1. Storage Corridor
DIGITAL EDGEJULY 201314
Storage Corridor
DIGITAL EDGE JULY 2013 15
CAN YOU DO WITHOUT
BACK-UP
RECOVERY?
DATA
&
We see data protection as a
key strategy in protecting
Information for disaster
recovery and business conti-
nuity (DRBC).
Information Management
As data volumes continue to
grow, today's disk-based
backup solutions are proving
to be more affordable and
capable of tackling file and
disk management problems
Huzefa Motiwala
Head, Presales
India & SAARC, Symantec
Storage Solutions Marketing
Amit Luthra
National Manager
Dell India
Solutions Marketing, Dell India, says, “We
see data protection as a key strategy in
protecting Information for disaster recov-
ery and business continuity. Whether busi-
ness is a small environment with no IT
staff or a global enterprise with specialists
and distributed IT infrastructure, one fact
remains the same—data needs to remain
always-on, available and well protected.”
Barun Lala, Director, HP Storage, HP
India agrees that the faculty of data back-
up & recovery is seen from the prism of
disaster recovery & business continuity. He
acquiesces that domestic and international
regulatory norms make it compulsory for
organizations to have foolproof provisions
for data back-up & recovery. In this case
he views that the entire concept of infor-
mation life cycle management (ILM)
becomes important. But certainly, data
back-up & recovery is central part of any
credible DRBC strategy which in turn has
opened up a huge market opportunity for
IT companies which bring in wide ranges
of systems & solutions to the global mar-
ket including India.
The evolution
Over many decades, tape-drives have
extensively been used for data storage,
back-up and archival purposes. The mag-
netic tapes, which have consistently main-
tained its cost-efficiency, stay relevant
even today. The new-generation tape-
drives can store colossal quantum of data
which can endure for several decades. The
latest strain of tape drive in ‘LTO 6’ can
store a minimum of 2.5 TB of data, which
can stay live and fresh for at least 30 years.
But in recent times, hard drives have made
big forays into the domain of data back-up
& recovery. That hard drives are not only
used in SAN and NAS systems, but are
even fitted in data protection systems.
Now, enterprises can address the issue
of data back-up & recovery either by
deploying the concerned solutions at pri-
mary productivity centres or can set up at
remote BRDC (disaster recovery and busi-
ness continuity) sites. However, most of
the large enterprises maintain their DRBC
facilities at far off locations, and data back-
up & recovery tasks take place their only.
But then, the coming of cloud computing
has brought in more convenient ways of
doing the data protection chores. Either
way, the fact remains that the field of data
back-up & recovery has attained eminence
and has become inalienable component of
DRBC strategy.
According to industry sources the
global market for data protection has been
growing with sustained rate. In fact,
Gartner predicts that the data back-up &
recovery market would reach $5.2 billion
mark by 2016 at a CAGR of 6.5 per cent.
In India as well, the market has been
showing good momentum where a host of
IT companies including HP, IBM, Dell,
Oracle, EMC, NetApp, Symantec and
Quantum offer a wide range of data back-
up & recovery systems, software and solu-
tions. This has also opened up big business
opportunity for data back-up & recovery
G
lobalization, thrashed out by sev-
eral WTO rounds of ministerial
meetings in late 1980s and early
1990s paved the way for rapid growth in
international trade and transactions. The
period also saw amazing spurt in entrepre-
neurship, where people embarked on start-
ing their businesses targeting domestic
and international markets. Coincidently,
the decade of 1990s also experienced tech-
nologies influencing the pace of the global-
ization like anything. The introduction of
internet and IT tools & applications
enabled firms and business houses expand-
ing their operational areas to newer fron-
tiers. Since then, the dependency on IT has
been increasing sustainably.
Over these years, the nature and depth
of IT interventions have evolved to greater
complexity. Today, most of large enter-
prises, cutting across verticals, have auto-
mated their operational processes by
implementing various software applica-
tions including ERP (enterprise resource
planning), CRM (customer relationship
management), SCM (supply chain manage-
ment), and BI (business intelligence)—not
to mention mailing solution which is the
most fundamental requirement of every
enterprise. Obviously, for running such
applications, enterprises need datacentre
capability. Interestingly, large enterprises
alone don’t have the datacentre aspirations,
even SMEs (small and medium enterpris-
es) strive to maintain datacentre prowess.
