Enrique Salem, Symantec CEO, started by offering “Every year, I stand up and talk about how data is growing … and every year we underestimate it.” (which is oh so very true for most IT environments today)

The launch events were recently held at the Tesla Motor headquarters, with highlights shared in today’s live webcasts along with new product demos and very active tweets.  The Tesla event was an impressive (no, I didn’t get to drive one).  But the theme of innovation was the right one, and they had some cool stuff to talk about on both product lines. 

You can get some insight what the new technologies are and  how they work at Symantec’s new video launch site – http://www.betterbackupforall.com/.  Kudos to the Symantec PMs and distinguished engineers on bringing some advanced functions not only to market but explaining them in a way that is meaningful and not just marketecture.

You’ll see more from ESG on both products as they come to market, and am hoping that my buddies in the ESG Lab get a chance to get some deep hands-on time with both products.  But in the meantime, the topline good stuff to me were:

Backup Exec 2012

• Easier Acquisition through Simpler SKUs, including Small-Business Edition and V-Ray editions
• Easier Operation through new UI’s and workflows that seem to really make sense. 
• Very cool “No hardware disaster recovery” through P2V and B2V functionality (more on that later)

NetBackup 7.5

• Up to 100X faster backups, by combining client-side dedupe during backups through NBU Accelerator
• Integrated use of snapshots from NetApp through NBU Replication Director
• Smarter retention of data through NBU Search

I was able to get a preview copy of BE 2012 and just started trying it out on my own home server – which might be a separate blog post later, along with other coverage by ESG as these products hit the street. 

Until then, you can read more about what I saw and liked in a TechTarget article covering this week’s announcements by Symantec.

As always, thanks for reading.

“They say the speed has been increased by 100 X, which is a bold claim,” said Jason Buffington, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). “They integrated technology from client-side deduplication. First, files are identified and then the parts of the file that have changed are deduped.”

via Symantec backup applications get makeovers for speed, VMs.

Click here to read the new ESG Lab Report on CommVault Simpana 9.0 “OnePass”

Click here to read a new ESG Analyst Brief on CommVault Simpana 9

With data growing at ever increasing rates, more data sets are simply becoming “too big” to back up — at least not in the traditional sense.  To help combat this, Archive is becoming more and more the steady-partner to Backup, whereby once something is adequately backed up, dormant data can be archived off — making future backups better.

That all sounds like steps in the right direction, but let’s take a look using a “Good, Better, Best” perspective for how these come together:

In other words — One Pass on the data, which (not coincidently) is the name of Simpana’s new feature.

CommVault may not be the only vendor to have ever converged its software’s methodologies, but it is now on a very short list of vendors who are addressing multiple data management problems with a truly unified solution through an elegant architecture.  And most impressively, they did it while not even asking for new licensing or deployment methods.  That’s right, existing Simpana 9.0 customers can take advantage of this by simply applying the most recent quarterly software update and then doing their normal agent update process.  After that, two simple checkboxes in the Simpana management console will enable the unified “OnePass” behavior within the Simpana system.  (check out the ESG Lab Report on all of this)

While I would love to say that consolidating the 3 workflows of Backup, Archiving, and SRM into one process gives you 3X return for your backup window, there are too many variables to make that claim, including:  file types and size, amount of redundancy, archiving retention rules, etc.   But by only traversing the disk system once (instead of for each of the three processes) every Simpana customer should see an appreciable improvement in backup window SLA compliance, as well as the less quantifiable but more appreciable reduced I/O impact on production disks and networks and CPU — all of which will free the production environment to do less backup tasks and more production work.

As always, thanks for reading.

Click here to read earlier ESG coverage of CommVault Simpana

The Challenges

Companies of all sizes continue to struggle with the various aspects of data protection. A great deal of attention is paid to solving not only traditional backup/restore, but also adding archiving and storage resource management to their infrastructures. Along with improving backups of virtualization platforms, laptops, and key workloads, ESG research[1] found that IT end-users planning to implement new data protection initiatives had other goals as well:

• 19% plan to implement data archiving
• 19% plan to implement data deduplication
• 18% plan to re-architect their backup processes
• 13% plan to implement reporting of backup/storage

Users attempting to address diverse backup, archive, and reporting needs often employ technologies from multiple vendors—each with their own agent technologies on individual production servers, as well as their own server back-ends and management interfaces. Each point solution performs its own operations on every production server, including traversing the disk, consuming memory/CPU cycles, and contributing to network traffic.

