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White Paper

Backup Solutions for Today’s SMB

September 2013

Printed in the United States of America

Copyright 2013 Edison Group, Inc. New York. Edison Group offers no warranty either expressed or

implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for errors resulting from its use.

All products are trademarks of their respective owners.

The product information in this white paper was provided by HP who is responsible for its accuracy and

content.

First Publication: September 2013

The information contained in this document is based on HP provided materials and independent research

and was aggregated for Edison Group, Inc. by the Edison Group Analyst team.

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1

SMBs’ Data Protection Challenges ........................................................................................... 2

Data Protection Options ........................................................................................................... 2

Tape Back Up Solutions ....................................................................................................... 2

Centralized Backups and Disaster Recovery .................................................................... 2

Long term data retention for compliance .......................................................................... 3

Why HP? ........................................................................................................................................ 3

HP StoreEver tape storage and autoloader solutions .......................................................... 3

HP StoreOnce Backup disk based deduplication solutions ................................................ 4

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 5

Resources ....................................................................................................................................... 5

Edison: Backup Solutions for Today’s SMB Page 1

Introduction

Fifty-three percent of small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) surveyed by Opinion

Matters earlier this year do not backup their data daily. Seventy-four percent of survey

participants also report that they have had to recover lost data.1 At the same time, the

data footprint of businesses grew 60 percent between 2010 and 2012, according to

Forrester Research.2 Each organization has its own reasons for delaying and/or making

fewer strategic investments in data backup and establishing backup procedures. While

the prospect of losing critical data assets such as intellectual property and customer

information can be stressful, protecting it may seem overwhelming and too costly. As

SMBs become more aware of the risks they are taking, they see the value of adopting a

backup strategy. SMBs need help choosing the best solution.

Deciding among the many ways to backup and restore data does not have to be a

difficult process. While some SMBs do not protect their data at all, many backup their

data to tape, whether directly from the application or through centralized backup

servers. While this approach works for many, others may want to use disk media to

increase the speed at which they backup and recover their data.

This paper explores a continuum of solutions, including advances in both tape and disk

technologies, that allow SMBs to proactively and systematically backup their data

affordably, without disrupting day-to-day operations.

HP offers SMBs easy to use storage devices to ensure that ever-growing data assets are

backed up and archived on a regular basis. In case of a loss, whether caused by system

failure or employee-error, HP solutions can help ensure that data can be recovered

quickly, easily and reliably.

1 Opinion Matters survey of small and medium-sized businesses, 2013

http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/marketreport/gfi-software-opinion-matters-backup

2 “Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q3 2012,” Forrester Research analyst Rachel Dines

http://www.forrester.com/Forrsights+Hardware+Survey+Q3+2012/-/E-SUS1631

Full report available from Forrester.

Edison: Backup Solutions for Today’s SMB Page 2

SMBs’ Data Protection Challenges

Rapid data growth increases the volume of data that SMBs store, retain and archive to

meet ongoing operational demands and comply with government and industry

requirements. SMBs need to securely backup data on a routine basis, and to archive data

offsite in case of accidental data losses caused by natural disasters or human error.

Establishing a data protection strategy is not as overwhelming or cost prohibitive as

many SMBs may think. Many affordable data backup options are available, including

solutions that scale as organizations evolve into larger enterprises.

Data Protection Options

SMBs can centralize their backup systems by combining tape-based autoloaders and

libraries with disk-based systems. Combining tape-based autoloaders and disk storage

into a disk-to-disk-tape solution provides SMBs with cost effective backup and recovery

strategies for both short-term storage and long-term archiving

Tape Back Up Solutions

Many SMBs currently backup their servers to tape to protect their data. As companies

have started to generate more and more data, the capacity of tape cartridges has also

increased. At the same time, tape technologies have become more efficient and easier to

use. For example, industry standard tape technologies LTO (Linear Tape Open) tape and

the Linear Tape File System (LTFS technology) allow businesses to store metadata and

file data together, which allows the tape drive to function more like a traditional disk

drive.

Centralized Backups and Disaster Recovery

As SMBs begin to outgrow their IT infrastructure and expand their footprint with

remote workers and branch offices, the challenges of data protection change.

Centralizing backup is a cost effective and operationally efficient strategy. SMBs have

many options for adopting this approach

For SMBs backing up to tape with a single Local Area Network (LAN) or Storage Area

Network (SAN), automating LTO-6 with autoloaders and tape libraries continues to

provide the lowest cost per TB for long term archival and data retention.

As SMBs continue to generate more data, they may want to change or expand their

storage media, automate backups, and reduce tape handling. Disk-based solutions can

greatly reduce backup windows and quickly restore data that may be lost in a natural

disaster, or via human or system error.

Edison: Backup Solutions for Today’s SMB Page 3

Increasingly, data deduplication software is built into disk-based systems. Data

deduplication can reduce backup capacity requirements as high as 20 times to

significantly and lower backup costs. The technology uses special algorithms to seek out

and remove redundant data. Unlike data compression, deduplication always retains a

copy of the data. Drives with deduplication are more cost effective backup solutions,

because they require less storage capacity and less bandwidth.