In capacity and operational expanse, SMEs
may be small, but in seriousness and busi-
ness focus they may not lag behind large
enterprises. They too run a slew of enter-
prise apps which streamline their processu-
al chores, enabling them to run their busi-
nesses effectively. The advents of virtual-
ization technology and cloud computing
further enable enterprises of all sizes to
harness IT to the fullest. In fact, every dat-
acentre building-block—be it server, stor-
age, networking, security or power condi-
tioning, has undergone amazing level of
augmentations. But behind all these tech-
nological advancements, data remains the
most precious commodity. In fact, data is
the lifeblood of business matrix which
keeps it alive and thriving.
Credible data backup
While, compute is important, the data gen-
erated requires reliable and efficient stor-
age and backup and credible recovery pro-
visions, which help in meeting the expedi-
ency of disaster recovery & business conti-
nuity (DRBC) as well as conforming to
numerous national and international regu-
latory norms. So, every company which
brings in automation makes sure that their
precious data is properly backed-up and
restored and recovered as and when
requirements come up.
In an interaction with Digital Edge,
Amit Luthra, National Manager, Storage
BY MD QAISAR ALAM
Whether it’s DRBC (disaster recovery and business continuity) expediency or meeting various
domestic and international regulatory norms or both, data back-up & recovery plays one of the
most critical roles. In India, enterprises cutting across size and verticals make sure that the data
they generate and acquire needs to be properly backed-up so that it could be recovered when-
ever needs and eventualities crop up. Interestingly, the realm of data back-up & recovery has
opened up elevated market opportunity. A host of IT companies including IBM, HP, Dell, EMC,
NetApp and Quantum offer wide range of data back-up & recovery systems and solutions. Not
only that the growing market dynamism around data protection has galvanized channel com-
munity who ultimately take the solutions to enterprise customers. Moreover, the coming of
cloud computing has added a new twist to the way data is backed-up and recovered.
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2. DIGITAL EDGE JULY 2013 17
Storage Corridor Storage Corridor
DIGITAL EDGEJULY 201316
pure play software companies including
Asigra and Acronis. Interestingly, the mar-
ket growth around data back-up & recov-
ery has also galvanized the entire channel
community. This space has also seen the
emergence of specialist solution providers.
In India, companies such as Ace Data
Devices and Apara Enterprise Solutions
have emerged as leading storage-centric
solution providers. The reality of big-data
which virtually encompasses every aspect
of datacentre, brings challenges and oppor-
tunities for this market segment. So, this is
easy to see that the data back-up & recov-
ery is one of the fastest growing sectors in
the Indian IT industry.
Disk-based systems get wider adoption
As discussed, organizations can either go
for disk-based systems or tape drives for
executing their data back-up & recovery
tasks. But then, the market trends show
some distinct preference for disk-based
back-up & recovery solutions.
The growing affordability of hard disk
drives (HDDs), which bring the ‘per-giga-
byte-storage-cost’ drastically down, per-
suade enterprises into deploying more of
disk based data back-up & recovery solu-
tions. Moreover, the TCO (total cost of
ownership) alone is not the only factor
which makes people adopt more of disk-
based machines, the ease and speed with
which data is backed-up and recovered also
make them the hottest choice before com-
panies’ CIOs. Luthra of Dell says that
large chunks of organizations are moving
to disk-based backup & recovery systems
as they take lesser time in performing the
required tasks as comparison to tape coun-
terparts. “With most companies experienc-
ing increase in mission critical applications,
disks prove to be a safer measure for doing
the required data back-up”, views Luthra.
Moreover, he does agree that there’re
definitive circumstances where tape-centric
systems are preferred to disk-based data
back-up solutions.
Lala of HP India sounds similar views
when he says. “For many years to come,
both disk-to-disk (D2D) and tape solutions
would happily coexist. Tape is still the best
media for archiving and data retention for
multiple years together. On the other
hand, data which is frequently accessed is
usually backed up in hard-disk based sys-
tems as they can do faster back-up and
recovery tasks. Hence, the market would
evolve on D2D2T (disk-to-disk-to-tape)
model, rather than on just D2D model.”
Huzefa Motiwala, Head, Presales-
Information Management, India &
SAARC, Symantec says, “As data volumes
continue to grow, today's disk-based back-
up solutions are proving to be more afford-
able and capable of tackling file and disk
management problems. While disks have
not yet replaced tape as the primary back-
up option, there are a number of advan-
tages the latter carry.”
Products galore
Sensing unfolding market of data protec-
tion, most of the IT players offer data
back-up & recovery systems and solutions
in the Indian market. For instance, HP
which has broadened its network storage
portfolio substantially in recent times,
offers a comprehensive range of data back-
up & recovery products. The company pro-
vides enterprise class disk-based back-up
system called the B6200 which has high
availability features in terms of redundant
nodes to prevent any back-up failure or
restore failure. The system is also modu-
larly scalable by adding additional nodes
enable it to scale from 32 TB usable to 512
TB usable. This is to be noted that HP
also offers software-based backup appli-
ances which can be deployed on existing
servers using hypervisor software to create
back-up appliances on the fly. This is par-
ticularly useful for SMEs and organiza-
tions which want to offer ‘Backup-as-a-
Service’. HP calls this StoreOnce VSA
(Virtual Storage Appliance).
