Automation
Best Practices for E-Discovery, E-mail Archiving and Data Retention - March 29, 2008
Tampa Florida - Understand what your main problems are before you purchase technology.
The biggest mistake IT managers make when researching e-mail archiving is to not fully understanding the reasons for it. Often, companies are reacting to one problem of concern, such as an audit suggestion, which leads to rushing out to buy e-mail archiving technology for FRCP, Florida Sunshine Laws, PCI or Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and not taking into account productivity or storage problems.
Most companies will have more than one problem that can be solved with e-mail archiving and record retentation. Whether it be regulatory compliance, litigation support or storage management, make sure you understand all of your needs before you take the next step.
Create or update e-mail retention policy to reflect today's business needs.
Very few companies have an up-to-date record retention policy. An effective document retention policy will address what the document retention policy covers, the company data retention philosophy, responsibilities and procedures. It will also have retention timeframes for all types of records in a company including unstructured data like Microsoft Office files, semi-structured records like e-mail and structured records like mainframe databases. You will also want to create retention schedules that employees can easily follow and remember. Make these documents short and simple. Also document how long you will keep records (including e-mails). There is lots of good software to assist you with data migration or working with a local reseller or consulting firm is always an option.
Periodically perform a legal or regulatory refresh.
When you have a data retention policy, be sure to review it annually. Regulations and laws change regularly, and so must your data retention policy. New regulations are created regularly as well as judicial rules of evidence. Government regulatory agencies and the courts expect companies to be fully aware of new regulations and laws.
Include all stakeholders: legal, compliance, HR, finance, investor relations, engineering, production and administration.
A data retention policy affects every employee in the company and should reflect input from everyone. Create a cross-functional team that represents most business operations or departments. Interview a wide sampling of employees and departments to determine how and why they create documents; if they re-use or reference them later; and where they store the documents. This helps you create a retention policy that won't adversely affect the employees and their day-to-day work.
Focus on similarities in laws or regulations and create "high water mark" retention lengths.
Multipage retention schedules are rarely effective or followed. Simplify them as much as possible. Most data retention requirements are for minimum retention periods. Create "high water marks" for similar types of documents. For example, retention regulations for employment records vary widely from one year to 10-plus years. "It is easier for employees to follow one retention period that meets all retention requirements for all employee-related records than to try to remember many different retention periods," states Brian McCarthy CEO and Archiving Consultant for Sencilo Solutions of Daytona Beach. "Creating high-water marks for retention periods will also make it much easier to adopt automated e-mail archiving processes," says McCarthy.
Socialize your policy companywide.
Be sure to adequately inform employees about the new or existing policy and make it easily accessible. Many employees don't know if their company has a data retention policy or where to find it if there is one. All employees should be "trained" on a new policy, including knowing why the policy was created (legal, regulatory or other); how to use any new technology associated with the new policy; and consequences for the company and employee if the policy is not followed. Offer annual training refreshers.
Don't attempt to teach employees to subjectively recognize "business" records.
It is very difficult to create a uniform archive across a company if you are asking employees to individually decide which records are business records and what can be archived. For example, in a company of 1,000 employees, you will have 1,000 different retention policies if you rely on employees to interpret the policy and make archiving decisions. The less complicated the policy, the more uniform the archives will be.
Don't forget the e-mail use policy.
Even when you have a data retention policy, you should still publish an e-mail use policy that informs the employees of their responsibilities, including things they shouldn't do, privacy expectations and consequences for system misuse. There are alot of good archiving products on the market like award winning Barracuda Archiver, Intradyn Orca eMail archiver vs Mimosa Systems. Some of the legacy products are for the most part over priced by today's standards like Symantec Enterprise Vault, CA's Message Manager vs EMC's Legato.
Move e-mail retention from a manual process to an automated process.
Take e-mail archiving out of the hands of employees. Automated e-mail archiving will ensure uniform archiving, increase employee and IT productivity and most importantly, put in place a system that can ensure no message protection if a litigation hold procedure is instituted.
Discourage employees from creating personal archives (PSTs).
Most employees, in companies without e-mail archiving automation, create their own "personal archives" or PSTs for many reasons. They create them for future protection, for reference or re-use. This adversely affects employee productivity. If the company is capturing e-mail traffic, employees won't need to spend time trying to find, access and create archives.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/c2c.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
Other Projects: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar CX4
Backup: LTO Tape vs Dedupe Disk Storage - March 14, 2008
Survey Data Suggests that Most Companies Surveyed Are Migrating to a Tiered Storage Infrastructure of Disk and Tape Deployments
St. Petersburg Florida HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation, the three technology provider companies for the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program today released survey results that strongly suggest that storage customers that use a dedup disk-only infrastructure are now looking at tape storage technology as part of a tiered storage infrastructure to support backup and archiving. Over two thirds of surveyed businesses said they were looking to add tape storage back into their overall network infrastructure and of those respondents, over 80-percent plan to add tape storage solutions within the next 12 months.
The survey, which was taken in the fourth quarter of 2007, focused on the views of more than 200 network administrators and mid-level tech specialists at mid-size to large companies throughout the United States.
“The integration of tape storage into a tiered information infrastructure is highly strategic for customers, due to its low cost of ownership, low energy consumption and portability for data protection,” said Brian McCarthy, President of Sencilo Solution in Jacksonville Florida. “LTO tape technology is a perfect choice for enterprise and mid-sized customer with its proven reliability, high capacity, high performance and ability to address data security with built-in encryption and data retention requirements for the evolving data center.”
According to the survey, 58-percent of the respondents use a combination of disk and tape for long term archiving, 24-percent use tape exclusively, and 18-percent employ a disk-only approach. In this group, 68-percent of the current disk-only users plan to start using tape for long-term archiving, and over half (58-percent) plan to add tape for short-term data protection.
