storage mag online august 2011 final

8/2/2019 Storage Mag Online August 2011 Final

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Managing the information that drives the enterprise

Vol. 10 No. 6 August 2011

HOW STORAGE TECH IS CHANGING VIRTUALIZE YOUR STORAGE

STORAGEBackup Dedupe

There aremore choices

thanever for deploying data

deduplication forbackup.Seewhatwill work best

inyour shop.

ALSO INSIDE

No more laptop backup excusesThe need for speedy storage

Backup options for ROBOs

Hybrid clouds looming

Remote backup under control

thestateof


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STORAGEinside |August 2011


3/533 STORAGE August 2011 Cover image by Enrico Varrasso

inside | august 2011

No excuse for lax laptop backup

5 EDITORIAL Too expensive, too much extra work and not enough inte-gration were legitimate complaints about laptop backup a few yearsago. But those excuses just dont cut it anymore. by RICH CASTAGNA

The need for speed9 STORWARS Servers and networks have the pedal to the metal, but

storage is struggling to keep up. With applications craving more andmore performance, storage vendors have to figure out how theyregoing to meet those needs. by TONY ASARO

The state of backup deduplication

13 In a relatively short time, data deduplication has revolutionized disk-based backup, but the technology is still evolving with new applicationsand more choices than ever. by LAUREN WHITEHOUSE

New trends in storage23 Storage technologies may sometimes seem a little stodgy and out

of date, but theres plenty of technical development going on at boththe big storage vendors and smaller upstarts. by STEPHEN FOSKETT

Storage virtualization: Its ready, are you?32 User adoption of storage virtualization has been picking up as some

of the early obstacles to implementation have been overcome. There

are plenty of mature products whether you opt to deploy storagevirtualization at the array or in the network. by ERIC SLACK

Options for ROBOs: Choose a backup method for the ages41 HOT SPOTS Satellite offices and workers are changing the look of

companies of all sizes, and backup technology is changing to keep pace.by LAUREN WHITEHOUSE

Hybrid clouds on the horizon45 READ/WRITE A few notable glitches have soured some users on cloud

storage services, but a hybrid approach that integrates public and

private storage may ultimately convince cloud skeptics. by JEFF BYRNE

Users get upper hand over remote site backup48 SNAPSHOT Our latest survey finds that more companies are relying on

automated processes to back up their remote offices, and more backupdata is making it back to the main data center than ever before.by RICH CASTAGNA

From our sponsors50 Useful links from our sponsors.


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Storage May 2010

Copyright 2011, TechTarget. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writfrom the publisher. For permissions or reprint information, please contact Mike Kelly, VP and Group Publisher([email protected]).

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

Virtualize

your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

Hybrid

clouds loom

emote backup

nder control

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5

TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW starts the second sentence ofMacbeths soliloquy in which he laments Lady Ms untimely demise. And

for fans of Jeopardy, its also the answer to the question When will

your storage shop implement some real data protection for laptop PCs?

That probably just tacked another violation onto my poetic license,

but its hard to avoid quoting Shakespeare even when youre talking about

something as non-Elizabethan as data storage. And the tomorrow refer-

ence is pretty accurate if some of the surveys Ive seen lately are reason-

ably accurate. The most recent one to catch my eye is from Druva Software,

which, as a laptop backup vendor, has just a wee bit of interest in the re-

sults. Nonetheless, some interesting numbers turned up in the survey.Among the surveys 140 respondents, approximately one-third said that

more than half of their users were issued laptops as their principal PCs.

But a whopping 62% said a laptop backup policy wasnt currently enforced

even though most claimed they currently have something in place to do

laptop backups.

Those are a couple of pretty big gaps, but the survey goes on to report

even more head-scratching results, like the 30% who said they dont really

see a need for a laptop backup policy. Even more perplexing are the 59%

of respondents who considered themselves satisfied with their current

laptop backup setup.Whats going on here? Maybe we just have some major denial working

heregood ol out of sight and out of mind, and keep your fingers crossed

that the CEOs laptop doesnt give up the ghost cruising at 35,000 feet in a

first-class cabin somewhere over the Atlantic.

What about SOX and HIPAA and PCI and all those other acronyms that

tell us to take care of our data just in case? File-based data is quickly over-

running our corporate data stores, and a growing portion of that is being

editorial | rich castagna

No excuse for lax laptop backupToo expensive, too much extra work and not enoughintegration were all legitimate complaints about laptop

backup a few years ago. But with so many new productsand alternatives, those excuses just dont cut it anymore.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

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ackup options

for ROBOs

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6 STORAGE August 2011

created, modified and toted around the country on laptop computers. You

might be OK rolling the dice when it comes to complying with laws thatsay what data must be preserved, but think about all that corporate IP

going unprotected. Thats gonna get somebodys attention, right?

Intel recently described a study it commissioned from the Ponemon

Institute in which the number of lost or stolen laptops was calculated for

the 329 participating companies. Ponemons numbers are staggeringwith

an average of 263 laptops MIA for each company. Even if your company

experiences just a quarter of that loss (lets say 60 laptops with half-filled

200 GB disks), you might be kissing off 6 TB of corporate contracts,

proposals, plans, projections and

budgets each year.The study goes on to put a price

tag of $49,246 on a typical disap-

peared laptop; again, that seems

on the high side as its based

on just about every worst-case

scenario imaginable. Unless your

companys laptop losers are writing

patents, putting risky information in the hands of competitors and would-be

litigants, and jotting down the passwords for your corporate bank accounts,

your tab probably wont be so high. But consider lost productivity, poten-

tial legal issues (and their resulting fines), compromised competitiveness

and so on, and a lost laptop can easily run up a considerable bill.