The Solution: CommVault Simpana 9.0 with “OnePass”

CommVault customers running Simpana software have already learned to appreciate something better than a myriad of point solutions. Simpana software’s common platform delivers backup, archive, search and storage resource management administered from a single console. While built on a single software code base, Simpana software modules have previously utilized separate processes and index databases to run archive jobs, followed by backup and, finally, reporting.

Throughout 2011, CommVault regularly added incremental features to its Simpana 9.0 platform—one of which is a new operating methodology referred to as “OnePass,” which enables backup, archiving, and analytical reporting from a single traversal of the file system. By only reading and/or moving data once, redundant backup, archive, and reporting processes are eliminated to speed operations, reduce storage costs, and simplify management.

ESG Lab Testing

ESG Lab tested the new OnePass functionality at a shared CommVault and HP test facility located in Denver, Colorado. The ESG Lab test bed consisted of a typical Simpana software configuration of one CommServe and two MediaAgents, each configured to protect three HP X9720 scale-out NAS nodes sharing a single file system, as seen in Figure 1.

The test bed was provided by HP to assess Simpana 9.0’s ability to protect a high-volume of unstructured data.

ESG Lab investigated how CommVault consolidated data protection methodologies using the OnePass architecture. The left side of Figure 2 shows the typical IO patterns of three related data management workflows, including traditional backup, file-archival for reducing disk consumption, and reporting services. The right side of Figure 2 shows the combined workflow of the OnePass-enabled agent in Simpana 9.0.

Figure 2 shows how “OnePass” traverses the production storage only once, thereby eliminating significant IO redundancies on the primary server, which should dramatically reduce backup windows and the IO penalties associated with data protection and management tasks.

In a traditional environment using three data management tools, ideally with some level of integration or at least reporting, one might:

1. Perform a traditional backup for data recoverability using traditional incremental methods.
2. After the backup is complete and therefore recoverable (just in case), determine if any files are candidates for archive (hierarchical) management. These files should be “stubbed” to save space, meaning that the original file is replaced with a “stub” pointer referring back to the original file held in near-line storage. This ensures that the actual contents are able to be retrieved transparently when the file is accessed.
3. With the backup finished and the appropriate files migrated to near-line storage, update the reporting system for usage and capacity.

In the case of Simpana OnePass functionality, the operating methodology is similar … yet optimized:

1. The agent conducts a backup of changed files.
2. With the backup changes successfully committed on the media server, the same agent then assesses the files as candidates for archival, and, if so, stubs the file.

• No additional file system traversal is necessary because it was done during the backup.
• No additional disk “read” or network “send” operations are performed during stubbing, as would be required by a separate archival product. The archival process knows that the backup process already read the file and sent it during the backup operation—so it already exists within the Simpana unified storage pool.
• Either way, the archival routines within the OnePass agent simply perform the stubbing operation of replacing the actual file with a stub—after which the file-system driver will handle retrieval requests in case the file is accessed.

1. With the backup complete and the appropriate files archived, the reporting mechanism updates its information.  Again, this occurs without any incremental disk traversal or network operations because Simpana OnePass uses a common index and reporting mechanism from a single collection.

ESG Lab tested the unified OnePass operating model by first conducting separate backups, archives, and report generation using Simpana 9.0 without the OnePass methodology at work. The files were spread across six nodes of an HP NAS and were backed up in parallel by one of the two Simpana media server nodes seen in Figure 1. After the initial testing, ESG Lab audited the results of a similar prolonged test provided by CommVault.

ESG Lab found that the overall backup time was reduced anywhere from 30% to 200% based on three key factors: data types and sizes, amount of redundancy among stored files (e.g., versioning), and archival retention settings that will vary by company. At the low end, even a 30% time savings may mean the difference between compliance with backup window SLAs or not. At the high end, the incremental nature of these backup processes, coupled with nearly transparent archival and SRM functionality, may make the entire backup tax nearly vanish for some production environments.

While less quantifiable, ESG Lab noted that by 1) only traversing the file system once, and 2) offloading the analysis processes to the Simpana MediaServer seen in Figure 2, an appreciable amount of disk IO and CPU processing should be relieved from the production server(s). This means that the production platforms should spend far fewer resources on data protection/management, reserving resulting in more IO and CPU for production purposes.

ESG Lab was impressed by how simple the process was to enable OnePass for Simpana customers. As is typical, the actual agent software components are upgradable through either a push from the Simpana administration console or an .MSI through the customer’s typical software deployment tool. The software can be deployed at any point even if the OnePass functionality is not immediately enabled.

Figure 3 shows how enabling the Archive or SRM reporting functions within the unified agent (i.e., enabling “OnePass”) is simply a matter of two checkboxes within the backup configuration in the Simpana administration console.