“The survey findings suggest that disk-only users of Data Domain and other VTL manufactures may be experiencing a bit of buyer’s remorse,” said David Geddes, senior vice president at Fleishman-Hillard Research, who oversaw the study. “We found that a wide majority of companies that employ purely disk-based approaches are looking to quickly include tape in their backup and archiving strategies.” Tape is dead, well maybe not.
LTO tape technology delivers the backup and archiving features needed by today’s storage administrators, including high capacity, blazing performance, 256-bit drive-level encryption for data security and WORM cartridge support to address data retention needs. With low energy consumption, tape technology can also provide organizations with a green alternative for the data center. Studies have shown that tape-based backup and archiving solutions can deliver substantial TCO benefits and energy savings, from companies like Quantum, Qualstar, Dell, Overland Storage and Pivotstor.
About Linear Tape-Open (LTO)
The LTO format is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format developed and continuously enhanced by technology providers HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation (and their predecessors) to help address the growing demands of data protection in the midrange to enterprise-class server environments. This ultra-high capacity generation of tape storage products is designed to deliver outstanding performance, capacity and reliability combining the advantages of linear multi-channel, bi-directional formats with enhancements in servo technology, data compression, track layout, and error correction.
The LTO Ultrium format has a well-defined roadmap for growth and scalability. The roadmap represents intentions and goals only. There is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. Format compliance verification is vital to meet the free-interchange objectives that are at the core of the LTO Program. Ultrium tape mechanism and tape cartridge interchange specifications are available on a licensed basis.
Note: Linear Tape-Open, LTO, the LTO logo, Ultrium, and the Ultrium logo are trademarks of HP, IBM and Quantum in the US and other countries.
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
Other Projects: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar CX4 Primary Storage Data Compression Storwiz FAQ
Best Practices and FAQs for Backing-Up VMware Servers - March 2, 2008
Yes you’ve made the move towards virtualizing the data center. Whether its for server consolidation, faster provisioning, improved business continuity, or a mix of these goals – you’re in good company. In fact, industry analysts estimate that over 60% of organizations are using server virtualization for some portion of their operations.
But how are you protecting these virtual servers and their data?
Most virtualization packages includes some form of high availability add-on that allows virtual machines (VMs) to move between physical resources. But just like in a physical server environment, HA is only one portion of a data protection strategy. You still need a solution to cost-effectively recover from data loss, corruption, and full site outages – not to mention satisfy regulatory compliance requirements.
To meet these needs without squandering your entire IT budget, you need a backup & recovery solution that uses cost-optimized disk (e.g. a de-duplication product) and tape for archiving and long term disaster recovery. But as you have probably already realized, backup and recovery of virtual servers is different than with physical servers.
Sencilo Solution can help. Working with industry leading backup applications and server virtualization vendors, Sencilo has solutions that easily integrate into your virtual data center and cost-effectively protect your data both on and offsite.
The Challenges of Protecting a Virtual World
At first glance, data protection within a virtual data center can be performed exactly the same as in a physical environment. Backup agents can run in a guest OS and then data can be pushed to a backup server connected to either a tape library or disk-based backup device with de-dupe like Quantum’s DXi. In fact, it is entirely possible that a virtual machine could connect directly to a backup device.
The obvious benefit of this strategy is that it leverages all of your existing processes and expertise. Unfortunately though, it does not account for some of the issues that sharing physical resources can cause. VMware servers share the underlying physical resources of a server. If one VM consumes the bulk of these resources, say for an active backup job, then other VMs become resource starved.
While many virtualization packages offer functionality to migrate VMs between physical resources to handle these issues, it is important to check how that can affect applications and backup jobs. In fact, moving a VM could prevent a backup job from running properly. So, before using any form of migration functionality, its critical to understand how it will impact the ability of data protection operations to run, unlike Data Domain, EMC, Falcon Stor which uses old technology.
In addition to resource allocation and VM location, another key factor to consider is protection of the actual virtualization layer. Some vendors recommend backing up the virtualization layer to make restoration easier in the event of a full disaster recovery. In this case, your data protection strategy will grow and include more jobs (VMs plus virtualization layer).
To recap, the most common data protection challenges in a virtual server world are:
- Resource allocation & preventing VM starvation
- VM locality impact on backup jobs working
- Adding new jobs to protect the virtualization layer
Best Practices for Backup in a VMware Virtual World
As covered in “The Challenges of Protecting a Virtual World” performing backup and recovery on virtual servers is not always completely straight forward. To help customers, Quantum offers the following tips and tactics. For more detailed assistance in how to best protect your virtualized data center, contact a Quantum sales representative today.
Tip 1: Leverage the Virtualization Software Vendor’s Strengths
Companies like VMware often provide utilities to help simplify the process of protecting virtual environments. VMware’s VCB uses snapshot technology to eliminate resource overhead and create images which can then be backed up by another application like BackupExec, Netbackup, Commvault, or TSM. Of course you should always understand the specifics of how these packages work. For instance, VCB requires a shared SAN resource and currently only offers incremental backup functionality for Windows VMs.
The counter is also true. There can be limitations or specific requirements to performing VM data protection. For instance, some virtualization products do not include snapshot functionality. In this instance a VM must be backed up using either standard backup software or by backing up the VM “disks” and the associated configuration files. This method usually requires the virtual machine to be shut down before running the backup. This may even be true when using expensive and complex array-based techniques (e.g. mirror splits). To prevent undesired performance issues or outages during backups, talk with your virtualization vendor.
Tip 2: Determine What is Best for the Application
Backup application vendors have years of experience handling database and email applications that need to be quiesced or tracked carefully to allow for a coherent and consistent backup. For these application types it may be best to continue to use an agent based backup approach – even if other backup and recovery functions are provided by the virtualization software vendor.