So, what are you doing about laptop backup? Our surveys and other

research show that the other backup problembacking up remote and

branch officesfinally seems to be under control (see our latest Snapshot

survey, Users get upper hand over remote site backup, page 48 in this

issue). But mobile computing is still an issue, and its gotten a little muddled

lately with smartphones and tablets getting added to the mix of things to

worry about.

Not too long ago laptop backup might have been one of the toughest

data protection nuts to crack, with few alternatives and little or no integra-

tion with other backup processes. Cloud backup services (and there are

tons of them) now offer good alternatives, and there are a handful of new

endpoint backup apps that also deserve some attention. Still, a lot of shops

dismiss those alternatives as just another backup application to maintain.

But if you havent had the time to check specs lately you might not

know how much the mobile backup landscape has changed, and now the

A recent study by thePonemon Instituteput a price tag of$49,246 on a typicaldisappeared laptop.


7/53

odds are that whatever your company is using right now to back up its

data center and remote offices can also be used for laptops. For example,if you use a backup app from CA, CommVault, EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft or

Symantec, it has a laptop backup option. And even if youre using a slightly

less popular backup app, its also likely to have laptop support these days.

So you can have a fully integrated backup systemdata center, remote

offices and mobile usersusing a single app with one management console.

Does adding laptop support to your backup application mean extra work

for your overtaxed crew? Sure, and if you have a lot of laptops floating

around, it could be a significant effort to protect them. But if you dont

think its really worth the time and effort, do you think it might be worth,

say, $49,246? 2

Rich Castagna ([email protected]) is editorial director of the

Storage Media Group.

* Click here for a sneak peek at whats coming up in the September 2011 issue.

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

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ech evolves

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ackup options

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mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


8/53

Quantums DXi-Series Applianceswith deduplication

provide higher performance at lower cost than theleading competitor.

Preserving The Worlds Most Important Data. Yours.

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit www.quantum.com/dxi

2011 Quantum Corporation. All rights reserved.

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process. The benefits they report are immediate and

significantfaster backup and restore, 90%+ reduction in disk needs, automated DR

using remote replication, reduced administration timeall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line.

Our award-winning DXi-Series appliances deliver a smart, time-saving approach

to disk backup. They are acknowledged technical leaders. In fact, our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a Best Backup Hardware finalist in Storage Magazines Best

Product of the Year Awardsits both faster and up to 45% less expensive than the

leading competitor.

Get more bang for your backup today.Faster performance. Easier deployment. Lower cost.

provide higherleading competi

Preserving The Worlds Most Importa

Contact us to learn more at (8

2011 Quantum Corporation. All rights reserved.

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9/53

Lax laptop

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Storage

ech evolves

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ackup options

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tHERES A LOT OF BUZZ around application performance and the direct connec-tion it has with data storage performance. Server virtualization, virtual

desktop infrastructure (VDI) and business intelligence/big data are some

of the key forces driving this need for speed. Servers and networks are

getting faster, but disk drives and the storage systems built around them

arent keeping up. Theres also a price/performance imbalance thats

becoming alarming with the cost per I/O per second (IOPS) climbing on

the storage side of the data center.

Application performance isnt just a special case requirement. There

are certain applications that need high performance the majority of the

time. However, we often have to engineer our environments for the 10%or 20% of the time when performance is critical, which would include a

much larger group of applications.

IT professionals want to increase virtual to physical server ratios from

10:1 to 50:1, but storage is the limiting factor. Some organizations need to

have hundreds or thousands of virtual desktops accessing a single pool of

storage but theyre limited by boot storms. And big data analytics drive

the need for speed through an enormous number of transactions per sec-

ond; there are solutions optimized to handle these workloads but they

come at a high price.

You could always increase the performance of storage, but just howmuch performance are you willing to pay for? To increase IOPS you add

more disk drives, create wide stripes and implement short stroking. But

that can be very expensive. Alternatively, you can just add lots and lots of

solid-state drives (SSDs), but were talking big bucks again. And whats the

right balance of price, performance and capacity for your environment? If

you dont need lots of capacity, do you really want to buy lots of disk

drives just to increase IOPS? However, if you require a substantial amount

StorWars | tony asaro

The need for speedServers and networks have the pedal tothe metal, but storage is struggling to keep up.

As applications crave more and more performance,data storage vendors will need to find new solutions.


10/53

of capacity, then buying SSDs will be unattractive price-wise and may not

be technically practical to implement.By placing dense and fast memory inside servers, Fusion-io has been

the big winner in terms of market buzz and IPO so far. Yet the Fusion-io

solution lacks in capacity and high availability, and its an expensive and

non-shareable resource. It may also be a concern that 90% of its revenue

comes from just a handful of customers.

Storage system vendors have also seen the trend for more performance

and nearly all have responded with SSD options. A few have automated

tiering that can move data at a sub-LUN level between tiers, including Dell

Compellent with Data Progression, EMC with FAST, Hitachi Data Systems

with Hitachi Dynamic Tiering andHewlett-Packard 3PAR with Adaptive

Optimization. All these solutions

typically have some page or extent

of varying sizes they promote/demote

based on activity/inactivity.

Xiotech has a unique approach

with its Hybrid ISE product using

Continuous Adaptive Data Placement

(CADP) that creates a single pool of

storage from SSDs and hard disk

drives (HDDs). Instead of promoting

and demoting data based on activity/ inactivity, Xiotech monitors application

performance and places data on SSD or HDD based on whether there will

be an actual improvement perceivable to the user. The goal is to ensure

that price, performance and capacity are in optimal balance.

There are also a number of notable startups, including Nimble Storage.

Nimble is taking the world by storm with an iSCSI solution that has SSD

and HDD, and leverages inline data compression to optimize capacity.

Additionally, there are pure-play SSD storage systems from companies

like Nimbus Data Systems and Violin Memory. And solid-state stalwarts

like Texas Memory Systems are revitalized because of the new attention

to high-performance storage.