Simpana Archive Integration with Scale-out NAS

“OnePass” is not the only innovation recently delivered for the Simpana 9.0 customer base. Along with backing up large file systems, CommVault now also offers its archival capabilities as the near-line extension of scale-out NAS platforms, including the HP X9000 (IBRIX) product family.

By integrating the Simpana software’s archival ability with scale-out NAS, CommVault software is able to offer an additional tier of near‑line storage, enabling organizations to leverage a wider range of storage options at a better price point.

ESG Lab Testing

ESG Lab initially treated the HP X9720 platforms as the production server farm being backed up by Simpana. By reconfiguring the test environment, ESG Lab was also able to test Simpana archival storage as a near-line expansion of a scale-out NAS appliance.

Figure 4 shows the reconfigured test bed with the production NAS being archived by the recent enhancements in Simpana 9.0, using the HP X9000 (IBRIX) platforms as a recent example.

In Figure 4, files accessed from the X9000 platforms can be either taken from their own storage pool or transparently retrieved from the Simpana Archive. While the user “sees” all files just as they would expect to within the NAS, those files may be within the primary storage of the scale-out file system or within the Simpana archival storage pool (using any storage that Simpana software supports).

While some NAS vendors provide their own “archival” capabilities through storage tiering and near-line capacity, it doesn’t always align with the “unified” data protection benefits described above unless 1) backup and reporting are also performed within the NAS/SAN and 2) the NAS/SAN platform is common across the entire corporate environment.  Using a software-based approach, customers may be able to leverage the unified data protection/management capabilities of CommVault software across a wide variety of production servers and NAS platforms consistently—and as a complement to any data management functions that may be offered by the NAS itself.

ESG Lab tested this by enabling the Simpana Linux file server agent on each of the HP X9000 NAS nodes. While many data management products purportedly present challenges when integrating with IBRIX platforms, CommVault is able to use its standard agent with the addition of a registry key on each IBRIX node.

After enabling the agent, ESG Lab tested the user experience by defining archival policies within Simpana software for various files and then retrieving them from an NFS client workstation.

Figure 5 shows two files used during testing of the archive integration with scale-out NAS:

• The top file listing shows the files were originally 100 MB.
• The left statistic reveals each file consumes 102,512 KB.
• The right statistic reports each file’s size as 104,857,600 bytes in the directory listing.
• The middle of the screen reveals that the files were stubbed after archive—consuming only 20 KB each within the NAS, while still displaying 100 MB in the directory listing.
• The last file listing shows that after accessing one of the files, it has been retrieved and thus consumes its regular capacity within the NAS while the other file remains archived until first access.

Note, that while Figure 5 shows the attributes from an NFS perspective, Windows (CIFS) users would have a similar experience where the actual consumption size is masked and the user perception is all files being offered and stored on the HP NAS.

After enabling archival, ESG Lab configured recurring jobs to enable migration of data from the shared file system within the six IBRIX nodes to the Simpana ContentStore. Files that have been migrated will be returned to make file requests from a client workstation accessing the NFS shares on the X9000. ESG Lab observed no appreciable lag in performance or changes in the users’ experience as file requests were routed to the Simpana platform and transparently retrieved from the CommVault software-powered archive.

ESG Lab Validation Highlights

• ESG Lab examined and tested the combined methodology of “OnePass” with appreciably reduced overall data protection jobs, as well as reduced impact to the production servers due to the consolidated network and disk operations of “OnePass.”
• ESG Lab observed how easy it was to enable Simpana software as an archive to a scale-out NAS, without perceivable changes to the end-users’ experience.

Issues to Consider

• ESG Lab found that while it would be easy for an experienced Simpana operator to add the OnePass functionality to their environment, the Simpana administration console may appear complex to someone new. This is a reasonable result of a very mature ninth-generation codebase that continually adds new features and options based on feedback from over 15,000 customers.[3] Those considering converting to Simpana for its OnePass functionality, its other workload-specific capabilities, or its ability to provide an archival store for scale-out NAS should be prepared for a learning curve which can be offset by training.
• While the HP X9000 is just one of the scale-out NAS platforms supported by the Simpana software archival function, customers will want to ensure that their specific platform is currently covered. With CommVault routinely producing updates and incremental functionality, those not directly supported today may be supported later in 2012.

The Bigger Truth

Most environments struggle with a myriad of data protection and management technologies, perhaps because of workload-specific requirements, data center solutions that are less ideal in remote offices, or simply different data management goals (e.g., backup, archive, and reporting). For many, the sentiment has often been “If there was a unified solution that did everything well, then we would all own it already.” For others, the potential interoperability of suite-based software or simply complementary products from the same vendor have left customers disappointed as they discovered that each product operates as if it were the only tool that matters.