Tip 3: Plot Resource Utilization Windows
For those VMs that will use a traditional agent based approach to backups, make sure you understand how much of the physical server’s resources will be consumed by the backup and for how long. With this information you can plot in advance how many VMs should reside on the physical servers or if VM migration strategies and hard resource allocations are necessary.
Tip 4: Understand How Virtual Your Virtual World Really Is
Always make sure you understand how migration of virtual machines will impact backup and recovery processes – whether the backup and recovery is done via a traditional agent based approach or a virtualization vendor specific process like VCB. Also be sure to understand how important it is to backup and restore the virtualization layer itself.
Tip 5: Make Sure Your Strategy Covers Every Server – Virtual and Physical
Most of the popular virtualization software packages available today are aimed at either high end UNIX systems or x86 based operating systems, typically Windows. As a result, many consumers find themselves with a data protection strategy that covers both VMs and physical systems. Work closely with your backup application and hardware providers that have knowledge of how to handle mixed environments like this.
Tip 6: Save Your Dollars, Euros, Yen
One of the key value statements of virtualization software is to reduce costs and optimize resource utilization. The same should be true of your data protection strategy. That’s why de-duplication products like Quantum’s DXi line fit so well into virtual data centers. The DXi offers capacity optimized storage, multiple presentations (NAS, VTL, iSCSI, FC), and encrypted, low-bandwidth replication to serve a variety of onsite and offsite data protection needs.
As data levels grow, tape is still the most cost effective and reliable method of preserving data. Quantum understands this and supplements the DXi line with a wide range of tape devices that support encryption so that you can protect and archive data at extremely low costs while avoiding the issues that have plagued offline storage in recent years.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-data-deduplication.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ
ILM, more performance, fewer drives, green storage from Compellent Technologies - February 28, 2008
February 28, 2008—Tampa and Orlando Florida Compellent has fine-tuned the way its SAN software writes data to disk drives with new techniques that could boost performance and capacity utilization while simultaneously reducing disk drive requirements by up to 80%, according to company officials.
The latest release of the company's SAN software, Storage Center 4.0, features new software applications such as Fast Track, Thin Import, and Free Space Recovery, all of which help reduce the number of disk drives required, effectively reducing total cost of ownership and energy consumption for true green storage.
The Fast Track application automatically places active data on the outer tracks of a disk drive to speed access to frequently used information like ILM. Compellent's vice president of marketing, Bruce Kornfeld, says competitive offerings place entire volumes on perimeter tracks, while Fast Track only moves frequently accessed data to the outer tracks of the drive, which accelerates performance and reduces drive requirements.
"If a storage system can differentiate between inner and outer tracks on the drive you can avoid putting inactive data or unallocated space on the outer tracks, so you get more performance out of the drives and you can buy fewer of them," says Kornfeld. "This technology can lower storage costs by 50% by reducing the number of drives vs. EqualLogic or Dell."
Also new to Storage Center 4.0, the Thin Import feature reduces disk drive requirements by converting existing data into thin-provisioned volumes as it is copied to a Compellent SAN vs. EMC or HP.
Steve Duplessie, founder and senior storage analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, says the Thin Import technology has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of storage in Florida data centers.
"Imagine being able to pull all the over-provisioned, over-allocated, and under-utilized capacity off your old expensive arrays and instantly apply just-in-time thin provisioning to those volumes," says Duplessie. "It is tantamount to taking your 25% utilized storage infrastructure to 80%. Think of what that would mean for everything from consolidation, green storage, footprint to backup."
Storage Center 4.0 also includes a feature called Free Space Recovery, which reclaims unused space in Windows environments, and Application Optimizer, a tool that tunes the size of data transfers within the SAN to match I/O performance for different applications.
A Storage Center 4.0 QuickStart ILM Bundle is priced from approximately $57,200 with 7.2TB of capacity. vs. Lefthand Networks, Dell or EqualLogic, a single controller, and the Fast Track, Thin Import, and Free Space Recovery applications. Users can also purchase the new Storage Center 4.0 applications and controller as individual upgrades.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Data Classification and ILM - February 28, 2008
A complete information life-cycle management strategy should include integrated automation, policy creation, discovery, and data classification.
Many ILM-labeled products in the Florida market today, lack a key ingredient-data classification, or the ability to classify or categorize data according to various criteria based on subjective or objective measures as opposed to just the age or type of file. Data classification allows Tampa users to set up different groups of data, to which appropriate policies can then be applied. Doing so has potentially significant benefits: If you think your existing EMC software management tools (e.g., HSM or SRM) have helped you trim resources, just wait and see what classification can do to your bottom line. It can also help with regulatory and security requirements in Miami, St. Petersburg and Jacksonville Florida.
End users are being pounded with ILM messages from virtually all storage vendors-hardware and software alike. However, many users have implemented ILM “strategies” that amount to little more than HSM (moving data to lower-cost storage tiers) or SRM.
Although these types of implementations do provide value, the potential benefits of a complete ILM strategy are more far-reaching. In particular Compellent, NetApp and Hitachi, ILM can help organizations make better use of storage resources (e.g., improve utilization, provisioning, etc.); reduce storage-related costs; improve backup efficiency; minimize application downtime; consolidate storage resources; better meet regulatory compliance, corporate governance, and security requirements through better management of data; and lower overall IT costs, including management.
"The value of an ILM infrastructure lies in its ability to treat data, or information, according to its changing business value," states Brian McCarthy President and Storage Veteran in Lake Mary Florida. Data in an ILM environment is not treated equally. It is not arbitrarily moved from storage resource to storage resource, nor is it necessarily moved in “bulk” (i.e., a single policy isn’t applied to all data). Data that is deemed mission-critical (high business value) is treated differently from data that is deemed less critical.