Dell which has broadened its storage
portfolio brings in a slew of data back-up
systems. Model such as ‘Dell DR4000’ is a
fast, disk-based back-up, data protection
and recovery solution that securely stores
critical data while reducing storage foot-
print. A new feature—DR rapid data
access—adds tighter integration with
backup software applications. On the other
hand, Dell DR4100 offers a simple and
cost-effective disk back-up and recovery
solution featuring deduplication, replica-
tion and capacity expansion. The
PowerVault DL4000 helps deploy compre-
hensive data and application back-up &
recovery for the physical and virtual
servers that power businesses.
The other significant player in
Symantec, which has traditionally been
known for its security and data availabili-
ty software solutions, has strengthened its
disk-based NetBackup range of data back-
up & recovery systems. “The NetBackup
appliances enable efficient, storage-opti-
mized data protection for the data center,
remote office, and virtual environments.
The NetBackup appliances enable organi-
zations to easily build up and deploy back-
up & recovery strategies for effective infor-
mation management”, says Motiwala of
Symantec.
Software plays big role
While, great improvements have been
made on enhancing the hardware capabili-
ty of disk-based data back-up systems,
software part of it plays much bigger role.
“Data back-up is not just about capacity,
but the efficiency with which data is
backed-up, restored and recovered. And
here comes the importance of software
intelligence which makes the entire data
retention and protection operations faster
and truly efficient”, opines Lala of HP.
One of techno-methodologies which
has revolutionized the art of data protec-
tion is ‘de-duplication’ which prevents the
duplicate copies of repeating data being
stored in hard disks of data back-up &
recovery systems. Another method is data
compression, which squeezes bulkier data
into smaller one, has extensively been used
in the domain of data back-up & recovery.
But in recent time, even this somewhat
older technology has hugely been impro-
vised on.
However, operational features such as
RPO (recovery point objective) and RTO
(recovery time objective) which are very
much present in most of today’s data back-
up & recovery software have brought in a
good deal of convenience to datacentre
administrators who easily zero in on the
specific data required instantaneously.
“We very much ingrain data deduplica-
tion, compression and encryption capabili-
ties in our backup & recovery software. Our
backup software called ‘Data Protector’ has
been fine-tuned for our appliances to offer
source-based deduplication from applica-
tion-server directly. The beauty of the RPO
and RTO story on our D2D appliances is
that once the back-up is over the replica-
tion of incremental deduped data automati-
cally starts to the DR site. Hence quite
good RPO and RTO readiness can be har-
nessed”, says Lala of HP.
primarily sought after by large enterprises or even SMEs look for
data-backup & recovery solutions?
Information protection solutions which include back-up &
recovery systems & solutions is a key focus area for HP. These
solutions are looked at by all segments, including large enter-
prise as well as SME (small and medium enterprise). It is only
the capacity, reliability & resiliency features that differ. We’re
uniquely positioned as we’ve products that cater to all sets of
customers right from SMEs to large enterprises.
What are the latest data-backup & recovery systems being
offered by your company in the Indian market? How modular
and scalable are these systems?
For enterprises, we are the only vendor today to offer enter-
prise- class disk based backup system called the B6200 which
has high availability features in terms of redundant nodes to
prevent a backup failure or restore failure. The system is also
modularly scalable by adding additional nodes enable it to
scale from 32 TB usable to 512 TB usable. ‘Pay as you grow’
for backup. We also have the software-based backup appliance
which can be deployed on existing server using hypervisor
software to create a backup appliance on the fly. This is par-
ticularly useful for SME’s and organization which want to
offer ‘Backup-as-a-Service’. We call this StoreOnce VSA
(Virtual Storage Appliance).
What are the key data backup & recovery software which you
deploy on your disk-based systems?
All key data back-up & recovery software are supported on the
appliance. Our back-up software, ‘Data Protector’, has been
fine tuned for our appliances to offer source-based deduplica-
tion from application server directly. The beauty of the RPO
(recovery point objective) and RTO (recovery time objective)
story on our D2D appliances is that once the backup is over
the replication of incremental deduped data automatically
starts to the DR site. Hence quite good RPO & RTO matrix
can be obtained. Our data back-up & recovery software brings
in top class deduplication, compression and encryption capabil-
ities.