Potential customers are inundated with choices and the various options

come with incredible claims of IOPS and throughput performance. Hundreds

of thousands and even millions of IOPS . . . and still affordable! But an old

skeptic like me knows that performance depends on a number of factors.

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

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ech evolves

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ackup options

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By placing dense andfast memory insideservers, Fusion-iohas been the bigwinner in terms ofmarket buzz and

IPO so far.


11/53

And besides, all those marketing numbers youre getting showered with are

always based on best-case scenarios.What happens to performance when something goes wrong? What if

a disk drive fails (and were not just talking HDDs; solid-state drives dont

spin but they can also fail)? What

happens to performance when a

controller fails? How is primary

application performance impacted

if theres another operation such as

mirroring running? How is perform-

ance impacted as capacity utilization

increases? What is performance overtime: one year, two years or three

years after initial implementation? These are questions that are rarely

asked, and when they are, they often trip up storage vendors.

Application performance is the hot new requirement and storage is the

bottleneck. The imbalance in the data center is real and will only get worse

if things continue as they are. Server and desktop virtualization as well as

the emergence of big data analytics as a major application all highlight the

performance disadvantage thats inherent in disk-based storage systems.

The good news is that theres a ton of investment in trying to solve this

problem. The bad news is that the number of options IT professionals will

have to choose from will make their heads spin; and we all know how slow

and error prone that can be! 2

Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder ofVoices of IT.

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

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ackup dedupe

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ech evolves

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ackup options

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Applicationperformance is thehot new requirementand storage is the

bottleneck.
http://www.voicesofit.com/http://www.voicesofit.com/http://www.voicesofit.com/http://www.voicesofit.com/


12/53

Up to 85% of computing

capacity sits idle in

distributed environments.

A smarter planet needs

smarter infrastructure.

Lets build a smarter planet.ibm.com/dynamic

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13/53

d

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ATA DEDUPLICATION TECHNOLOGY identifies and eliminates redundant data

segments so that backups consume significantly less storage capacity.

It lets organizations hold onto months of backup data to ensure rapid

restores (better recovery time objective [RTO]) and lets them back up

more frequently to create more recovery points (better recovery point

objective [RPO]). Companies also save money by using less disk capacity

and by optimizing network bandwidth.

Backup

DedupeIn a relatively short time, data

deduplication has revolutionized

disk-based backup, but the

technology is still evolving

with new applications and

more choices than ever.

BY LAUREN WHITEHOUSE

thestateof


14/53

Deduplication was first adopted by companies with tight backup windows

and those looking to reduce tape usage. The primary considerations wereseamless integration with incumbent backup apps and processes, and

ease of implementation.

In the next wave of adoption, concerns shifted to scaling capacity and

performance. Vendors beefed up disk capacity, performance, network

connectivity and system interfaces, and also improved deduplication

processing. Recovery was improved with the use of optimized replication.

With ongoing data growth and highly distributed environments, organi-

zations and data dedupe vendors have been driven to investigate other

ways to optimize deduplication, including new architectures, packaging

and deduplication techniques.

DEDUPLICATION IS DEFINITELY DESIRABLEResearch from Milford, Mass.-based Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) reveals

that the use of deduplication is increasing. Thirty-eight percent of survey

respondents cited adoption of deduplication in 2010 vs. 13% in 2008. By

2012, another 40% plan to adopt deduplication (ESG Research Report, Data

Protection Trends, January 2008 and ESG Research Report, Data Protection

Trends, April 2010).

In addition, according to the ESG Research Report 2011 IT Spending

Intentions, data reduction ranked in the top one-third of all storage priorities

for enterprise-scale organizations (those with 1,000 or more employees).

While debates continue about the nuances of deduplication products

such as file vs. virtual tape library (VTL) interface, source vs. target, hard-

ware vs. software, inline vs. post process, fixed-block size vs. variable-

block size, its important to remember that the goal of any deduplication

approach is to store less data.

TARGET DEDUPLICATION SYSTEMSProducts that deduplicate at the end of the backup data path are called

target deduplication systems. Theyre often storage appliances with disk

storage or gateways that can be paired with any disk.

Target dedupe vendors include EMC Corp., ExaGrid Systems Inc., Falcon-

Stor Software Inc., Fujitsu, GreenBytes Inc., Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co., IBM,

NEC Corp., Quantum Corp., Sepaton Inc. and Symantec Corp. What often

distinguishes these products is their underlying architecture. Aside from

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

Virtualize

your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

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clouds loom

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nder control

Sponsor

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15/53

appliance vs. gateway differences (FalconStor and IBM offer gate-

ways), another key factor is whether theyre single- or multi-nodeconfigurations.

With a single-node architecture, performance and capacity scaling is

limited to an upper threshold for the configuration. While some of these

products can be sized to handle tremendous scale, you may have to over-

purchase now to accommodate future growth. When the upper limit is

hit, a forklift upgrade is required to move up in performance or capacity,

or another deduplication unit must be added. The latter option results in

deduplication islands because backup data isnt compared for redundancy

across systems.

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

Virtualize

your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

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APIs and open standards

sYMANTEC CORP.S OpenStorage Technology (OST) is an API for NetBack-up (Versions 6.5 and higher) and Backup Exec 2010. Target deduplica-tion system vendors leverage the API to write a software plug-inmodule thats installed on the backup media server to communicatewith the storage device, creating tighter integration between thebackup software and target storage. It enables features such as

intelligent capacity management, media server load balancing, re-

porting and lifecycle policies. It also delivers optimized duplication

network-efficient replication and direct disk-to-tape duplication

thats monitored and cataloged by the backup software. EMC Corp.

offers similar functionality for EMC NetWorker; however, to date, the

benefits are only extended to EMC Data Domain deduplication systems.