By simply enabling the “OnePass” capabilities within Simpana 9.0, CommVault customers can enjoy something that many others should find very enviable: a single agent that backs up, archives, and reports on each production server, with only one network stream and significantly optimized disk-IO impact. The result is something that appears so intuitive that it should be the measure by which other unified products aspire—where functions/technologies may have originally been developed or even acquired separately, but eventually become folded into a single agent talking to a unified back end.

Along with observing the before and after effects of “OnePass,” ESG Lab also tested integration of the archival capabilities of Simpana software with scale-out NAS, showing an appreciable benefit to customers with applicable platforms. Without changing the client experience or installing client-side software, even the most advanced NAS platforms can take advantage of an additional tier of storage through the near-line capabilities of Simpana.

If you are currently using a variety of data and management technologies for different purposes and have been disappointed by the lack of integration or coexistence supportability, then Simpana may be exactly what you have been looking for. While individual test results will vary, the fact that common disk reads and network operations are unified should be a valuable optimization method that all environments can take advantage of. Looking at the unified workflow of Simpana software’s OnePass methodology should make you ask, “Why doesn’t everyone do it like that?”

[2] See: ESG Research Report, Scale-Out Storage Market Forecast 2010-2015, December 2010.

[3] CommVault press release, November 2011

Background

IT managers are always on the lookout for ways to improve backup and recovery performance, streamline protection management, and reduce costs. ESG research proves the point (see Figure 1), as backup and recovery remain top spending priorities year after year. In 2011, when asked where they would make significant storage infrastructure investments, more than one-third (36%) of survey respondents planned to invest in backup and recovery solutions.[1] Other top-ten protection priorities include data replication for offsite disaster recovery (24%) and tape replacement (15%).

Improved storage management software tools (21%) and data reduction technologies (18%) are also expected to receive investment money. While these technologies can improve many aspects of IT, they can be applied to data protection tasks specifically to reduce costs.

EMC NetWorker

EMC NetWorker is a well-known and trusted backup and recovery solution that centralizes, automates, and accelerates data protection across the IT environment. It enables organizations to leverage a common platform for backup and recovery of heterogeneous data while keeping business applications online. NetWorker operates in diverse computing environments including multiple operating systems; SAN, NAS, and DAS disk storage environments; tape drives and libraries; and cloud storage. It protects critical business applications including databases, messaging environments, ERP systems, content management systems, and virtual server environments.

Integration with VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP). NetWorker supports VADP, VMware’s recommended off-host protection mechanism that replaces VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). VADP improves performance by eliminating temporary storage of snapshots and enabling support for Change Block Tracking (CBT) as well as improving network utilization and reducing management overhead. NetWorker communicates with VMware vCenter to auto-discover and display a visual map of the virtual environment, streamlining administrative tasks dramatically.

EMC Data Domain. Data Domain systems deduplicate data inline during the backup process. Deduplication reduces the amount of disk storage needed to retain and protect data by ratios of 10-30x and greater, making disk a cost-effective alternative to tape.  Deduplicated data can be stored onsite for immediate restores enabling longer-term retention on disk. NetWorker not only can use Data Domain systems as disk targets, but also can leverage Data Domain Boost (DD Boost) software to achieve faster and more efficient data protection. DD Boost increases performance by distributing portions of the deduplication process to the NetWorker storage nodes and/or application modules so that only unique, compressed data segments are sent to the Data Domain system.

DD Boost also provides visibility into Data Domain system information, and it enables NetWorker to control replication between multiple Data Domain systems while maintaining a single point of management for tracking all backups and duplicate copies.

EMC NetWorker Clone-controlled replication with Data Domain Boost. A key feature available with the integration of NetWorker and DD Boost is clone-controlled replication. Through the NetWorker GUI, administrators can create, control, monitor, and catalog backup clones using network-efficient Data Domain Replicator software. NetWorker also enables administrators to move backup images to a central location where they can be cloned to tape, consolidating tape operations. With NetWorker wizard-based clone-controlled replication, administrators can schedule Data Domain Replicator operations, track save sets, set retention policies, monitor the local and remote replicas available for recovery, and schedule cloning automatically. It also takes advantage of Data Domain’s deduplication, compression, and high-speed replication to reduce data amounts and speed cloning resulting in improved performance and reduced network bandwidth requirements.