Ultimately, an ILM infrastructure will continually assess data value and transparently re-assign resources in a tiered fashion as dictated by adaptive policies.
The number of storage tiers companies implement depends on the specific business demands of their organizations and on available IT and corporate resources. Storage tiers can include primary disk arrays from HDS, secondary disk storage from Data Domain, virtual tape libraries (VTLs) from Overland Storage REO, online disk archives (e.g., content-addressed storage), and LTO-4 tape.
Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research shows an increasing trend among organizations of all sizes to implement disk-based data-protection tiers to improve backup-and-recovery efficiency and overall disaster-recovery preparedness. At the other end of the spectrum, users cite the high costs of primary storage as a strong impetus for implementing SATA-based secondary storage tiers.
As one end user says, “A growing problem with our snapshot solution is that it’s just too expensive to keep the snapshots on our high-end storage. We’d like to move those volumes to a midrange product or cheap ATA disk.” Another end user points to data-retention issues that were affecting backup-and-recovery strategies. “Going forward, we really only want to use tape for disaster-recovery purposes. We’ll address data retention with cheaper, more readily accessible disk technologies.”
But ILM is about more than just the movement of data among storage tiers. It’s about being able to discover and extract the business value of data; categorize or classify data types; and set policies that transparently move data among available resources in a way that makes optimum business sense. In other words, it’s about being able to classify, migrate, and investigate.
While many vendors today tackle one aspect of the ILM process (e.g., discovery via SRM or data movement via HSM), few offer integrated product suites that tackle all three. (One exception is Compellent, flexible, granular data groups).
Data classification can help organizations make the best use of their IT resources and extract maximum business value from their data.
Rather than dumping all data into a large funnel and applying generic global policies to a single data pool, classification software sorts data at a more granular level and then applies policies to the data based on the specific needs of a particular group or department.
ILM suites with data classification like Compellent in Florida not only let administrators create data groups that span multiple volumes on heterogeneous servers and storage devices, but also allow them to differentiate within these groups by establishing data classes based on the age/type/size of file, owner, or path of the data. Data is directed to the appropriate class, or tier, of back-end storage based on this information.
Like the storage groups, the storage classes also need to span different heterogeneous storage devices (e.g., primary and secondary storage tiers) and the process should be automatic. For example, IT departments should be able to implement the most-cost-effective storage platforms without having to create new data movement policies.
For example, if SATA has been designated as a secondary storage tier, the end user should be able to swap out technology (regardless of the manufacturer or type of storage) without having to create new data movement policies. The classification system should be able to adapt to the new technologies and move data appropriately among data groups.
As for regulatory or corporate compliance, organizations can use ILM with data classification tools to establish multiple data groups and then apply corporate or regulatory policies to all or some of them. Similarly, they can define which data groups need to be encrypted for security purposes and which don’t. No more blanket encrypting. Policy management is fluid, allowing users to start with simple actions but scale them over time. For example, users can write specific policies around financial data that can exclude certain types of data (e.g., quarterly financials) from moving to secondary storage tiers regardless of the age of the data or its access frequency. This differs from traditional HSM software, which moves data among tiers based on the age of the data.
Early adopters report significant application performance improvements as a result of their ILM implementations, improved recovery times, and improved resource utilization.
Some ILM suites can be used alone or in combination with e-mail archiving, content management, or other applications that lack data classification capabilities to help these applications run more efficiently. In these situations, ILM would classify and sort the application data according to pre-defined policies and move the data to appropriate storage classes, while the e-mail archiving or content management software would deal directly with the primary application.
ILM should cover the full spectrum of discovery, classification, automation, and policy creation. ESG research has shown that users are interested in purchasing storage software as bundled solutions. Users also indicate growing interest in purchasing integrated product suites that share a common interface, database, and policy engine (see figure).
ILM in its truest form provides many benefits for companies of all sizes. But being able to realize these benefits will require users to implement storage software products that do more than just move data from point A to point B.
Users need to implement a data classification product that will use more than the age of the data to help determine its value to the organization.
Sencilo Solutions is a recognized leader in the design and deployment of primary storage. Through extensive experience in the storage industry, we have developed a deep understanding of how technology can solve operational problems. The greatest challenge that organizations face is knowing which technology will help and which will not. Sencilo leverages its expertise to help customers address this challenge and select the best storage solution available for current and future needs. Our solutions include SCSI, iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity. With offices in Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines Florida. Primary Storage Data Compression Storwiz
Symantec launches service option for Backup Exec 12D - February 20, 2008
Orlando Florida Symantec Corp.'s much anticipated data backup Storage as a Service (SaaS) is finally seeing the light of day. The Symantec Protection Network (SPN) will now be generally available as a standalone service, as well as a backup media option in the latest version of Backup Exec, also unveiled today.
The two new services are called Symantec Online Backup and Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec. The Online Backup option accesses the SPN storage facility through a Web portal that includes a user's registration and account information, as well as access to provisioning tools for the service. The portal is eventually intended to support other SaaS offerings from Symantec with tabular views in a single console. Pricing for the service is $25 per month for 5 GB of storage.
Online Storage for Backup Exec allows the SPN service to be managed through the Backup Exec interface and does not require customers to install a separate software agent on the client server. The Backup Exec option lets organizations back up to tape or disk and then to the SPN as an off-site option. Pricing for this option is $38 per month for 10 GB. Users of both services can add or subtract capacity on a monthly subscription basis.