APIs facilitate interoperability, but could the industry take it one

step further with a deduplication standard? A standard algorithm,

similar to compression today, could emerge and open-source soft-

ware could be the vehicle for it to develop and gain a following. The

lobby for a standard is fueled by the need to seamlessly, efficiently

and rapidly move data between disk and tape (without having to

un-deduplicate or rehydrate the data), as well as to improve recovery

operations. Any of the dedupe technologies added to open-source

backup appssuch as Bacula and Amandaand open-source ZFS

and SDFS file systems could one day emerge as a standard.


16/53

Vendors with a single-node architecture include EMC, Fujitsu, GreenBytes

and Quantum. EMC does offer the Data Domain Global Deduplication Array(GDA), a composite system consisting of two DD890 devices that appear as

a single system to the backup application. EMC might argue that GDA meets

the criteria to be considered a multi-node configuration with global dedupli-

cation, but it has two controllers, two deduplication indexes and two storage

silos. The devices also arent in a high-availability configuration; in fact, if

one DD890 goes down, then neither DD890 is available. EMC distributes a

portion of deduplication processing upstream from its appliance, but only

for EMC backup apps and backup apps that support Symantec OpenStorage

Technology (OST). For example, at the media server, EMC performs pre-pro-

cessing, creating 1 MB chunks to compare with the deduplication index. Ifthe pattern of the content contained in the large chunks has redundancy,

the data is broken down into the more traditional 8 KB chunks, compressed,

and transferred to one DD890 controller or the other for further process-

ing, depending on where theres a better chance of eliminating redundant

data.

In a multi-node architecture, a product can manage multiple dedupe

systems as one. This approach also provides linear throughput and capacity

scaling, high availability and load balancing. Theres a reduction in admin-

istrative overhead and, importantly, global deduplication is typical. ExaGrid

EX Series, FalconStor File-interface Deduplication System (FDS), HPs Virtual

Library Systems (VLS), IBM ProtecTier, NEC Hydrastor, Sepaton DeltaStor

and Symantec NetBackup 5000 Series all have multi-node configurations

STORAGE

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ackup dedupe

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ackup options

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Global deduplicationgLOBAL REFERS TO the domain of comparison for deduplication. Identifi-cation of duplicates occurs in two ways. Within a single domain,backup data passes through an individual system and is comparedwith data passing through the same system. With deduplication

across domains, backup data passes through an individual system

and is compared with data passing through the same system as well

as other systems in the domain. Global deduplication can result in

higher deduplication ratios because there are more comparisons and,

therefore, more chances to find replicate data.


17/53

and support global deduplication. The modular architectures of these

products deliver impressive aggregate performance and let you grow thesystems seamlessly.

Symantecs appliance is a new entrant in the target deduplication system

field through a joint venture with Huawei. Symantec maintains a unique

position in the data protection market as the only vendor to offer integrated

deduplication in its own backup software- and hardware-based products

as well as catalog-level integration with backup target devices of third-

party vendors via its OST interface.

DEDUPLICATION IN BACKUP SOFTWAREWhile originally limited to so-called next-generation backup apps like

EMCs Avamar, deduplication in backup software is now pervasive. Backup

software products with deduplication include Arkeia Network Backup, Asigra

Cloud Backup, Atempo Time Navigator, CA ARCserve, Cofio Software AIMstor,

CommVault Simpana, Druva InSync

and Phoenix, EMC Avamar, i365 EVault,

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM),

Quest Software NetVault Backup,

Symantec Backup Exec and NetBack-

up, and Veeam Backup & Replication.In software, client agents running

on application servers identify and

transfer unique data to the backup

media server and target storage de-

vice, reducing network traffic. Other

software solutions deduplicate the

backup stream at the backup server,

removing any potential performance

burden from production application

servers. The deduplication domain is limited to data protected by the

backup application; multiple backup applications in the same environment

create deduplication silos.

Global deduplication isnt a given with software approaches either. First

of all, not all vendors employ the same techniques for identifying duplicates.

Some deduplicate by employing delta differencing (e.g., Asigra), which com-

pares data segments for the same backup set over time. Deltas identify

unique blocks for the current set vs. the previous backup of that set and

STORAGE

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The deduplicationdomain is limited to

data protected bythe backup applica-tion; multiple backupapplications in thesame environmentcreate deduplicationsilos.


18/53

only transfer unique blocks. It

doesnt make comparisonsacross different sets (i.e., no

global deduplication).

Another approach is to use a

hash algorithm. Some vendors

segment the backup stream into

fixed blocks (anywhere from 8 KB

to 256 KB), generate a hash val-

ue and compare it to a central

index of hashes calculated for

previously seen blocks. A uniquehash indicates unique data that

should be stored. A repeated

hash signals redundant data, so

a pointer to the unique data is

stored instead. Other vendors

rely on variable block sizes that

help increase the odds that a

common segment will be de-

tected even after a file is modi-

fied. This approach finds natural

patterns or break points that

might occur in a file and then

segments the data accordingly.

Even if blocks shift when a file is changed, this approach is more likely to

find repeated segments. The trade-off? A variable-length approach may

require a vendor to track and compare more than just one unique ID for

a segment, which could affect index size and computational time.

Arkeia Software uses another approach it calls progressive deduplica-

tion. This method optimizes deduplication with a sliding-window block size

and a two-phase progressive-matching deduplication technique. Files are

divided into fixed blocks, but the blocks can overlap so that when a file is

changed, the block boundaries accommodate the insertion of bytes. Arkeia

adds another level of optimization by automatically assigning fixed block

sizes (from 1 KB to 32 KB) based on file type. The technique also uses a

sliding window to determine duplicate blocks at every byte location in a

file. Progressive deduplication is designed to achieve high reduction ratios

and to minimize false positives while accelerating processing.