EMC Data Protection Advisor. DPA provides unified monitoring, analysis, alerting, and reporting across the data protection environment. It collects information about data protection automatically to inform IT decisions and help administrators correct problems and meet SLAs. The software’s single, integrated view brings simplicity to a complex environment, reduces risk, and helps IT work more effectively. DPA takes volumes of disparate data and turns it into actionable knowledge, enabling organizations to reduce costs by more efficiently managing people, processes, and equipment.

ESG Lab recently tested NetWorker and confirmed that enhancements such as greater integration with Data Domain systems, VMware, and DPA result in faster backup performance, better replication control, and simpler administration across heterogeneous environments. Its enhanced versatility helps reduce both the cost and the complexity of a task that is typically considered to be complicated and expensive.

As a complement to our hands-on testing in the laboratory setting, we also recently spoke with three IT managers using NetWorker, Data Domain, and DPA in heterogeneous physical and virtual environments. Their organizations, which vary in size and in the types of data being protected, include a high-tech research and development organization, a diversified media company, and a government agency.

In the next sections, we let these customers speak for themselves. All customer quotes appear in italics.

Customer #1: A High-tech R&D Organization

ESG spoke with the backup and recovery architect for the worldwide R&D organization of a global technology leader. This architect is responsible for protecting file system and SQL database data, test-build source code, and user-experience test media files for all the R&D teams and departments across the company in all geographies.

Situation

Our organization was established specifically to support the product groups and their mission. A great many spots had not been covered by backups, so we wanted to provide backup services that would have a global span of reach and be able to scale. Our goal is to be 100% virtualized, which means we could be looking at 20,000 to 30,000 discrete virtualized servers in a single environment with a single data zone. We have to scale to meet those needs. Also, we aim to be 100% tapeless.

NetWorker Environment

We have 20 TB of data now, but we are just turning on the environment for the general population. We sized the environment to scale and have 128 TB of committed use for about 2,000 clients. We back up physical and Hyper-V virtual servers. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We plan to expand to other data zones in the future, but we built the NetWorker Server to handle 7,000 to 8,000 clients before we extend it to other zones. Next we will expand to a large lab with about 200 TB across 4,000 clients. We’ll probably be backing up multi-petabytes within the next two to three years.

Right now, we’re a single data zone with a single NetWorker server running at the central site. We built a high-speed environment with 10 Gb connections, tiered storage, fast drives, and flash cache. Storage won’t be a bottleneck as far as getting NetWorker performance. Four storage nodes are attached and run within that data zone. Two of those storage nodes are in a remote location using the 10 Gb connection between our central and remote sites. At the central site, we have a DD880, and DPA runs there as well. Primary data is in the lab environment with two storage nodes. Those are using a DD670 target, so all clients in the labs backup to those two storage nodes.

The entire environment is controlled in the central site 10 miles away. We use DD Boost from the storage node to the DD670, and NetWorker to manage replication from the DD670 to the DD880. So DD Boost clones create our offsite components. The DD670 provides 30-day retention, while the DD880 provides 90-day retention. Data is expired from there. Longer retention will be offered later but with a goal of remaining tapeless. We have multiple VLANS, including a dedicated replication and metadata VLAN.

Why Select NetWorker

We looked at other solutions from Symantec and CommVault. One was too complex to deploy with the number of services we run. With the other, the size of the company was too small: I’m not going to bet our source code on a small company, and their view of support and customer response were not up to my enterprise standards. Also their interface is very complex, while NetWorker’s is intuitive. NetWorker’s footprint is also lighter-weight.

Implementation

Our NetWorker environment (see Figure 3) has been in place for about a year. It took 12 hours to implement NetWorker, Data Domain, and DPA for reporting and chargeback.

Results

We have expanded the data that is protected, incorporating global reach and central management. We are now able to do cost recovery and chargeback. We no longer have to write scripts because we can schedule cloning and pick save sets. The cloning mechanisms are working very well for us.

Customer #2: Diversified Global Media Conglomerate

ESG spoke with the director for international infrastructure and projects at this large global media company. The organization provides services to all international offices—60 locations across all divisions, from film to consumer products, retail stores, and entertainment locations. This customer’s major IT hubs are located in Hong Kong and Tokyo (covering Asia); Paris and London (covering Continental Europe, the U.K., South Africa, the Middle East, and Russia); and Buenos Aires and Mexico City (covering Latin America).

Situation

We currently provide services for more than 15,000 employees. That number will grow over the next few years as we add about 13,000 employees in 160 locations including China. We have focused on consolidating sprawl and reducing costs—because these improvements will drive the agility that enables us to expand at a very high rate. Our offices are not running the same things—they are doing film, theatrical, distribution, consumer products, retail, etc.