"Symantec from Orlando Florida has tried to support users through a Web-based portal before and acknowledges that the customer service portal launched after the rollout of Backup Exec 11d was a failure. According to Chris Schin, Symantec's director of product management for SPN, the circumstances around SPN's launch are less complicated than they were with the customer support portal, which launched at the same time as a new product and a new licensing policy. The team that runs SPN also has experience managing a large multitenant infrastructure with Symantec's existing managed security services, he added.
"Symantec began beta testing SPN last April. The service was supposed to have been available before the end of 2007 but languished as rivals EMC Corp. and CommVault Systems Inc. launched their own data backup SaaS offerings last month, says Brian McCarthy of Sencilo Solutions in St. Petersburg Florida.
Schin said Symantec originally intended to launch a standalone service but decided to hold off until it was integrated with existing products. "We heard strong feedback from a significant number of customers that they wanted us to keep their current environments intact," he said. "We decided to reallocate our resources and work toward launching two services."
Uncertainty over how to position SaaS may also have played a part, according to Eric Burgener, a Taneja Group analyst. "One of the strategic concerns for Symantec has always been how to grow revenue for NetBackup and Backup Exec without letting them cannibalize each other," he said. "There are additional potential problems SaaS presents to license-based revenue streams."
Backup Exec 12 -- Incremental updates
Symantec's Windows data backup software is getting a minor facelift to go with the new online backup option. "These updates aren't what I'd consider a major leap forward," Burgener said. "There are some incremental improvements and integration with some previous acquisitions."
The updates include a more granular restore capability for Microsoft Exchange. Backup Exec now allows mailbox-level recovery of data from one backup, akin to CDP. In previous versions of Backup Exec, mailbox-level restores required users to make two backups of the same information. According to Symantec's Backup Exec director of product management Brian Greene, some customers reported that granular Exchange backups took 10 times as long as regular backups.
The new version also allows customers to back up Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory from a snapshot, rather than the production host, and allows backups to be sent to destinations other than the media server, such as a SAN or removable hard drive.
"Not having to back up Exchange separately is a huge advantage," said Nick Joseph, network administrator for business systems certification registrar Orion Register Inc. Joseph said full backups take about 16 hours in tests with version 12. Prior to this release, his backups took up to three days.
Backup Exec 12 can now back up the Enterprise Vault data archive and use Symantec's ThreatCon security threat monitoring system to trigger automatic backups. Backup Exec is also the first data backup application to be certified with Microsoft Windows Server 2008.
Symantec officials said there are no planned changes to Backup Exec's licensing for VMware, which currently requires a backup software agent for each guest host. Joseph said this is the most pressing item left on his wish list.
"VMware backup doesn't seem to be as complete [with Backup Exec] as with NetBackup," Joseph said. Symantec added support for granular virtual machine restores for its NetBackup 6.5 enterprise backup application last June, but that remains missing from its Windows-based Backup Exec product.
"I'd like the ability to just back up VMs and restore them like any other server," Joseph said.
System Recovery 8 -- Consolidation to come?
Symantec made the same upgrades to its Backup Exec System Recovery 8 bare metal restore application as it did to Backup Exec 12, except for the SPN integration. "We wanted to have these features available for people who use just one product," Greene said.
Asked about the possibility of merging the two products into one, Greene said, "That's a good question, but it's something I can't talk about today."
Sencilo Solutions is a recognized leader in the design and deployment of primary storage. Through extensive experience in the storage industry, we have developed a deep understanding of how technology can solve operational problems. The greatest challenge that organizations face is knowing which technology will help and which will not.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-protection.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
Other Projects: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar CX4
Server virtualization can have big disaster recovery payoff - February 18, 2008
While most of the buzz around server virtualization in general, and VMware Infrastructure in particular, have been about server consolidation and greening the data center, disaster recovery may be the IT area where server virtualization technology has the biggest impact.
"Disaster recovery (DR) planning for mission-critical applications historically called for replicating the data for these applications and having servers standing by at the DR site ready to take over at a moment's notice," says Brian McCarthy President of Sencilo Solutions, in Tampa Florida.
Most organizations can save money by virtualizing these standby servers. A single offsite server can act as the standby domain controller, SQL server, Exchange server and several more. Not only can you save the cost of all those physical servers, but also the rack space and power charges from your DR site.
Saving money and still providing the same level of protection that your old expensive physical server solution could is a good thing. But the real payoff is improving the recovery time of the applications that you wouldn't dedicate a standby server to. Most organizations soon realize they can move some applications up from the secondary tier to having standby servers, since the standby servers are essentially free.
Solving bare metal restore to different hardware
In the "old days," secondary applications were limited to restore from tape as their protection model, resulting in multiday recovery points and recovery times. Even if you were replicating the application's data, it wasn't always possible to get an identical server to restore the application backup to. You either had to go down the dank dark path of a bare metal restore to different hardware, or pursue a new OS and application install, all the while hoping you had a record of all the patches needed to mount that database.
The "different hardware" problem is solved because virtual machines are indeed virtual machines -- they all run with the same set of drivers and can't tell if they've been moved from one host to another. In addition, virtual machine snapshots from VMware or even Microsoft's Virtual Server or Hyper-V are just files, so restoring a virtual machine is just a matter of mounting the files on a new host.
"Rather than relying on tape transfers, you can schedule snapshots of your virtual machines and transfer them to the DR site over the replication link. And if your network guys can prioritize traffic properly, it won't interfere with real-time replication", say McCarthy from Sencilo in Florida.
The real fun comes when a disaster is declared and you have to start switching over to the standby servers. Because the suspenders-and-belt crowd set up their DR infrastructure to be able to take over at full speed the minute the switch was thrown, their DR site has lots of compute horsepower. (Of course lots of horsepower means lots of money.)