STORAGE

Lax laptop

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eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

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ech evolves

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LTFSwITH THE INTRODUCTION of IBM LinearTape File System (LTFS), a dataformat that provides a file systeminterface to data stored on LTO-5tape media, tape can be treatedmore like an external disk device.With LTFS, data doesnt have to

be written in a tape format, so

the data is independent of the

application that wrote it. It may

also be a more appropriate long-

term storage medium for uncom-

pressible data types, such as

medical images and video files.

Does LTFS offer an opportunity

for dedupe vendors to integrate

tape as a long-term storage tier

for deduplicated data? The jurysstill out on that one, as well have

to see if vendors adopt it.


19/53

DEDUPLICATIONS GROWING PAINS

As deduplication technology has matured, users have experienced mostof the growing pains. Growing data volumes that tax backup and recovery

have been a catalyst for performance and scale improvements, and have

shifted attention to scale-out architectures for deduplication solutions.

And replacing tape devices at remote and branch offices created require-

ments for optimized site-to-site replication, as well as a way to track those

duplicate copies in the backup catalog.

In its most recent Data Protection Trends research report, ESG surveyed

end users regarding their deduplication selection criteria and cost was the

top purchase consideration. Some of the issues affecting cost include the

following:

Some backup software vendors add deduplication as a no-cost feature

(CA and IBM TSM), while others charge for it.

There are hidden costs, such as the added fee to enable replication

between deduplication systems. And the recovery site has to be a

duplicate (or nearly so) of the system at the primary location, which

can double fees. There are exceptions, such as Symantec 5000 Series

appliances, which include device-to-device replication at no charge.

Symantec also licenses its product based on the front-end capacity

of the data being protected vs. the back-end capacity of the data

being stored, so replicated copies dont incur additional costs.

Target deduplication system vendors bundle their storage hardware

with the deduplication software, so refreshing the hardware platform

means the software is repurchased. Again, Symantec takes a different

approach, licensing software and hardware separately.

USERS DRIVE NEW DEDUPE DEVELOPMENTSIn addition to Arkeias progressive deduplication approach, other develop-

ments have been pushing the dedupe envelope. CommVaults ability to

deduplicate on physical tape media is one such example. In spite of the

initial hype regarding disk-only data protection and the potential to elimi-

nate tape, for most companies the reality is that tape is still an obvious,

low-cost choice for long-term data retention. Dedupe has been considered

only a disk-centric process due to the need for the deduplication index

and all unique data to be available and accessible to rehydrate whats

stored. That means when deduplicated data is copied or moved from the

deduplication store to tape media, it must be reconstituted, reversing all

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20/53

the benefits of data reduction. But CommVaults Simpana software enables

archival copies of deduplicated data without rehydration, requiring lesstape media. Importantly, data can be recovered from tape media without

having to first recover the entire tape to disk.

When source deduplication approaches gained traction, the key benefits

touted were the end-to-end efficiency of backing up closer to the data

source (content-awareness, network bandwidth savings and faster backups)

and distributing deduplication processing across the environment (vs. having

the proverbial four-lane highway hit the one-lane bridge downstream at the

target deduplication system). These two themes are evident in HPs Store-

Once deduplication strategy and EMC Data Domains Boost approach.

While HP Data Protector software doesnt have deduplication built intoits backup architecture today, users can benefit from HPs StoreOnce dedu-

plication strategy. StoreOnce is a modular component that runs as a service

in a file system. It can be integrated with HP Data Protector backup soft-

ware and HPs scale-out file system or

embedded in HP infrastructure compo-

nents. The StoreOnce algorithm involves

two steps: sampling large data se-

quences (approximately 10 MB) to

determine the likelihood of duplicates

and routing them to the best node for

deduplication, and then doing a hash

and compare on smaller chunks. HPs

dedupe strategy is differentiated be-

cause its portable, scalable and global.

The implication is that dedupe deploy-

ments can extend across a LAN or

WAN and among storage systems

without flip-flopping data between

rehydrated and deduplicated states.

EMC Data Domains Boost option

enables Data Domain to perform

deduplication pre-processing earlier in the backup flow with NetBackup,

Backup Exec, EMC Avamar or EMC NetWorker. A Data Domain software

component is installed on the backup server or application client. The

tasks performed there help improve deduplication performance by distrib-

uting the workload while introducing network efficiency between the

backup server or application client and the Data Domain system.

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EMC Data DomainsBoost optionenables Data

Domain to performdeduplicationpre-processingearlier in thebackup flow withNetBackup, BackupExec, EMC Avamar

or EMC NetWorker.


21/53

WHATS IN STORE FOR DEDUPLICATION?

Disk-based data protection addresses backup window issues and dedupli-cation addresses the cost of disk used in backup configurations. But new

capture techniques, such as array-based snapshots, are emerging to meet

high-performance requirements for those organizations with little or no

backup window and minimal downtime tolerance. In many cases, block-level

incremental capture and deduplication are baked into snapshot products.

NetApps Integrated Data Protection products (SnapMirror, SnapProtect and

SnapVault), coupled with NetApp FAS-based deduplication, eliminate the

need for deduplication in backup software or target deduplication systems.

Similarly, Actifio VirtualData Pipeline (VDP) takes a full image-level backup

and continuous block-level incrementals thereafter, and deduplicates and

compresses the data so a third-party data reduction application isnt needed.

Nimble Storage takes a similar approach. It combines primary and second-

ary storage in a single solution, leverages snapshot- and replication-style data

protection, and employs capacity optimization techniques to reduce the

footprint of backup data. These approaches undermine traditional-style

backup and, therefore, traditional deduplication techniques. 2

Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on data protection software and

systems at Enterprise Strategy Group, Milford, Mass.

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Year after year, some companies stick with legacy data

protection software not designed to handle todays IT

realities. The result? Business at risk, frustrated users,

out-of-control costs, and compromised business agility.

In a word, insanity.