The way we are growing, we just cannot have individual backup servers in every location—but we can grow organically using the major hubs in each area, making us nimble enough, for instance, to have a 30-day cycle from signing a lease to opening a retail store.

Just two-and-a-half years ago, every individual office had local tape silos running Backup Exec or NetBackup. We tried to get a harmonized platform with automated reporting, but it didn’t work. Each location had a different offsite backup vendor partner who would rotate tapes and take them offsite. We had no centralization or reporting.

NetWorker Environment

In each [Tier 1] hub [Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, Paris, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires], we have servers, storage, NetWorker nodes, and a Data Domain DD890 or DD880. NetWorker supports everything under the sun: Oracle 10g/11 and Informix databases, plus HP-UX, Red Hat Linux, Windows virtual machines, Solaris, and AIX.

The retail end makes it different, so we have AS400 as well. NetWorker plays well for Wintel, Red Hat Linux, HP-UX, and some Unix platforms.

So we operate in pairs. Anything that is backed up to Data Domain in Hong Kong is replicated to Tokyo and vice versa. Paris/London and Mexico City/Buenos Aires work the same way. All of our Tier 2 and Tier 3 locations are basically fully virtualized and run on Celerra iSCSI for file- and block-based data. That’s all replicated back to the Tier 1 site using Celerra Replicator. At those hubs, we backup and write out to Data Domain. We still use the Data Domain systems as VTLs because it’s the only way to get NDMP (Network Data Management Protocol) out. The Data Domain systems have a split personality: They support the advanced file type devices (AFTD) as well as VTL.

Any OS-based level services we drive through NetWorker. So, we still back up the HP-UX boxes running Oracle 10g RAC onto NetWorker, and with or without DD Boost, ultimately, it all goes to Data Domain. We give DBAs the option of writing SQL and Oracle RMAN directly into Data Domain; we leave Data Domain to age-out the database jobs and provide cloning to make sure that the backups are sent offsite. DPA reports on it all.

Retention policies are anywhere from one week to one year, and they are handled globally. Everything expires either on virtual tape or spinning disk.

We are live on DD Boost too. For all virtualized environments, it comes in from VADP. Then, basically, we write to the storage node, and DD Boost spins it back over. We get the VADP nodes to function as network storage nodes, have DD Boost [running] on it, and then poof, we write back out to the Data Domain systems. That’s [representing] significant savings.

Operationally, we drive all work through DPA, including reporting for Data Domain. That part is still in its infancy. We would like to see deeper reports for Data Domain, but it’s pretty good. So we have a DPA point of presence for Europe, one in Asia, and one in Latin America. They handle all their countries and locations—not just regarding NetWorker, but also Celerra Replicator and RecoverPoint job status.

Why Select NetWorker

EMC came in, did a competitive swap of the sprawling stand alone Symantec-based tape configurations, and consolidated [us] onto a single NetWorker platform. I think the secret sauce really was the reporting functionality that came from DPA.

We looked at IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) too. All [backup applications] have their pros and cons, but the orchestration from DPA really sealed it together. [It offers us] standardization and automation of reports and the ability to actually blend not just typical NetWorker backup, but also replication through RecoverPoint or Celerra Replication and Data Domain integration. It all flowed into a single DPA screen, and that is the secret sauce for us. NetWorker also has a cleaner user interface.

Results

We are extremely satisfied with the NetWorker and DPA solution. We could not be happier. We have been able to free-up resources within the infrastructure team because we’re not troubleshooting failing backup jobs or failing tapes, and [we are not] having to deal with two different consoles. Our team can focus on more value-added items because [the environment] just works (see Figure 4).

We’ve drawn a line in the sand. We are a Data Domain back-end shop. With this implementation and DPA, we don’t have to log into the Data Domain box just to figure out what’s going on in terms of job successes, failures, high-water marks, times for backup, replication, and cloning between hubs.

We did some DD Boost tests. We saw an immediate 40% reduction in backup times compared to our current AFTD backup and very significant deduplication from the source storage node back to the Data Domain device. Network traffic dropped from 50 megabits per second to 7 Mbps. NDMP is really our problem: We really want NDMP DD Boost functionality!

With NetWorker clone controlled replication, we can actually manage Data Domain replication from within NetWorker. Once we’re done with the setup of the job, we never really have to go back to the NetWorker screen. Everything goes through DPA.

We’ve consolidated from 50 sites down to six. And we have gotten rid of all tape except for legacy systems like AS400. The NDMP backups go to virtual tape, so they are also on the Data Domain system. It’s been a year and a half since we had to do any tape out at all. There’s a very real chance that once we are done with the tape silos’ depreciation cycles we’ll take them out completely.

