Maximizing the Benefits of Virtualization with Real-time Compression. Check out Real-time Compression appliances for NAS. Visit http://ibm.co/QExPjp.

1. Maximizing
the
Benefits
of
Virtualization
with
Real-­time
Compression
By Dan Kusnetzky, Distinguished Analyst
E X E C U T IV E S U M M A R Y
Organizations are using more and more data. Much of this growth can be
attributed to the increasing collection of analytical data, documents,
messages, presentations and other unstructured data. Data retention
requirements and the need for both backup and disaster recovery plans
is causing organizations to face the fact that backup and disaster
recovery procedures are time consuming.
As difficult as it is to address the need to maintain backups today, the
introduction of virtual servers and virtualized environments is likely to
only exacerbate the problem. The proliferation of virtual environments
means that there are more sources of data to include in a company’s
backup and archival storage plan.
Decision makers must consider the rapid growth of the company’s
information assets, the challenges of backing up this data and develop
concrete plans to address this issue.
A sound approach is reducing the size of the data that must be stored,
starting with primary data. While sound, this approach can only be
successfully used if proper attention is focused on not impacting
performance and compatibility with current applications and processes.
Real-time compression may be the best approach because it not only
shrinks primary data in real-time, but it also reduces the requirements for
new and existing storage throughout the data lifecycle without impacting
application performance or forcing the company to change applications,
processes, procedures, or re-train IT or business staff.
W H A T IS T H E IS S U E ?
Companies are facing an explosion in the need for and use of data. At
the same time, these organizations are facing the need to reduce overall
spending on IT. These divergent trends are at the foundation of one of
the many issues IT management faces today.
FACTORS CREATING THE DRAMATIC GROWTH IN STORAGE
Let’s look at some of the factors that are creating this dramatic data
growth.
 In order to reduce staff-related costs, companies are increasingly
automating previously manual processes. The newly automated
processes produce additional structured and unstructured data. In
both cases, additional storage capacity is required.
The Kusnetzky Group © 2011
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presented in this document are based upon our research, our personal experiences and actual use of technology regardless of whether this
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under license from The Kusnetzky Group.

2.  In order to improve sales and marketing processes and reduce the
cost of customer acquisition and retention, companies are turning to
the use of business intelligence and real-time analytical processing
software to uncover previously hidden customer requirements. This
means gathering and storing large amounts of data from customer
relationship management, marketing and sales systems.
 Companies are seeing continued growth in the use of unstructured
data in the form of messages, documents, presentations,
spreadsheets and the like as part of its operations. Regardless of
where this data is being used; whether it is on a PC, a smartphone or
a tablet computer; this data must be backed up.
 Virtual environments are increasing the amount of data being
processed. As companies begin to encapsulate server workloads
into virtual machines, there are more sources of data to include in a
company’s backup and archival storage plan.
This quick survey covers only part of the increasing amount of data the
organization’s staff and systems are creating. What is clear is that the
amount of data companies need to backup is growing rapidly. It is also
clear that it is increasingly difficult to backup everything.
WHAT PAIN DOES THIS ISSUE CAUSE?
Increased requirements for data storage causes a number of painful
problems including increased costs, difficulty finding a window of time to
successfully backup data and being prepared for either a disaster or for
an audit.
INCREASED COST AT A TIME WHEN BUDGETS ARE
BEING REDUCED
Dramatic growth of both structured and unstructured data usually leads
to the acquisition of additional storage devices, storage networking
equipment, and storage software. This additional equipment requires
power and cooling which only add to the high price of purchasing and
maintaining storage. Furthermore, the requirement to backup all this data
means an increase in staff time as well. Overall, this leads to ever-
increasing IT costs.
Since organizations are seeking to reduce IT budgets, data growth
presents a serious problem.
WHEN IS THERE TIME TO BACKUP IN A 24 X 7 X 365
WORLD?
Some organizations find that they simply cannot backup all of the data
their systems and processes are creating. Operational systems are now
accessed from customers and staff worldwide. So, operational and
support systems must be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365
days a year.
In the past, IT staff would backup systems after business hours in their
home time zone. This no longer works because systems are always in
use. There is no longer a specific time that can be seen as a window of
opportunity to backup all of the data the company is using.
VIRTUALIZATION IS EXACERBATING THE PROBLEM
This issue is compounded by the increasing use of virtualized
environments.
The Kusnetzky Group © 2011 Page 2