The more frugal companies take advantage of VMotion, which moves virtual servers from one host to another dynamically while they're still running and, in addition, DR providers like SunGard's "shared server" offerings. With shared servers, you pay a few shekels to the DR provider every month for the right to claim servers out of their stock at the DR site when you declare an emergency. Once you declare that, you get the servers for your exclusive use and can install VMWare ESX on them.
Then, once the new hosts are up, you can use VMotion (or even better VMware DRS) tol dynamically allocate virtual servers to hosts based on load and to mount your virtual servers on the new hosts. This will boost your application performance. . .probably before your users can get to their new workplaces to use the applications.
Sencilo a leader in Server virtualization deployments is the masking of server resources throughout Florida, including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems, from server users. The server administrator uses a software application to divide one physical server into multiple isolated virtual environments. The virtual environments are sometimes called virtual private servers, but they are also known as partitions, guests, instances, containers or emulations. Call us today at (407) 265-6293 or visit our website http://www.sencilo.com
Infoblox hooks into Windows DNS - February 15, 2008
Infoblox has launched an appliance designed to help manage DNS and DHCP addressing on Windows servers without swapping out existing systems
Infoblox IPAM WinConnect sits in the datacentre and talks to Windows DNS and DHCP servers via the network, providing IT managers with a common view into both environments as well as automation and administrative features. It would augment existing Windows IP address management tools, according to industry watchers, who say many customers depend on out-of-date and insufficient tools to manage IT addresses.
“Forgotten services like DHCP, DNS, and RADIUS are critical network services components that dictate availability. Yet most are woefully out of date, stagnating on non-enterprise-grade infrastructure, with few security mechanisms," wrote Robert Whiteley, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, in a recent report on IP address management.
Infoblox said its appliance adds more functionality to existing Microsoft DNS and DHCP server deployments. For instance, the product automatically catalogues devices on the network, eliminating the need for IT staff to maintain spreadsheets or other home-grown approaches to tracking IP data. It also gives IT staff a look at current and historic IT usage and lets managers delegate administrative jobs into roles, which is critical for compliance purposes, the company said.
"IT managers need detailed audit logs of who did what and when to every device. And a vast majority of organisations using Windows are tracking that with spreadsheets, which is very manual and error-prone," said Richard Kagan, Infoblox vice president of marketing. "The native tools offered with Microsoft aren't as rich as they need to be so this appliance is designed to help people keep managing DNS and DCHP with Microsoft and a little help from Infoblox."
Infoblox, which competes with the likes of BlueCat Networks, DNSstuff and Secure64, said the appliance uses standard Microsoft protocols, so no changes are needed on the Windows servers. Forrester's Whiteley said such appliances could be ideal for greenfield environments looking to get started with IP address, DNS, DHCP and RADIUS management.
"If you have a greenfield opportunity to build a utility-grade network, then start with an appliance-oriented vendor like Infoblox or BlueCat," Whiteley wrote.
Infoblox IPAM WinConnect is scheduled to be available in December. It runs on Infoblox-250, -550, -1050 and -1550 platforms. Pricing for the IPAM WinConnect on an Infoblox-250 platform starts at about $3,000.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/security-threat-management.php
About Sencilo Solutions
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
VMware backup using Veritas NetBackup and DeDupe VTL - February 15, 2008
As server virtualization assumes a greater role in the enterprise, administrators face a proliferation of VMware machines residing on the same physical server. Each VMware machine uses a portion of the physical machine's processing, memory and I/O resources. Ideally, server virtualization provides a means of increasing hardware utilization, says Brian McCarthy VMware Consultant and President of Sencilo Solution of Orlando Florida.
But as more "logical" servers are consolidated into fewer "physical" computer systems, it's important to protect each VMware machine's data against failure or loss. Virtual server backups using NetBackup or Commvault are the key to providing this protection. This article examines how virtual server backup can be achieved using a mix of traditional backup techniques and dedupe VTLs. It also highlights important deployment issues, Sencilo has sum 50 VMware installations throughtout Florida.
What is virtual server backup?
A virtual machine is a complete logical environment existing as a separate entity on a physical server. Each virtual machine is treated and perceived as if it is physical. In fact, a user cannot tell the difference between a real and virtual machine. A data center may host thousands of virtual machines running on only a fraction of that much HP or Dell hardware, and this presents a serious problem for storage or backup administrators. "Data loss on a virtual server can be just as catastrophic as data loss on a physical server, so every virtual server must be backed up as part of a company's backup regimen," says Sencilo's manager of Professional Services, Andrew Mapp.
Virtual server backups can be accomplished using a traditional approach with conventional backup software, like Veritas NetBackup or new comes like Unitrends and CommVault. The backup software can be simple to installed and configured on each virtual machine, and backups will run normally to any conventional backup target, including Overland LTO-4 tape drives, virtual tape libraries like Quantum, or Overland (VTL) or Nexsan disk storage. "That's probably the most popular way that people do it today because it's familiar," says Brian McCarthy. "It ensures a consistent backup; it will give you the granular recovery that you're looking for, and it's application-specific."
However, applying traditional backup tactics to virtual server backups does have drawbacks. The most significant problem is resource contention. Backups demand significant processing power, and the added resources needed to execute a backup may compromise the performance of that virtual machine and all virtual machines running on the system. "Don't go for 100% utilization," says McCarthy. Leave some server resources unused to accommodate backup tasks and stagger backup processes so that only one VMware machine is being backed up on any physical system at one time or use a backup appliance from Unitrends.
Backup process more costly in virtualized environments
There are far more installations when the backup software is installed on every virtual machine, and this can make your backup process far more costly. Also, traditional disk-to-disk (D2D) backups will copy programs and application data but do not necessarily capture the entire virtual machine state. This may be fine if your only goal is to preserve an application, such as a database, but a failed virtual machine may need to be recreated and reconfigured from scratch before the backup can be restored.