Our goal is not backup. It’s to provide a better automated DR-based service. We want to automate more and provide better DR and HA capabilities. NetWorker backup happens to be one of the vehicles to actually bring that about.

Customer #3: International Government Agency

ESG spoke with the storage virtualization and data protection team leader for an Asia/Pacific government agency responsible for community services such as child protection and safety, disability services, housing, sports, and recreation.

Situation

There’s a big consolidation process at the moment and a refinement of our tiering and classification of business systems. About 12 months ago, we had a single data center and commissioned a new one. So there is a huge project [underway] at the moment to identify the priority of applications, [determine] how the business wants them protected, better define SLAs, etc.

Originally, we had a single data zone and clustered backup server. Then, we split our data center into DC1 and DC2, and we moved our backup environment into a third small data center (DC3). We had two storage nodes attached to an EMC CLARiiON CX4-480 with about 70 TB of disk, and a Quantum i6000 tape library with 10 RTO-5 drives. The architecture was simple, and the roughly 600 clients were balanced across the storage nodes. They backed up to the AFTDs in the storage nodes, and we used scripts to do cloning. A very small number of clients backed up directly to tape—to preserve PST archives and things like that. We also archive to EMC Centera, and that backs up to tape as well.

NetWorker Environment

We have 90% to 95% of our infrastructure virtualized with about 1,500 virtual servers. We have been running NetWorker for close to 15 years now. We are running the NetWorker server in a non-network zone, so effectively, we have a manual failover for the cluster.

Today, we have three DD890s, one for each data center. The two active data center systems are configured with 64 TB, while the larger one has 128 TB. We split the data zone in two because we grew by acquisition and by the merging of departments, which added about 150 more clients. A new pair of VMware virtual centers became active about nine months ago too, adding another 200 Citrix clients. We were using VCB for that stuff, and have moved to VADP. We may clone that data to tape or just continue to use client-based backups and clone to tape. With our Data Domains, it’s great: We can turn around and do VADP backup as well as client-based [backup], and it doesn’t consume any more storage.

In DC1 and DC2, we deployed a pair of storage nodes for each zone and attached 16 DD Boost devices to those. So there was a single storage node for each data zone in each active data center—four virtual storage nodes in the active data centers. The nodes in DC1 have devices off the Data Domain system at DC2. We back up to our local storage node and send a full data set between the client and the storage node, and then DD Boost sends the data off to the opposing data center. It is deduping the data at that point. DD Boost helps [reduce the bandwidth consumed] on that LAN.

We use NetWorker clone-controlled replication, going from a DD Boost device to a DD Boost device. This gets data from the DC1 and DC2 Data Domain systems cloned to the DC3 Data Domain system. We clone it to tape as well. VSS [monitoring] is pretty much built into anything, so we do use that; we’ve got a couple of instances of the Oracle module in use, and the Exchange and SQL modules too.

In terms of retention policies, daily backups are retained for four weeks on the DC1 and DC2 Data Domain systems; when we clone them to the DC3 Data Domain, we change the retention and browse policies. Weeklies are retained for 12 weeks, and quarterlies for 12 months, all on Data Domain. DC3 is a central place to tape out if we need to, and tapes are stored offsite.

Why Select NetWorker

There is a government push to standardize technologies, so NetWorker and Data Domain were the main [candidates for standardization].

Implementation

Getting it up and running and configuring devices took us an hour. In terms of actually working out how these systems were going to work within our organization and [support] the way we do things, we had to tweak things a little bit—like getting 16 devices to each storage node, and our pools, etc. In terms of deploying devices, it’s easy. We probably had a week’s worth of planning to do, but the actual implementation (see Figure 5) took only a couple of days.

Results

Full backups of our Exchange data used to take 36 to 48 hours, and they’ve come down substantially to about 12 hours with DD Boost. We used to split our full backups into four chunks and stagger them across each weekend of the month. With the Data Domain systems, we’ve collapsed that [process] down to doing full backups on the first weekend only.

We used to run out of space constantly. We had 70 TB of disk available with the CLARiiON and advanced file device. But because we also had media database issues, we were waiting for the network to clear out devices.

Because we don’t have to do that anymore, and because the Data Domain systems are sized appropriately, the backups finish in a timely manner. That means the network can do better database consistency checks, so our whole environment has become more stable.

The other big benefit is that we now have all of our backups online. Our data set is in DC1, initial backup is in DC2, and a clone is in DC3—almost instantaneously. So we have the added comfort of quickly having multiple copies in multiple locations. We still write cloning scripts because the GUI-based tool only filters save-sets by group, client, or pool—not by bus or anything. With small changes, I would start to use it.

