Overview

Consolidation has been a big theme over the last few years. Data centers, servers, storage, and more are being combined for simplified management and cost savings. This theme is also being seen in data protection, with backup/recovery hardware and software components being united in appliance form factors. In recent ESG research,[1] survey respondents were polled regarding current and planned use of integrated computing platforms (see Figure 1). While adoption of integrated computing technology has been relatively tempered to date, ESG research reveals that, today, it’s more likely to see organizations committing IT budget to the purchase of integrated solutions.

An integrated approach promises simplified management and faster provisioning—benefits that organizations with increasingly large and complex IT environments will appreciate. ESG research found that current and planned adopters cite benefits of the approach, including simplified management, reduced deployment time, better TCO, and improved interoperability, application performance, and service and support, as the main drivers for implementing converged infrastructure stacks.[2]

When compared with software-only packaging for backup and recovery, a fully-integrated, all-in-one package has several advantages. Typically, backup software solutions are less expensive, but more time and technical acumen is required for setup. In addition to the software, other components of the “stack” need to be procured: the physical server and operating system it will run on, storage media, and networking components. Appliance-based solutions are pre-assembled with these components, offering a more plug-and-play installation and configuration experience. An all-in-one appliance approach removes the need to source individual components of a whole solution. In addition, the appliance vendor has pre-tested the configuration, security hardened it, and optimized it to perform for its backup software application, potentially reducing the user’s administrative overhead for maintaining the system. The approach reduces the degree of complexity and cost involved versus integrating disparate components in an ad hoc solution. Finally, since it’s sourced through a single vendor, interactions from purchase to support are streamlined significantly.

Symantec introduced appliance platforms for data deduplication in its NetBackup 5000 Series, and NetBackup backup engine in the NetBackup 5200 Series, in late 2010. Symantec more recently introduced the NetBackup 5220 appliance to deliver greater scalability and connectivity. The NetBackup 5220 appliance includes the company’s latest NetBackup 7 software and has integrated deduplication capabilities. It comes configured with 4 TB of storage capacity, which can be expanded to a maximum of 36 TB (with the addition of storage trays) or to a maximum of 192 TB (when combined with a NetBackup 5000 deduplication appliance). Capacity can be intermixed between deduplication and disk storage.

Analysis

Symantec is differentiated by its fully-integrated backup appliance and “deduplication everywhere” approach. The company offers integrated deduplication in its own backup software- and hardware-based solutions, as well as catalog-level integration with backup target devices of third-party vendors. Depending on the implementation, NetBackup 7 offers integrated source-, proxy- (i.e., NetBackup media server), and target-based deduplication, and inline or post-process configuration.

The newest member of the NetBackup 5200 Series Appliances is the NetBackup 5220 appliance. The NetBackup 5220 is a 2U rack-mountable form factor appliance that comes standard with 4 TB of usable capacity in a RAID-6 configuration. It can, however, be expanded up to 36 TB via an optional storage shelf, with future plans to expand both the physical and logical (deduplicated) capacities. When combined with NetBackup 5000 Series appliances (the NetBackup 5000 model or NetBackup 5020 model), the solution scales up to 192 TB of usable capacity. Connectivity options have been expanded in the new model to include six 1GbE and two 8Gb FC ports standard; and up to two 10GbE and up to six 8Gb FC ports as options. Support for 8Gb FC interface allows for improved streaming of SAN clients and/or to replace virtual tape libraries (VTLs) (garnering the benefits of Fibre Channel connectivity but without the limitations inherent in traditional VTL interfaces). Further, the implementation removes the need for a separate master or media server since it can be deployed as either. The NetBackup 5200 Series appliances unite both physical and virtual machine protection. Deduplicating across both environements provides greater deduplication results and further reduces storage requirements.

