

A lot has been said over the last 18 months regarding an inflection point, where the growth of data is out pacing the capabilities of traditional backup technologies.  This has driven the 'one size does not fit all' belief when it comes to backup technology for your infrastructure.  Vendors talk about utilizing new technologies such as disk based backup, VTL (virtual tape libraries), deduplication and data protection management in order to improve the backup process.  While each of these technologies can help to improve the process, customers need to act faster in order catch up with the growth of data.

It’s not to say run out and buy one of each of these technologies and collectively they will solve your all your backup challenges.  The first and perhaps the most important thing is to assess your backup environment.  The reason there is not a one size fits all policy when it comes to backup is because different data types behave differently with different backup technologies.  Data deduplication is great, but it can work much better when it is applied in the proper manner.  A combination of source and target deduplication can complement one another to maximize your backup efficiency.  As an example, by leveraging source based deduplication for the proper data in your environment can give you a significant number of cycles back to your traditional backup software and improve performance on data types that aren't a good fit for source based deduplication.  So the message is, use assessment services to help you gain a realistic understanding of your data profile that allows you to choose the right deduplication for your environment.  Additionally, make sure the tools that you use to understand your deduplication efficiency utilize similar algorithms as the products you will use in your environment so there are no surprises.

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May 19, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Backup Takes Off!


There has been a lot written about the airline industry and its ongoing challenges.  Bankruptcies and mergers have been frequent topics on the business pages of the newspapers. Stranded passengers and jets sitting on runways for hours make are page news.

I travel a lot and have been doing so for 20 years.  It's an interesting industry I have observed first hand, often times painfully.  I would postulate, the air travel industry is one of the few industries that effectively hasn't improved in any measurable way over the past 20 years.  Consider:

- It still takes you six hours to fly from Boston to London, just as it did 30 years ago. Despite the brief, and ultimately failed foray into speed improvements via the Concorde, jets still fly +/- 500 MPH and get you to your location no faster than they did a quarter of a century ago

- Customer satisfaction has been steadily declining - across the board

- Flight delays and lost / mishandled baggage continue to increase

- The food is still awful, if you get any at all

It is, however, worthy to note that air travel continues to have excellent safety records. So if the airlines haven't improved in speed, comfort, or the basics like taking off and landing on time, what the heck have they been focused on? After all, look at another travel related industry, automobiles, over the past 25 years. More features (how many of you still "roll-up" your windows), safer (airbags, traction control), more fuel efficient (introduction of hybrids), and more dependable (Six-sigma, Kaizan!). Airlines? Well, no such luck. They've been focused on "cost." With de-regulation and the entrée of low cost carriers coupled with the price of fuel, cost savings is where all of their focus has been. Let's think about these two facts:

- Fuel efficiency in the airline industry increased 21% over the last five years

- But the price of oil, increased 130% over the last five years

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May 08, 2009 | 0 comments View Post