When we moved to the new backup environment, we also moved to capacity-based licensing. That has meant we can experiment with virtual storage nodes and other modules, configurations, and features [without having to request a temporary key, with its associated delay and subsequent sales call]. It’s just brilliant in that sense.

The Bigger Truth

Backup/recovery gets a bad rap from most organizations because of the pain and expense it can cause. But whatever its reputation, no one disputes its importance. As a result, backup and recovery are perpetually among IT organizations’ top spending priorities.

Those organizations today face not only continual data growth, but also new backup and recovery challenges related to server virtualization. IT managers look to storage solution vendors to help them:

• Reduce the amount of backup data.
• Find easier and faster ways to complete backups.
• Speed recovery to keep the business in operation.
• Enhance management capabilities.
• And always, reduce data-protection costs. Backups must be done, but no CIO likes spending money on data that is really only there for emergencies.

ESG has been familiar with EMC NetWorker for many years. We completed our most recent NetWorker ESG Lab Validation in July 2011. NetWorker remains a viable solution for diverse computing and storage shops, and recent improvements are designed to enhance data protection for VMware environments (via VADP integration), take advantage of EMC Data Domain Boost (to speed backup performance while leveraging deduplication), consolidate management, and integrate DPA (for reporting and chargeback).

It is worth noting that few vendors would be able to offer such an extensive suite of integrated products as EMC. NetWorker, Data Domain, DD Boost, DPA, Avamar, and RecoverPoint can all be easily combined to deliver a multi-functional data-protection environment.

The diverse set of customers with whom we spoke demonstrates the range of benefits that EMC NetWorker delivers:

• The high-tech R&D organization needed to provide backup services to labs across the globe and scale massively to accommodate a goal of 100% virtualized servers and 100% tapeless backup. NetWorker was chosen over other competitive solutions and is expected to back up multiple petabytes of research data to Data Domain systems in the next few years.
• The media company with 60 worldwide locations could no longer make do with individual backup solutions in each office. With a new installation of NetWorker, Data Domain, DD Boost, and DPA, the company has freed-up staff resources, consolidated sites, virtually eliminated tape, and provided higher availability and automated disaster recovery to its lab teams.
• The government agency and long time NetWorker customer drastically reduced backup times while simultaneously improving its sense of data security.

And in all three cases, these customers reported that deploying the NetWorker solution was quick and easy.

EMC has a history of buying technologies that complement what it already has and further integrating these solutions. Its backup and recovery products today work together to provide an end-to-end solution, from backup software to target devices, leveraging deduplication to reduce data volumes and software such as DD Boost to improve performance and manageability. DPA rolls-up details of backup and replication activities across multiple products so that administrators can keep track of progress in a single location as well as enable departmental chargeback.

You might say that backup administrators have a friend in EMC.

In fact, ESG’s 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey reveals that improving data backup and recovery is the most commonly identified IT priority over the next 12-18 months. Earlier ESG research exploring data protection priorities indicated that the most significant data protection investments were in the areas of:

• Improving disaster recovery (35%)
• Backing up virtual server environments (30%)
• Improving application backup (26%)
• and desktop/laptop backup and recovery (23%)

For years, Microsoft has delivered Volume Shadow copy Services (VSS) for third-party backup mechanisms to help achieve these goals.  More recently, Microsoft System Center’s Data Protection Manager has also been offered to help satisfy the needs of Windows customers that are very much in-line with ESG research findings:

• Improving disaster recovery – Through a feature Microsoft refers to DPM-2-DPM-4-DR, DPM replicates data from secondary onsite storage to tertiary offsite storage, including to third-party partner clouds
• Backing up Hyper-V virtual machines – DPM offers both host-based and guest-based options
• Improving application backups – DPM uses only VSS-based or other application-supported methods developed in alignment with System Center’s peers in Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint
• Desktop/laptop protection – This was first released in DPM 2010 (v3), including online and offline scenarios

This week, Microsoft announced the availability of the Release Candidate for its System Center 2012 management products, including v4 of Data Protection Manager.

What is new in 2012

I spent some time talking with Microsoft on what was coming in DPM in 2012, with key features being:

• Centralized Console using Operations Manager, thereby also providing better integration of DPM functionality across the System Center line
• Enhanced SharePoint recovery options
• Better Hyper-V protection capabilities, including the ability to run DPM within a VM
• and Generic Data Source Protection for non-Microsoft applications that run on Windows

Click here to read the ESG brief of DPM in System Center 2012