Disk-based deduplication systems also allow SMBs to automate data backups

throughout the organization, including remote and branch offices where there are few if

any IT staff. Backups can be scheduled at the main data center and then replicated across

the Wide Area Network (WAN) or Internet.

Long term data retention for compliance

Most organizations today need to keep data often for a number of years in order to

comply with industry and government regulations. Tape continues to be the most cost

efficient storage medium for long term archiving.

Why HP?

For over thirty years, HP has been a leader in the storage, offering scalable information

protection and retention solutions for businesses of all sizes.

HP offers a range of storage solutions for SMBs, including:

HP StoreEver LTO tape drives, autoloaders, and libraries

HP StoreOnce Backup disk-based data deduplication

HP StoreEver tape storage and autoloader solutions

StoreEver tape and LTO-6 storage devices can store up to 6.25TB per tape cartridge at

speeds of up to 400 mbps, for less than 5 cents per GB. The LTO-6 increases backup

performance by 44 percent. HP StoreEver Autoloaders are capable of storing up to 50TB

of compressed data and provide automated tape storage, reducing cumbersome tape

handling. HP also offers its MSL tape libraries that scale up to 600 TB.

Edison: Backup Solutions for Today’s SMB Page 4

According to a report published in April 2013 by Tech Target, “tape can offer a better

price-per-gigabyte than the equivalent size in a hard disk, making it ideal for long-term

retention.”3 In short, tape is an affordable and reliable medium for archiving data offsite

in case of data loss, and to comply with data retention regulations imposed by industries

such as healthcare, financial services, and government agencies.

HP StoreOnce Backup disk based deduplication solutions

HP StoreOnce Backup 2000, 4000 and VSA provide SMBs cost effective solutions for

daily backup and fast restore with many options to scale as organizations grow. These

StoreOnce Backup devices offer HP’s proprietary data deduplication technology, which

reduces the volume of data stored by as much as 95 percent.4 By improving storage

capacity, HP’s deduplication technology significantly lowers SMBs’ data backup costs.

HP StoreOnce VSA is a virtual machine backup solution for virtualized environments.

HP StoreOnce VSA offers storage capacity that scales from 1TB to 10TB. The VSA runs

on an SMB’s existing server and storage infrastructure without the need for dedicated

hardware.

StoreOnce Backup 2000 has 4TB of capacity and is designed for SMBs or remote offices

where data growth is relatively slow, features automated backup and replication. It can

be integrated into SMBs’ existing infrastructure and supports widely used technologies,

including NAS and iSCSI VTL through standard IP infrastructure.

StoreOnce Backup 4000 has a storage capacity ranging between 6TB to 76TB that can be

used for an SMB’s main data center and its branch offices. The 4000 supports Fibre

Channel, iSCSI, and NAS.

StoreOnce Backup 6000, designed for larger organizations, has a storage capacity that

scales from 32TB to 512TB, with backup speed of up to 100TB/hour5. The 6000 also

3 Backup Challenges: Slow Backup and Recovery, Growing Capacity Demands,” Tech Target,

writers/analysts: Andrew Burton and John Hillard, April 2013

http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/photostory/2240181192/Backup-challenges-Slow-backup-and-

recovery-growing-capacity-demands/1/Data-growth-trends-show-that-users-battle-capacity-

demands#contentCompress.

4 HP StoreOnce Dedupe Ratio Testing, October 2012

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-3329ENW&cc=us&lc=en

5 HP StoreOnce Backup QuickSpecs, July 2013

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14450_na/14450_na.pdf

Edison: Backup Solutions for Today’s SMB Page 5

includes a backup feature, called “scale-out,” so that if data stored on one StoreOnce

device goes down or offline, it can back up data onto another operational node.

All HP StoreOnce Backup products utilize the same core technologies. They are

compatible with one another and with a wide range of backup software, including HP

Data Protector, and products from Symantec and Veeam.

Conclusion

Delaying strategic investments in data backup and recovery can cost SMB customers

time and credibility in their industry. HP and its channel partners continue to team with

SMBs to help implement backup and recovery solutions that meet their budgets, while

requiring limited time and effort for IT departments to deploy a comprehensive data

protection strategy.

Resources

HP presentations about storage solutions:

http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/storage/nextera/index.aspx

HP StoreOnce Backup Overview:

http://www.hp.com/go/storeonce

HP StoreOnce Deduplication Overview:

www.hp.com/go/deduplication

HP StoreOnce data sheet overview of benefits:

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-

3329ENW&cc=us&lc=en

HP StoreOnce VSA Trial:

www.hp.com/go/tryvsa

HP videos on StoreOnce and Software Defined Storage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCAwwn2UIzo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF1FqiYGAJM

4AA4-8072ENW