3.  Each virtual server consumes and produces data. As virtual servers
increase in number, the amount of data increases as well. Each
virtual server has its own copy of the operating system, application
software, application support software as well as database software
and data. As the company increasingly relies on hundreds or,
perhaps, thousands of virtual servers, the amount of data being
produced rises as well.
 Internet eCommerce applications, which are often based upon
application and processing virtualization technology, sharply
increase the amount of data an organization must store.
Furthermore, that data changes rapidly enough to overrun the
capabilities of many storage systems.
 Organizations are making more use of modeling applications to
manage risk, do non-destructive testing, develop manufacturing
processes, and, of course, as a part of architectural development.
These models are often huge files.
W H A T W O U L D A N ID E A L S O L U T IO N L O O K
L IK E ?
Let’s consider the characteristics of an ideal solution to these issues. The
solution must have the following attributes to be successful:
 The solution must get control of the explosive growth of data and
reduce data center costs by reducing the floor space storage, power
consumed and the heat produced by storage devices.
 Rather than facing the constant installation of new storage devices,
the solution must make it possible for the organization to get greater
use out of its current storage systems. It must also reduce the
ongoing need for additional storage devices.
 The solution must drop right into the current IT infrastructure without
causing a negative impact on application performance. Applications
must, at minimum, perform as they did before.
 The solution must reduce the amount of data that is stored and, thus,
the time it takes to backup data and support disaster recovery plans.
This change must be handled gracefully and not require extensive
and expensive changes to storage configurations.
 The solution must not force changes in the organization’s processes,
procedures or staffing.
 Applications and databases, regardless of whether they are
supported by physical or virtual servers, should continue to work as
before without being re-engineered or re-written.
 The ideal solution must be a good neighbor and work with other
storage efficiency technologies, such as deduplication.
IBM Real-time Compression can address these issues quickly, easily
and without breaking the budget.
W H A T IS R E A L-T IM E C O M P R E S S IO N A N D W H Y
C A N IT H E L P ?
Data compression has been a tool IT developers have used to reduce
the size of data objects. Traditionally this has been accomplished by
encoding data so that it takes up less physical storage.
Storage compression methods were based upon finding repeating
patterns of the zeros and ones that make up a digital file and replacing
The Kusnetzky Group © 2011 Page 3

4. them with a single copy of that pattern and the number of times that
pattern must be repeated when the file is expanded for use.
Compression required a great deal of processing power in the past and
so was not suitable for general-purpose use. IT developers had
requirements for data integrity and availability that challenged previous
approaches to data compression. Even with those limitations, It found
strong proponents in the networking and digital content creation
communities.
Recent improvements in microprocessor performance and data
compression algorithms (Lempel-Ziv) has meant that data compression
could be accomplished quickly and at a level of reliability to make it
possible to use as a tool for primary storage optimization. IBM’s Real-
time Compression Appliances are an example of today’s state-of-the-art
technology.
IBM Real-time Compression Appliances have been designed to improve
NAS efficiency dramatically. Here are some of the benefits companies
can realize:
 Reduce primary and backup NAS data in real-time by up to 80%,
with no performance degradation. IBM’s Real-time Compression
Appliances allow NAS data to be handled in compressed form, which
leads to improvements in downstream storage system operations
(i.e., backup and recovery, archiving, etc.). The less storage to
backup and store means faster backup and recovery, increased data
availability, better RPO/RTO, and reduced costs. The compression
works with NAS data and storage systems and can gain up to 5x
more storage efficiency.
 Virtual machine files and data produced by virtual environments can
also be dramatically reduced in size. In VMware environments, IBM
Real-time Compression reduces primary storage by up to 72%.
 IBM Real-time Compression enhances data deduplication to improve
overall data reduction.
 There is a cascading effect of efficiencies - IBM Real-time
Compression enables significant reductions in storage CPU and disk
utilization and less storage traffic going over the network.
 A reduction in the data footprint means less storage equipment to
power, cool and manage.
 IBM Real-time Compression Appliances are non-disruptive to
existing systems, applications, and processes.
 IBM Real-time Compression Appliances are easy to install and use.
 Improvements across the entire information life cycle can help further
reduce management expenses.
U S E R S T O R IE S
Let’s examine an example of how an IT organization that deployed a
virtualization environment found itself facing explosive data growth and
then benefited from the use of IBM’s Real-time Compression in
managing that growth.
BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY
Ben-Gurion University in Israel is a major center for teaching and
research, with more than 19,000 students enrolled in the Faculties of
Engineering Sciences, Health Sciences, Natural Sciences, Humanities
The Kusnetzky Group © 2011 Page 4