With its revolutionary single-platform architecture,

Simpana software enables you to solve these problems

right now and far into the future. It will lower operational,

labor, and infrastructure costs, streamline integration

of new technologies like virtualization and cloud

computing, and smooth adaptation to challenges like data

center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements.

The result? Up to 50% reduction in storage-related

costs, and a far simpler, saner way to manage, access,

and recover business information. In a word, oneness.

To learn how you can do far more with less and add real

value to your end users and your business with Simpana

software, visitAchieveOneness.comor call 888-311-0365.

1999-2011 CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, the CV logo, Solving Forward, Simpana, and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks o CommVault

Systems, Inc. All specifcations are subject to change without notice.
http://www.achieveoneness.com/http://www.achieveoneness.com/http://www.achieveoneness.com/http://www.achieveoneness.com/


23/53

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NEW TRENDS

in STORAGE

tHE ENTERPRISE DATA storage industry doesnt have a reputation as a hotbedof innovation, but that characterization may be unfair. Although bedrocktechnologies like RAID and SCSI have soldiered along for more than twodecades, new ideas have flourished as well. Today, technologies like solid-state storage, capacity optimization and automatic tiering are gainingprominence, and specialized storage systems for virtual servers are beingdeveloped. Although the enterprise arrays of tomorrow will still be quiterecognizable, theyll adopt and advance these new concepts.

It may seem as if storage technologies are a

little stodgy and out of date, but theres plenty of

technical development going on at both big storage

vendors and smaller upstarts. BY STEPHEN FOSKETT


24/53

SOLID-STATE CACHE

Spinning magnetic disks have been the foundation for enterprise datastorage since the 1950s, and for just about as long theres been talk of

how solid-state storage will displace them. Todays NAND flash storage is

just a decade old, yet it has already gained significant traction thanks to

its performance and mechanical characteristics. Hard disk drives (HDDs)

wont go away anytime soon, but NAND flash will likely become a familiar

and dependable component across the spectrum of enterprise storage.

Hard disks excel at delivering capacity and sequential read and write

performance, but modern workloads have changed. Todays hypervisors

and database-driven applications demand quick random access thats

difficult to achieve with mechanical arms, heads and platters. The best

enterprise storage arrays use RAM as a cache to accelerate random I/O,

but RAM chips are generally too expensive to deploy in bulk.

NAND flash memory, in contrast,

is just as quick at servicing random

read and write requests as it is with

those that occur close together, and

the fastest enterprise NAND flash parts

challenge DRAM for read performance.

Although less expensive, flash memory

(especially the enterprise-grade single-

level cell [SLC] variety) remains an

order of magnitude more costly than hard disk capacity. Growth in the de-

ployment of solid-state drives (SSDs) has slowed and isnt likely to displace

magnetic media in capacity-oriented applications anytime soon.

Flash memory has found a niche as a cache for hard disk drive-based

storage systems. Caching differs from tiered storage (see the section on

Automated tiered storage) in that it doesnt use solid-state memory as

a permanent location for data storage. Rather, this technology redirects

read and write requests from disk to cache on-demand to accelerate per-

formance, especially random I/O, but commits all writes to disk eventually.

Major vendors like EMC Corp. and NetApp Inc. have placed flash memory

in their storage arrays and designed controller software to use it as a

cache rather than a tier. NetApps Flash Cache cards use the internal PCI

bus in their filers, while EMCs Clariion FAST Cache relies on SATA-connected

SSDs. But both leverage their existing controllers and expand on the algo-

rithms already in place for RAM caching.

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Flash memory hasfound a niche as acache for hard diskdrive-based storage

systems.


25/53

Avere Systems Inc. and Marvell Technology Group Ltd., a couple of rela-

tive newcomers, take a different tack. With a history in the scale-out net-work-attached storage (NAS) space, Averes team developed an appliance

that sits in-band between existing NAS arrays and clients. No single

technology is best for all workloads, said Ron Bianchini, Averes founder

and CEO, so we built a device that integrates the best of RAM, flash and

disk. Bianchini claims Averes FXT appliance delivers 50 times lower ac-

cess latency using a customers existing NAS devices.

Marvells upcoming DragonFly Virtual Storage Accelerator (VSA) card is

designed for placement inside the server itself. The DragonFly uses speedy

non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) as well as SATA-connected SSDs for cache capac-

ity, but all data is committed to the storage array eventually. This is focusedon random writes, and its a new product category, claims Shawn Kung,

director of product marketing at Marvell. DragonFly can yield an up to 10x

higher virtual machine I/O per second, while lowering overhead cost by

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All-Flash storageALTHOUGH FLASH is expensive on a capacity basis compared to

hard disk technology, many applications can be run completely

in flash. iSCSI pioneer Nimbus Data Systems Inc. transitioned

to an all-flash offering last year and has seen good results. Our

S-Class enterprise storage arrays deliver 90% lower energy costs

and 24x better I/O performance, said CEO Thomas Isakovich.

And since we include inline deduplication and thin provisioning,

were competitive on a cost-per-used-capacity basis as well.

All-flash storage in a PCI card form factor is popular in high-

performance applications as well. Fusion-io has gained traction

with its ioDrive cards, and LSI, OCZ Technology Group Inc., Texas

Memory Systems Inc. and Virident Systems Inc. have also found

enterprise success with solid-state systems. Flash maker Micron

Technology Inc. recently jumped into this market with a PCI Ex-

press flash storage card priced 25% lower than its competition.


26/53
http://www.efficientvirtualstorage.com/


27/53

50% or more. The company plans to deliver production products in the

fourth quarter.EMC, famous for its large enterprise storage arrays, is also moving into

server-side caching. Barry Burke, chief strategy officer for EMC Symmetrix,

said EMCs Lightning project will integrate with the automated tiering

capabilities already delivered to VMAX and VNX customers. EMC previewed

the project at the recent EMC World conference and plans to ship it later

this year.

