The document discusses how large organizations are moving to disk-based data protection platforms to more efficiently manage massive amounts of data for disaster recovery purposes. These platforms use automation, integration with backup applications, and features like deduplication and replication to minimize costs while improving backup and restore speeds. They also allow for centralized management of policies to back up, replicate, store, and expire data across multiple sites according to regulatory requirements.

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Managing Data to Improve Disaster Recovery Preparedness
Posted By Industry Perspectives On July 16, 2012 @ 8:30 am In Industry Perspectives | No
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Joe Forgione, senior vice president of product operations and business development at
SEPATON, Inc [1]. Most recently, he served as CEO of mValent, a data center applications
management software company, acquired by Oracle in 2009.
The use of tape as the primary backup medium for disaster recovery
purposes long ago gave way to disk-based data protection platforms. This
approach enables large organizations with massive volumes of data to
minimize storage costs, reduce risk of data loss and downtime, retain data
online longer, and accelerate backup/restore times.
Managing Large Volumes of Data
In today’s large enterprises with massive data volumes to protect
JOE FORGIONE and multiple data centers and disaster recovery (DR) sites to
SEPATON manage, manual data protection is not cost-efficient and does not
provide sufficient risk reduction. Large organizations need to back
up and move tens of terabytes (often petabytes) of data over a WAN quickly and efficiently.
Also, they manage backup and replication policies for hundreds of backup volumes and data
types to ensure data is de-duplicated, replicated, stored, and (eventually) securely erased in
accordance with strict regulatory requirements.
As a result, most large enterprises are moving to powerful disk-based appliances that enable
them to backup data within their backup windows, to store petabytes of data in a single
system, and to automate management of their complex data lifecycle policies.
Automation and Integration
For example, one backup application vendor that has pioneered such automation and
integration is Symantec through its OpenStorage Technology (OST) plug in for the popular
NetBackup backup application. With OST, NetBackup can be more closely integrated with
disk-based data protection platforms, enabling enterprises to take full advantage of the
advanced capabilities in both NetBackup itself and the backup target. At the same time,
enterprise data protection platform technology has advanced to include such innovations as
ContentAware byte-level de-duplication and replication that is capable of moving massive
data volumes over a WAN with minimal bandwidth for fast, efficient replication. They also
include a high degree of automation, detailed dashboards, and support for OST’s Auto Image
Replication (A.I.R.), enabling them to be an integral part of the disaster recovery
management of all backup data sets. One such platform is capable of backing up 43 TB per
hour and can de-duplicate and replicate these volumes without slowing performance.
Together, A.I.R. and advanced enterprise data protection platforms provide the performance,
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control, flexibility, and automation that enterprises need to centralize management of data
protection —from data backup and replication through the expiration and secure electronic
destruction of each copy
As the name implies, A.I.R. enables you to automatically backup and replicate copies of data
sets without needing to manage multiple catalogues. With A.I.R. the backup is determined by
automated storage lifecycle policies (SLPs) enabling enterprises to consolidate data types
with different storage plans onto the same enterprise data protection platform for
significantly simpler management. Managers simply use SLP to define all copies at once,
specifying the storage device and the specific retention for each copy. They then point all the
backup policies that follow the same storage plan to that lifecycle.
Synthetic Backup
Another valuable feature is optimized synthetic backup – a capability that dramatically
reduces the volume of data that an enterprise needs to backup and replicate. While SLPs may
not be necessary for small and medium businesses where manual backup management may
be manageable, and tape may even remain an acceptable medium, but in large enterprises
with multiple sites, multiple data centers and massive volumes of data, more seamless
integration between a robust backup application and a high-performance, disk-based data
protection platform should now be considered a business continuity best practice.
A unified set of SLPs combined with storage pooling and multi-tenancy capabilities in the data
protection platform are particularly beneficial to large enterprises with multiple business units
and demanding recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs and RPOs).
Additional advantages of implementing a centralized, highly automated disaster recovery plan
include:
The ability to leverage de-duplication and compression capabilities built into the data
protection platform to minimize the size of both master and replicated backup images
Content-aware byte differential de-duplication to cut the capacity of data to be backed
up and replicated without slowing backup performance
Bandwidth-optimized replication to deliver fast, cost-effective movement of data to
geographically-dispersed locations for disaster recovery protection
Support for active/active, many-to-one and one-to-many topologies to accommodate
different business continuity strategies
Extending a centralized data protection umbrella to remote office locations more
effectively and economically
More affordable consolidation and centralization of a tape infrastructure used for
archiving
An easier way to set multiple, different retention periods in different locations for lower
storage utilization and, therefore, lower costs
The ability to minimize RTO by automating the importing of catalogs to immediately
restore mission-critical production applications and systems
Large enterprises should evaluate emerging solutions that can significantly reduce disaster
recovery data protection costs while improving recovery times. The advantages of disk-based
data protection are clear, especially when specifically designed for the ingest, de-duplication
and replication challenges of massive data volumes.
Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought
leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process [2] for
information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our
Knowledge Library [3].
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