Virtualization-specific tools, such as VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) or Microsoft's Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), interface directly with their respective virtualization platform and capture point-in-time snapshots of the entire VMware's Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) or Microsoft's Virtual Hard Drive (VHD). Virtual server backup tools like, VCB or Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), can capture the entire virtual machine state quickly, and the virtual machine typically does not need to be quiesced or taken offline,say Mapp. Not only does this allow for fast, complete system restorations, but complete snapshots can also be uploaded to new virtual machines, allowing system administrators to "clone" virtual servers on demand.
The downside to virtual server files is a potential loss in granularity. With traditional backups, it is easy to restore a single application or data file. When there is one single VMDK or VMM file, you typically have to restore the entire snapshot in order to recover, even if only one file is lost or corrupted. "Some snapshot vendors have figured out how to take that image-level backup and break it down into the granular single files that people need to recover," Whitehouse says, "Not everyone has done that though." Companies like Data Domain often try and mislead the end-user with a "it's all wonderful presentation, so keep your VMware Consultant or trusted reseller near by", says McCarthy.
Implementing virtual server backups
Storage space poses a particular challenge for virtual machine files. The virtual snapshot is always seen as a new file, so it is backed up in its entirety, regardless of how much data has actually changed since the last snapshot. Snapshots will continue to use the full backup window and consume the same amount of disk/tape space. Data deduplication from companies like Quantum or Overland Storage, also called single-instance storage, can help to reduce these storage demands. Deduplicating at the storage system doesn't shrink the backup window because data still must be transferred across the network prior to deduplication. Experts suggest deduplicating through an appliance or at the source to save backup media while minimizing the backup window.
Virtual server backups have no specific affinity for backup targets. Traditional backups can go to LTO tape, a Quantum VTL or other disk systems like Nexsan as they do now, though most performance-minded users will backup to some form of disk storage first, then offload the backup to tape later, this known as D2D2T. VCB or VMM backups are almost universally sent to disk, then later replicated to offsite disk storage or sent to tape. Backup media is then retained or stored exactly the same way as conventional backups. However, retention periods should be evaluated carefully; it may not be necessary to save every snapshot for a prolonged period, Sencilo has worked with hundreds of companies recommanding the correct methods to use. But consult your local retention experts or legal counsel for their recommendations.
Virtual server backups should also be verified and tested periodically to ensure that the required suite of data has been captured adequately, but this typically involves restoring the backup to another virtual server and verifying normal operation. For some shops that perform frequent restorations, the "testing" process is ongoing; backups are tested each time a file or application needs to be restored. Other virtualized shops have auxiliary machines available for testing purposes, which allows administrators to periodically test backups without taking the original production machines offline.
Companies performing virtual server backups
For Orange County Library in California a Sencilo customer, fulfillment business generates a great deal of customer data. Close to 20 terabytes (TB) of production data and another 10 TB of development and test data is spread across several Compellent platforms running under VMware Inc.'s Infrastructure 3.5 virtualization software. Virtualization has proven its benefit to the organization. "The No. 1 reason [benefit] is efficient use of resources," says Dan Mawn, network engineer for Orange County. "Secondary reasons include ease of backups and disaster recovery."
Mawn backs up virtual machines using VCB operated in concert with Veritas NetBackup software. Virtual server backups are performed nightly along with the entire backup process and are also performed on-demand. The entire backup process takes about 6-to-7 hours each night, but with about 160 servers to contend with, half of them virtual servers, it's difficult to say exactly how long a single virtual machine backup takes.
In addition to protecting existing virtual servers, Mawn also uses virtual snapshots to clone new servers, "You can use VCB to actually save a copy of a virtual machine "hot" then you can restore it to another VMware machine and bring it up as a clone of the first one," he says.
An Overland Storeage Disk Library (REO) provides virtual tape support. "The backup application backs up to that and also to actual [IBM] tape, so we go to both," Mawn says, noting that the current LTO-4 tape drives will soon be upgraded to dual LTO-4. Although Mawn has never needed to restore a virtual machine failure, the restoration process has been thoroughly proven and is tested monthly or even more frequently.
Mawn notes that virtualization has proven reliable, since the resolution of some early difficulties. "We had virtual machines lock up when VCB is executed that we attributed to outdated VMware drivers and tools, he says. With that updated, those virtual machines haven't had a problem since." This underscores the importance of software maintenance and version control in the virtual environment.
Next to efficiency, flexibility in integrating infrastructures is probably the most important benefit gained from server virtualization. For information services business Miami-Dade, the flexibility afforded by Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 proved critical when integrating data centers. "We were moving an acquired company and their technology infrastructure into our data center, and the virtual environment was really the only way that we could be flexible enough to tackle the integration in a timely manner," says George Bush, manager of information security and compliance.
Once the benefits of storage virtualization became clear, the entire infrastructure was migrated to a virtual server environment, supporting more than 600 virtual machines in production (80%-85% of the production environment). In addition there are about 400 virtual machines in disaster recovery, another 400 virtual machines in development. "It's a hardware-agnostic point of view," Bush says. "Any platform that runs a Windows server can support full virtualization and really utilize your hardware to its fullest potential." Today, Miami-Dade operates about 60 TB of storage on an Pillar Data SAN.
Bush uses the VMM utility to manage and back up Microsoft virtual machines. Not only does VMM help to configure and optimize the virtual environment, it also creates backup snapshots of the VHD file. George Bush also uses VMM to create standard server "images" that speed the deployment of new virtual servers, while helping to prove the compliance of software/driver versions across the environment. "Instead of configuring a new server from scratch, which can take two-to-four hours, just take and copy the hardened image that you've already created and patched correctly up to the host machine -- that takes 10-to-15 minutes," he says.