The “backup in a box” NetBackup 5200 Series appliances are licensed on a flat rate per hardware appliance. As for the software component, the volume of data on the front side (i.e., production data) determines the capacity license required. In an interesting twist that is more in line with a software distribution model, NetBackup licenses (on maintenance) can be transferred to the appliance. As newer appliance models become available, NetBackup licenses are transferrable, providing cost savings and future proofing.

The Bigger Truth

IT organizations modernizing their data protection infrastructures may look to integrated computing platforms to streamline deployments and reduce costs. Symantec’s appliance approach is applicable in small- to large-enterprise environments, as well as remote/branch offices (ROBOs). The appliance form factor of NetBackup 5200 Series provides a new level of deployment simplicity for current and prospective NetBackup customers, while also providing predictability of performance. With the addition of the NetBackup 5220 appliance, Symantec now offers a new level of flexibility for configuring and deploying NetBackup.

From a management perspective, there is, however, some room for improvement. The initial configuration of the appliance is done via a Web interface. Ongoing, day-to-day backup and recovery operations are managed and monitored via the NetBackup console. However, if multiple appliances are in use, centralized monitoring and reporting of backup activity occurs through NetBackup OpsCenter Web console, but a centralized view of appliance hardware status is not rolled up. Given Symantec’s relative newcomer status as a hardware provider, this limitation will likely be addressed in short order.

Smaller organizations typically have fewer resources to integrate the disparate components of the backup infrastructure stack. However, ideal candidates for NetBackup 5200 Series appliance adoption are likely the larger organizations more atypical of NetBackup’s installed base—especially as current customers upgrade to version 7 and/or take advantage of NetBackup’s key features supporting server virtualization deployments. For this reason, ESG expects Symantec’s appliance offerings to gain serious consideration and adoption in the near term.

[2] Ibid.


]]> http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2012/01/symantec-extends-appliance-series-with-netbackup-5220/feed/ 0 http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/12/asg-software-expands-into-backup-archiving-with-atempo/ http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/12/asg-software-expands-into-backup-archiving-with-atempo/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:29:56 +0000 cwhitehouse http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/?p=27264 “Atempo is a very rich data center grade backup, recovery and archiving solution,” said Lauren Whitehouse, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).

However, she said that while Atempo has good technology, it faced a tougher road on its own because the company faced bigger companies with deeper pockets in the data protection market.

via ASG Software expands into backup, archiving with Atempo.

Overview

Raising the subject of availability is often met with conversations about high availability (HA) and replication products and the work involved in configuring and keeping “data” available for access.  Business service availability (comprised of all of the components required to access highly-available data) is equally important as data availability. This is a challenge since IT staffing remains flat overall, and the speed of business continues to escalate. In spite of this, IT needs to find a way to deliver on its goals and objectives: keeping the business running even in the event of an IT interruption. This paper examines Symantec’s latest announcement related to achieving business availability and meeting the service level agreements (SLAs) in place today.

Business Service Availability

Without question, most business managers would say that business operations are critical and must remain available 24x7x365. If there is catastrophic failure at the primary data center and all things are created equal, then it would make sense that the various systems could simply be recovered alphabetically. But honestly, how many would bring up the accounts payable system before the accounts receivable system? Who would recover customer relationship management (CRM) software after recovering the engineering applications? While all parts are important to the running of the business, some carry a higher value in the face of recovery. In order to maintain business continuity, the order of recovery is critical. Today’s environments are riddled with dependencies and cross-dependencies that may impact overall successful recovery if not followed closely. Think of it in the same way as you would when you build a house: the roof is not the first component you add to the structure. The same is true for recovering business services. All parts are important, but the order in which recovery takes place, otherwise known as recovery objectives, is critical.

Recovery orchestration gets more complicated with a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Application architectures that consist of Web front-end servers, and back-end application and database servers (potentially running on multiple operating systems and hypervisors) create more complexity due to the interdependencies of service components, and multiple management tools. An unplanned downtime event for the service that necessitates a recovery requires coordination between administrators responsible for the application, database, storage, and servers.  Without a streamlined, concerted effort, valuable time can be lost—potentially causing irreparable damage to a company’s reputation or financial assets.