What are the marketing strategies of your company here in
India?
Currently our marketing strategies are centered on creating
awareness around our systems & solutions. This could involve
back-up assessment surveys, customer events, and partner
events. We’re focusing on all verticals as we are seeing equal
demand. There is lesser transaction with higher value in enter-
prise and more transactions with lesser value in SMEs.
INFORMATION
PROTECTION SOLU-
TIONS WHICH
INCLUDE DATA
BACK-UP & RECOV-
ERY SOLUTIONS IS
A KEY FOCUS AREA
FOR HP
Do you think disk-based data-backup & recovery systems are
becoming rapidly popular in the Indian market? Do you think the
traditional tape-based data-backup & recovery solutions are get-
ting less popular in the market?
Yes, Disk Based data Backup & Recovery Systems are becom-
ing popular. We’re finding all segments including BFSI (bank-
ing financial services and insurance), Telco, manufacturing,
communications & media trying to adopt this approach. The
cost per gigabyte has become attractive due to higher capaci-
ty lower cost HDDs are being used. This will further improve
with the launch of 4TB disks in the end of this year.
Moreover, our feelings are that both tape and D2D (disk-to-
disk) solutions will coexist. The market is maturing in terms
of data protection needs and will finally evolve to a clear cut
distinction between archiving and data recovery. Tape is still
the best media for archiving and data retention for years
together. However faster restorations for data for a time peri-
od of a year or faster back-up speeds can only be provided by
disks. Hence the market should evolve to a D2D2T (disk-to-
disk-to-tape) model rather than simply a D2D model. Here,
HP is uniquely positioned as we’ve the best of both the worlds,
and are the only vendors today which can provide the D2D2T
solution. The disk-based solutions have faster restoration times
as the restoration is from disk and random. They also have
higher back-up speeds again due to the fact that one is back-
ing up to disk.
Also, the disk based backup solutions have the added benefit of
deduplication which increases the retention time of data on the
D2D device. At the same time, low cost disaster recovery solu-
tions can be implemented by replicating deduped data across
WAN to a remote site. No more tape vaulting or tape admin-
istration and management is required. Single file restores
become very simple on D2D devices unlike tapes. Protection
of data at branch offices is much simpler as this can be repli-
cated to the central site and can also be restored from the cen-
tral site. The cost Efficient ROBO (remote office, branch office)
implementations are possible with D2D Solutions. Most
importantly, D2D solutions do not suffer with generation com-
patibility issues. For instance, a latest LTO-6 tape device can
only read tapes up to two generations below. So, any LTO-3
tapes will have to be migrated. This is not the case with D2D
devices. D2D devices are also far more reliable in terms of
Raid6 implementations and dual controller. Due to lowering of
the number of mechanical components the D2D device has less
stress than tape Library.
For your company how significant is the market of data- backup
& recovery systems & solutions? Do you thing such solutions are
Barun Lala
Director, HP Storage
HP India
In India as well, the market has been showing good momen-
tum where a host of IT companies including HP, IBM, Dell,
Oracle, EMC, NetApp, Symantec and Quantum offer a wide
range of data back-up & recovery systems, software and solu-
tions. This has also opened upa big business opportunity for
data back-up & recovery pure play software companies includ-
ing Asigra and Acronis. Interestingly, the market growth
around data back-up & recovery has also galvanized the entire
channel community. This space has also seen the emergence
of specialist solution providers. In India, companies such as
Ace Data Devices and Apara Enterprise Solutions have
emerged as leading storage-centric solution providers.
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3. Storage Corridor
DIGITAL EDGEJULY 201318
On the other hand, Dell brings in as
assortment of software products which
help consolidate, compress, and deduplicate
data to minimize the amount of data
moved, managed, stored and protected.
“Our software portfolio helps organizations
minimize back-up storage requirements to
reduce capital expenses, network band-
width requirements and backup windows.
This makes it possible to back-up more
frequently and increase the number of
recovery points for improved service lev-
els”, informs Luthra of Dell.
Symantec, which has got innate soft-
ware capability, offers a wide repertoire of
data back-up & recovery software.
Symantec’s Backup Exec software, which
primarily works on Windows platform,
enable customers grow their data capacity
intelligently and cost effectively. The
Backup Exec software includes deduplica-
tion solution, which streamlines the data
transfer from the remote office and branch
office to the data center across physical
and virtual machines. “Deduplication has
the power to transform information man-
agement; it is great for backup, it is great
for archiving, and can even make virtual-
ized server back-up manageable. Symantec
believes that deduplication should live in
every part of the information architecture”,
says Motiwala. Moreover, the company
offers much powerful data protection soft-
ware in ‘NetBackup’ which is compatible
for Open Source platform including Novell.