5. and Social Sciences, the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and
Management and the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies.
The IT department at Ben-Gurion University is responsible for all
computer-related projects and issues for the entire University, including
registration, academic research, computing classes and supported
programs. In addition to University programs, select outside research
groups are permitted to utilize the high performance computing
environments on campus.
Ben-Gurion University uses VMware for server virtualization.
CHALLENGE
All groups are added to the University’s main data cluster in order to
provide ongoing access to resources and the capability to utilize
available storage resources allocated to other groups at the University.
By utilizing a “storage on demand” model that enables researchers, labs
and whole departments to acquire managed disk space on an as-needed
basis, Ben-Gurion allows groups to grow over time while ensuring all
data is fully backed up to the University’s backup filer and then archived
to tape. Ben-Gurion was experiencing exponential data storage growth
with an expanding number of research groups, University administration
and academic departments demanding ever-larger amounts of storage
capacity.
The department currently has a VMware server farm that runs over 50
virtual servers with 1.5TB of disk space each from a centralized NetApp®
file server. With data storage demands continuing to grow rapidly, the IT
department was looking for a new technology that would improve its
storage efficiency. It needed a solution that would enable it to utilize
existing disk capacity more efficiently without affecting performance or
creating an additional layer of management complexity.
SOLUTION
Ben-Gurion’s IT department deployed IBM Real-time Compression
Appliances to automatically compress Microsoft Office data, research
data and Oracle databases that are stored on its virtual NAS and Sun®
Solaris® solutions. The IT department was able to start compressing
data immediately. All of the data already stored on the University’s
system was compressed, reducing each existing 300 GB volume to less
than 50 GB. The reduced size of the volumes made it much more
manageable to perform functions such as mirroring and backup, and the
entire storage environment now runs much faster than before.
Ben-Gurion realized a 65% to 83% reduction across its Microsoft Office
data, research data and Oracle databases. By compressing home
directories on-the-fly, IT administrators have been able to create new
volumes and copy over data quickly and easily. All data is seamlessly
compressed and does not require stopping the production environment,
making it easier to copy data whenever needed as well as improve
overall system performance.
With the ability to seamlessly compress data, without affecting
production environment performance, the IT department at Ben-Gurion
University is now able to offer end users additional storage capacity at
the same cost. It also empowers IT managers to better utilize the
University’s existing storage solutions.
With the additional space savings, the University’s IT department has
been able to extend the life-cycle of the current infrastructure without
The Kusnetzky Group © 2011 Page 5

6. having to continually purchase additional inefficiently utilized disk-based
storage capacity. By offering on-demand capacity-optimized storage for
“In the past three years we the University’s computer labs, departments and research groups, the IT
have continued to see an department is able to deliver significantly more usable space to end
exponential growth rate in data users and get more return out of its storage purchases.
storage requirements. This has
not been a linear upscale of KEY BENEFITS
storage growth. Data is Not only did the IT department at Ben-Gurion achieve ROI within the first
growing so rapidly on campus year of use, managing less storage has allowed IT managers to focus on
and storage is in such high other important tasks. In addition to the structured data already being
demand that we had to find a compressed, the University will also soon begin compressing
solution that would enable us unstructured data that is stored in the high performance computing
to better utilize our existing environment.
infrastructure. We’ve been
amazed by the amount of Storage Efficiency: Ben-Gurion University was able to reduce each of its
compression that we can many 300 GB storage volumes down to 50 GB each in the first year of
achieve by using the IBM Real- deploying IBM Real-time Compression, reducing storage management
time Compression appliance.” requirements and driving efficient utilization of its storage-on-demand
services by 65% to 83%
Shmuel Gruber, Computation Cost Savings: IBM Real-time Compression appliances enable Ben-
Center Director, at Ben-Gurion Gurion to extend the lifetime of its existing disk capacity and reduce the
University storage and resulting in a better storage ROI for individual departments
and research groups in less than one year. The IT department is able to
offer research labs and departments more storage capacity at the same
cost and extend the lifespan of its current infrastructure despite growing
storage requirements.
S U M M A R Y
Organizations are using more and more data. Much of this growth can be
attributed to the increasing collection of analytical data, documents,
messages, presentations and other unstructured data. Data retention
requirements and the need for both backup and disaster recovery plans
is causing organizations to face the fact that backup and disaster
recovery procedures are time consuming.
As difficult as it is to address the need to maintain backups today, the
introduction of virtual servers and virtualized environments is likely to
only exacerbate the problem. The proliferation of virtual environments
means that there are more sources of data to include in a company’s
backup and archival storage plan.
Increased requirements for data storage causes a number of painful
problems including increased costs, difficulty finding a window of time to
successfully backup data, and being prepared for either a disaster or for
an audit.
Reducing primary NAS data enables companies to address storage
efficiency issues at the source of the problem. Real-time compression’s
benefits cascade throughout downstream storage operations such as
backup, recovery and archiving, as well as optimize the efficiencies of
other data reduction technologies such as deduplication. In virtualization
environments, real-time compression complements system and storage
reduction requirements and contributes to improving the overall cost of
running the IT infrastructure by reducing the amount of storage
equipment that needs to be powered, cooled and managed. IBM Real-
time Compression Appliances are able to affect this high level of storage
optimization by up to 5x without performance degradation or forcing the
company to change applications, processes, or procedures.
The Kusnetzky Group © 2011 Page 6

7. IBM Real-time Compression ought to be considered as part of any large
enterprise initiatives for storage capacity optimization in large virtual
private data centers and cloud management environments.
For more information, please visit http://www.ibm.com/storage/rtc
TSL03055-USEN-00 The Kusnetzky Group © 2011 Page 7