Understanding recovery objectives here is key:

• The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the duration of time and a service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster (or disruption) to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in business continuity. It specifies the amount of downtime the business can tolerate. For example, the RTO for a payroll function may be two days, whereas the RTO for sales order processing may be two hours.
• The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the point in time (relative to the disaster) to which you plan to recover your data. Different business functions may have different recovery point objectives. RPO is expressed backward in time from the point of failure. Once defined, it specifies the minimum tolerance for data loss, and therefore, the frequency of making copies for recovery.

To get some perspective on RTOs, ESG research[1] explored the downtime tolerances for the highest-valued data (tier-1) to the least valued (tier-3), and found a staggering 74% of respondents indicated recovery requirements of three hours or less, while 53% can only tolerate one hour or less (see Figure 1). These very tight timelines for the highest-valued data applies even more pressure to IT organizations looking for solutions to help address these issues.

Symantec Targets Functional Operations

Symantec’s Storage Availability and Management Group 6.0 announcement is all about building resilient business services. A highlight of this announcement is a framework called Virtual Business Service (VBS), which enables automatic recovery of specific business services based on priorities. A finance business application, for example, may be made up of components such as Web services, an application interface, and finally the database itself. Supporting servers for those components have network, storage, IP addresses, etc.

To further complicate things, the Web servers may be running in virtual machines, the application server tier may be running on Linux and the database might be sitting on a physical UNIX server.  Symantec can provide visibility across the entire business service and orchestrate the recovery of this business service automatically.  It can do this because application availability in VMware, Red Hat KVM, Solaris LDOM, and IBM AIX LPARs are protected with Symantec ApplicationHA.  Applications and databases running on physical servers and the underlying operating system, server, and network resources are protected with Veritas Cluster Server.  With the 6.0 launch, Symantec can coordinate across operating systems and virtualization technologies and provide a single solution and a central management point that can provide high application availability across the different platforms in the data center.

A high availability architecture with automated business service recovery is key to minimize planned and unplanned downtime.  A high availability configuration is designed to eliminate single points of failure with no or minimal downtime.  If an unplanned interruption of service does occur, recovery happens automatically—without coordination between functional teams or performing manual tasks.  In a planned downtime incident, inadvertent consequences are alleviated since all dependencies are known and coordinated.  Services can easily be taken down or brought online as needed—without manual intervention or the risk of error.  The bottom line is that less downtime in recovery situations saves administrator’s time, lowers costs, and minimizes risk.

While the 6.0 release helps IT organizations address stringent storage budgets with storage efficiency, increasingly strict SLAs with its high availability suite, growing data center complexity through its management software, and more, Symantec focused its announcement on building more resilient business services. With this latest announcement, Symantec is enabling organizations to keep pace with the speed of business.

The Bigger Truth

With this announcement, Symantec has further simplified the customer experience, as well as its messaging to current and prospective customers regarding enhancements to its continuity solutions. Symantec avoids speaking about individual products and instead takes a higher-level approach to its customers’ businesses. This gives Symantec the ability to have a business conversation at the highest level, while naturally still enabling most technical conversations with its traditional IT audience.

Symantec has done a great job of pulling together the product groups and the leadership needed to drive toward a common goal: improve the customer experience as it transitions to a more dynamic data center—which may include leveraging cloud services. The simple truth is that IT organizations are having a hard time keeping up with data growth and increasing business needs, so they must identify clever ways to continue to support internal customers and provide much higher service level agreements. Solutions from Symantec may prove to be a very good way for customers to get more control over their environments. However, because this is such a massive announcement, Symantec made sure the key value points are not lost in the details of each product group. By keeping its message focused on the very basic things this announcement brings to the customers—keeping the lights on (resilient business services)—without diving too deeply into the technical depths of extraneous features, it has a great deal more impact than even Symantec may have anticipated.