Almost all virtual machine backups are performed through VMM, though there are still some manual backup processes to accommodate mission-critical processes that have not yet been virtualized. The actual time needed to back up a virtual server depends on the size of the VHD file and the bandwidth available to pass the backup data to the target. Commvault backups are always sent to a Overland REO disk first, then offloaded to Overland NEO tape as a separate process.
The ability to configure disaster recovery sites virtually anywhere, where power and Internet access are available, was an important benefit, according to Bush. "Virtualization makes the whole disaster recovery 'mess' actually something that is manageable," he says. "And VMM helps with configuration management, update migration and so on." VMM provides load-balancing recommendations that can help to optimize the number of virtual machines on each particular server, but we get a lot of credit to Sencilo Solution for getting us there.
The future of virtual server backups
Storage volumes will continue to grow, and this will inevitably lead to a demand for more network storage for virtual machine backups. This will also usher in greater application awareness and data deduplication with virtual server backups. The real challenge will be to implement deduplication without compromising virtual machine performance. "If you run dedupe on a VMware, you'll put more workload on the VM [CPU]," Schulz says. In the near term, an external data deduplication appliance may be necessary to achieve necessary performance goals. There are other performance issues with server virtualization that will be increasingly addressed using optimized hardware chipsets, such as Intel Corp's vPro Processor Technology and Q35 Express Chipset.
While conventional backups will rely upon Veritas backup software for proper restoration, affording a small amount of native security, virtual machines are complete self-standing system snapshots that are far simpler to restore than a backup volume. Encryption is another component in the virtual backup environment, but few virtualization users have made security a major priority yet, say Sencilo's McCarthy, look at Decru and Neoscale.
Ultimately, the future of such tools remains murky. Experts note that virtualization vendors may shift the backup burden to third-party developers. "I think the first step for them [virtualization vendors] would be to create APIs for backup vendors," Whitehouse says, noting that backup vendors could then build new applications or add features to their existing backup products that would utilize those APIs to provide better and more refined backup products.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Key words: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Legato TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell
Storage architecture choices: SAN, NAS or DAS? - February 15, 2008
Storage area networks (SANs), which were once available only to large enterprises that could afford to pay steep premiums for the best storage, are increasingly moving downstream. "SANs combine the benefits of shared storage with those of direct-attached storage (DAS), and newer technologies make them affordable even for small businesses, says Storage Vetern and President of Sencilo Solutions of Orlando Florida. This article will explore why storage area network (SAN) devices may be right for you.
Storage acronyms: SAN, NAS and DAS
The three main ways of connecting storage to servers are SANs, network-attached storage (NAS) and DAS. With DAS, which is the most basic form of the three, the drive connects directly to the server and is often even in the same enclosure. Because DAS is simple to install and requires no large, IT-level planning, it's still what many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rely on, said McCarthy.
SANs and NAS both separate data storage from servers, allowing servers to share those resources. NAS devices have their own file system, so they work best as file servers, that because their OS is designed to handle file data very quickly. SANs give block-level access and appear to computers as normal drives, so they work better for applications such as databases. Companies start needing databases once they reach about 50 users, which is why even small businesses are starting to look into storage area networks, McCarthy said. SANs handle block data well, where as file data is better off on a NAS systems. Most modern SAN are designed to handle both SAN and NAS unlike older EMC or Open Source units from Equal Logic or Lefthand Networks that require a file server. Look for units from NetApp, HDS or MDI in which you can consolidate both file and block data, and retire older File Servers.
Benefits of SANs
Why storage area networks? Depending on how many servers your client has, a SAN can offer significant advantages over a DAS array for each server. Consolidating storage devices will save your clients money by allowing them to buy capacity according to what the entire company needs, as opposed to having each server work with its own disk array, much of which may go unused. Provisioning tools can let your client dynamically allocate space -- instead of giving a server 100 GB in anticipation of growth in a few years, an IT manager can give it 25 to 50 GBs and increase that as needed, McCarthy said, this is offer known as Thin Provisioning.
Because SANs can consist of several physically separate drives or arrays, they also offer replication and disaster recovery features. For instance, you can set up two SANs with automatic, real-time replication. If the primary SAN goes down for any reason, the system will automatically fail over to the second.
SANs also complement server virtualization. One of the features of some virtualization software is the ability to move images between physical servers on the fly, without downtime. This requires the two servers to share the same storage device -- both so they can access the same data and to serve as a medium for the virtual machine (VM) image.
Cost of SANs
A SAN can works on a Fibre Channel (FC) network. The wires may be either fiber-optic or copper, but since even the copper FC wires supporting 2 to 4 Gb/sec transfers are different than Ethernet cables, all FC-connected SANs require a separate, dedicated network.
Fibre Channel equipment is expensive; the wires, which are often optical, can cost $100 to $200 each, and each device's FC adapter will cost another $400 to $1,000, said Henry Baltazar, storage analyst for The 451 Group in San Francisco. This extra infrastructure makes up the bulk of the cost for SANs that use FC, which is why storage area networks have traditionally been reserved for larger companies while smaller companies are going with iSCSI SANs.
But iSCSI, a variant on the SCSI interface that runs over IP, can eliminate those costs by connecting your SAN devices over your existing LAN. Your client will still need to make a few adjustments, such as configuring a virtual LAN (VLAN) for the SAN drives to ensure that they get all the bandwidth they need; your role should include helping the client with this implementation work. An entry-level iSCSI-attached SAN can cost as little as $10,000 including implementation services, McCarthy said. "I expect iSCSI will soon ship more units then FC-based unit, since iSCSI is far easy to run then a complex Fibre Channel ones".
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