VIRTUALIZATION-OPTIMIZED STORAGE

One common driver for the adoption of high-performance storage arraysis the expanding use of server virtualization. Hypervisors allow multiple

virtual machines (VMs) to share a single hardware platform, which can

have serious side effects when it comes to storage I/O. Rather than a

slow and predictable stream of mostly sequential data, a busy virtual

server environment is a fire hose torrent of random reads and writes.

This I/O blender challenges the basic assumptions used to develop

storage system controllers and

caching strategies, and vendors are

rapidly adapting to the new rules. The

deployment of SSD and flash caches

help, but virtual servers are demand-

ing in other ways as well. Virtual

environments require extreme

flexibility, with rapid storage provi-

sioning and dynamic movement of

workloads from machine to machine.

Vendors like VMware Inc. are quickly

rolling out technologies to integrate

hypervisor and server management,

including VMwares popular vStorage

API for Array Integration (VAAI).

Virtual server environments are an opportunity for innovation and new

ideas, and startups are jumping into the fray. One such company, Tintri Inc.,

has developed a VM-aware storage system that combines SATA HDDs,

NAND flash and inline data deduplication to meet the performance and flex-

ibility needs of virtual servers. Traditional storage systems manage LUNs,

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This I/O blender

challenges the basicassumptions usedto develop storagesystem controllersand caching strate-gies, and vendorsare rapidly adapting

to the new rules.


28/53

volumes or tiers, which have no intrinsic meaning for VMs, said Tintri CEO

Kieran Harty. Tintri VMstore is managed in terms of VMs and virtual disks,and we were built from scratch to meet the demands of a VM environment.

Tintris VM-aware storage target, isnt the only option. IO Turbine Inc.

leverages PCIe-based flash cards or SSDs in server hardware with Accelio,

its VM-aware storage acceleration software. Accelio enables more appli-

cations to be deployed on virtual machines without the I/O performance

limitations of conventional storage, claims Rich Boberg, IO Turbines CEO.

The Accelio driver transparently redirects I/O requests to the flash as needed

to reduce the load on existing storage arrays.

CAPACITY OPTIMIZATIONNot all data storage innovations are focused on performance. The growth

of data has been a major challenge in many environments, and deleting

data isnt always an acceptable answer. Startups like Ocarina and Storwize

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The endof the SAN?

ALTHOUGH SCSI IS still the dominant enterprise data storage pro-

tocol in the form of Fibre Channel and iSCSI, that might change

in the future. The rise of PCI Express storage suggests that cen-

tralized networked storage might not always dominate. Internal

cards dramatically reduce access latency, and the performance

of these solutions is an order of magnitude better than tradi-

tional SCSI-based technology.

The rise of virtual machine-specific and cloud storage suggests

that other changes are imminent. In both cases, some products

eschew traditional block or file access in favor of an application

programming interface (API). These devices are designed to be

integrated, automated components of a larger environment,

application platform or hypervisor, and would no longer require

storage architects and managers.


29/53

updated existing technologies like compression and single-instance storage

(SIS) for modern storage applications. Now that these companies are inthe hands of major vendors (Dell Inc. and IBM, respectively), users are

beginning to give capacity optimization a serious look.

Reducing storage has ripple effects,

requiring less capacity for replication,

backup and disaster recovery (DR) as

well as primary data storage. The

Ocarina technology is flexible enough

to be optimized for the platforms were

embedding the technology into, said

Mike Davis, marketing manager forDells file system and optimization

technologies. This is an end-to-end

strategy, so were looking closely at

how we can extend these benefits

beyond the storage platforms to the cloud as well as the server tier.

Data deduplication is also moving to the primary storage space. Once

only used for backup and archiving applications, NetApp, Nexenta Systems

Inc., Nimbus Data Systems Inc., Permabit Technology Corp. and others

are applying deduplication technology in arrays and appliances. NetApps

deduplication technology [formerly known as A-SIS] is optimized for both

primary [performance and availability] as well as secondary [capacity-

optimized backup, archive and DR] storage requirements, said Val Bercovici,

NetApps cloud czar. NetApp integrated deduplication into its storage soft-

ware and claims no latency overhead on I/O traffic.

AUTOMATED TIERED STORAGEOne hot area of innovation for the largest enterprise storage vendors is

the transformation of their arrays from fixed RAID systems to granular,

automatically tiered storage devices. Smaller companies like 3PAR and

Compellent (now part of Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell, respectively) kicked

off this trend, but EMC, Hitachi Data Systems and IBM are delivering this

technology as well.

A new crop of startups, including Nexenta, are also active in this area.

NexentaStor leverages SSDs for hybrid storage pools, which automatically

tier frequently accessed blocks to the SSDs, noted Evan Powell, Nexentas

CEO. Powell also said that his firms software platform allows users to

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The Ocarina technol-ogy is flexible enoughto be optimized forthe platforms were

embedding thetechnology into.

MIKE DAVIS, marketing manager, Dell


30/53

supply their own SSDs, which he claims reduces the cost of entry for this

technology.EMC has added virtual provisioning and automated tiering across its

product line. EMC took a new storage technology [flash] and used it to de-

liver both greater performance as well as cost savings, said Chuck Hollis,

EMCs global marketing chief technology officer. Best of all, its far simpler

to set up and manage.

Like caching, automated tiered storage improves data storage system

performance as much as it attacks the cost of capacity. By moving hot

data to faster storage devices (10K or 15K rpm disks or SSD), tiered storage

systems can perform faster than similar devices without the expense of

widely deploying these faster devices. Conversely, automated tiering canbe more energy- and space-efficient because it moves bulk data to

slower but larger-capacity drives.