This is to be noted that Symantec extends
its technology benefits by supporting third
party disk products in its back-up architec-
ture through the OpenStorage (OST) ini-
tiative. The OpenStorage initiative allows
customers to better utilize advanced, disk-
based storage solutions from qualified
partners. Tighter integration between the
backup software and storage allows cus-
tomers to increase the efficiency and per-
formance of their existing assets using an
easy-to-deploy, purpose-built appliance
that does not have the limitation of tape
emulation devices.
Growing regime of cloud data back-up
Meanwhile, the area of cloud-based data
protection solution has gained nice momen-
tum. Enterprises of all sizes seriously eval-
uate the efficacy of cloud back-up & recov-
ery services which are being offered by
many companies including IT biggies like
IBM, HP, Dell, and Fujitsu—not to men-
tion numerous dedicated cloud service-
providers. However, companies tend to
adopt cloud computing in varying ways.
For instance large enterprises running
their own datacentres and having remote
DRBC sites may not necessarily go for
availing of third-party cloud back-up &
data services. But, every enterprise may not
have its own remote DRBC facility. For
such companies, cloud back-up & recovery
provisions can make really good sense.
In an interaction with Digital Edge,
Neeraj Mediratta, CEO, Ace Data Devices,
says “Of late, cloud back-up & recovery has
gained huge attraction where enterprises
cutting across vertical like healthcare,
manufacturing, and media have shown
interest in cloud back-up & recovery serv-
ices.” Of late, Ace Data Devices, which is a
storage specialist solution provider head-
quartered at Gurgaon, and which works
closely with EMC, NetApp, HP, and
VMware, has emerged as a major player
active in the cloud back-up & recovery
services domain. The company, aligning
with Toronto-based software company,
Asigra, offers cloud back-up & recovery
service called ‘Abhraya Cloud Backup
Vault’ to enterprises out of its
datacentre located at Noida.
In recent times, Pune-based Anoosmar
Technologies has alos started offering
enterprise-class of cloud-based data back-
up & recovery service named ‘Vaultize’ in
the Indian market. “Vaultize ensures com-
plete and secure protection of files, emails
and application databases on laptops, desk-
tops and servers”, says Anand A Kekre,
CEO & Co-Founder, Anoosmar
Technologies.
What prompted Ace Data Devices to
enter into the space of enterprise cloud-
based back-up & recovery?
Ace Data has been working in back-up
& recovery space for over 12 years
now. We’ve a track record and experi-
ence behind us working with different
operating systems, applications and
networks to cater to backup & recov-
ery needs of enterprises of all types
and sizes. However, in recent times,
the notion of cloud computing has got
credence and more and more enterpris-
es are adopting cloud-based services.
So, we came out with our cloud-based
data back-up & recovery service.
How significant is the ‘Indraprastha
Apollo Hospitals’ win for ‘Abhraya Cloud
Backup Vault’?
We’ve been getting good response
from our customers and prospective
customers to ‘Abhraya Cloud Backup
Vault’. They’re taking keen interest in
evaluating various features and func-
tionalities. We’ve registered good suc-
cess around our cloud initiative. In just
one and half year’s time since we intro-
duced ‘Abhraya Cloud Backup Vault’,
we’ve noted very encouraging market
traction here in the Indian market. As
of now, ‘Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals’
has been the most important win for
‘Abhraya Cloud Backup Vault’. Some of
the key features including de-duplica-
tion, and compression technologies
have greatly resolved the data back-up
& recovery worries of enterprises.
What are the key verticals which have
become first movers in terms of adoption
of ‘Abhraya Cloud Backup Vault’ in India?
Working over the years, we’ve realized
that data protection is a requirement
for every industry and organization.
Our cutting edge technology is capable
of addressing the back-up requirements
for all data types. With unique features
like CDP (continuous data protection)
de-duplication and compression, our
solution has been able to cater well to
the requirements of healthcare & man-
ufacturing industry. These two verti-
cals have been the early adaptors of
our technology and solution. By the
way, our cloud back-up & recovery
service is based on highly versatile
Asigra platform. Asigra is a Canada-
based data protection software firm
with which we’ve partnered.
INDEED ‘INDRAPRASTHA
APOLLO HOSPITALS’ HAS
BEEN THE FIRST MAJOR
WIN FOR ‘ABHRAYA
CLOUD BACK-UP VAULT’
FOR ACE DATA DEVICES.
Neeraj Mediratta
CEO, Ace Data Devices
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