INNOVATION IN STORAGEEnterprise storage vendors must maintain compatibility, stability and per-

formance while advancing the state of the art in technologygoals that

may sometimes seem at odds. Although smaller companies have been a

little more nimble at introducing new innovations like capacity optimization

and virtualization-aware storage access, the large vendors are also moving

quickly. Theyve put into service solid-state caching and automated tiered

storage, and are moving forward in other areas. Whether through invention

or acquisition, innovation is alive and well in enterprise storage. 2

Stephen Foskett is an independent consultant and author specializing in enter-

prise storage and cloud computing. He is responsible for Gestalt IT, a community

of independent IT thought leaders, and organizes their Tech Field Day events. He

can be found online at GestaltIT.com, FoskettS.net and on Twitter at @SFoskett.

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NETGEAR, the NETGEAR logo, Connect with Innovation, ReadyNAS, ReadyNAS Replicate, and ReadyNAS Vault are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NETGEAR, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other

countries. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective holder(s). Information is subject to change without notice. 2010 NETGEAR, Inc. All rights reserved.

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HILE THERE MAY BE some dispute over an exact definition, storage virtualization

is generally considered technology that provides a flexible, logical arrange-

ment of data storage capacity to users while abstracting the physical loca-

tion from them. Its a software layer that intercepts I/O requests to the

logical capacity and maps them to the correct physical locations.

The most basic implementation of storage virtualization is at the host

level, where a logical volume manager allows the simple provisioning of

storage capacity to apps and users. While also implemented with file

storage systems, block storage virtualization is more commonly imple-

mented due to the complexity of LUN management and the requirements

STORAGEVIRTUALIZATION:

Its ready,

areyou?Adoption of storage virtualizationhas been accelerating as some of theearly obstacles to implementationhave fallen by the wayside. Theresa wide choice of mature products

whether you decide to deploy

storage virtualization at the

array or in the network.

BY ERIC SLACK


33/53

for flexibility in storage provisioning, especially in multi-user environments.

This article covers storage virtualization technologies at the network andstorage device level, not at the host level.

GOODBYE TO GROUPS, LUNs AND PARTITIONINGThe legacy process of creating array groups, allocating LUNs and partition-

ing volumes is a complicated and inefficient way to provision storage, par-

ticularly when it involves balancing performance and reliability of physical

disks across drive shelves. Similarly, expanding an existing hosts volume

can be a time-consuming process of concatenating LUNs and copying

data. Storage virtualization providesa better way to keep up with the

demands of provisioning storage to

applications and servers while reduc-

ing time and resources expended by

allowing the brains of the storage

system to make most of the deci-

sions. It can also improve utilization

by replacing the guesswork of manual

allocation while supporting technolo-

gies like thin provisioning.Initially, virtualization was simply

a tool used to provision and manage

storage efficiently. But by isolating

the host from physical storage, the

technology also enabled storage capacity in different physical chassis

(even from different manufacturers) to be logically combined into common

pools that could be managed more easily. While some of these heteroge-

neous systems were used to create larger volumes than were physically

present on any one disk array, most use cases employed storage virtual-

ization as a common management platform. This enabled existing storage

systems to be repurposed and reduced the overhead associated with

managing multiple silos of storage, although the physical disk systems still

needed to be maintained.

Virtualization can improve performance as host volumes are easily spread

across larger numbers of disk drives, which could negatively affect capacity

utilization. Virtualization also allows storage tiering and data migrations

between devices, such as moving older data to an archiving appliance or

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Virtualization canimprove performanceas host volumes areeasily spread acrosslarger numbers ofdisk drives, which

could negativelyaffect capacityutilization.


34/53

hot database indexes to a solid-state drive (SSD) cache. These activities

are typically carried out based on policies set at the host, application or filelevel, and the same data movement mechanism can be used to migrate

data offsite for disaster recovery (DR) purposes.

DEVICE-BASED VIRTUALIZATIONIn the traditional scale-up architecture where the controllers are sepa-

rate from the disk shelves, virtualization at the storage device level is

typically built into the controller operating system. As a standard feature

it essentially provides a workable solution for provisioning the tens or

hundreds of terabytes that modern storage arrays can contain. Mostsystems include the ability to create tiers of storage within a single virtu-

alized system or among discrete systems, using different storage types

(performance drives, capacity drives or SSDs) and different RAID levels.

Some also include a policy engine and the ability to move file or sub-file

data blocks among the tiers based on activity, application and so on.

Most systems allow data to be copied to a second chassis for high avail-

ability or moved to a second system at a remote site for DR. While the

majority of storage systems include virtualization, most dont support

storage from other vendors. For a heterogeneous virtualization solution,

one that can consolidate different vendors storage systems, most options

are network based.

NETWORK-BASED VIRTUALIZATIONA number of years ago, the conventional storage wisdom was that storage

services, like virtualization, and to an extent storage control, would even-

tually reside in smart switches on the storage-area network (SAN). While

at least one storage virtualization product is moving in that direction, the

network implementation of storage virtualization technology has com-

monly been in the form of appliances. These appliances are essentially

storage controllers that connect to disk arrays or storage systems from

certified vendors, or theyre software thats installed on user-supplied

servers or virtual machines (VMs). Storage virtualization appliances con-

nect to heterogeneous storage arrays directly, or via Fibre Channel (FC) or

iSCSI SANs, but most provide the option of using their own disk capacity

as well. Most solutions include some storage services, like file sharing,

snapshots, data deduplication, thin provisioning, replication, continuous

data protection (CDP) and so on.

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IN-BAND AND OUT-OF-BAND VIRTUALIZATION

Early on in the lifecycle of storage virtualization technology two primaryarchitectures emerged: in-band and out-of-band virtualization. In-band

implementations placed a controller between users and physical storage

or the SAN, and passed all storage requests and data through that con-

troller. Out-of-band products placed a metadata controller on the network

that remapped storage requests to physical locations, but didnt handle

the actual data. That added complexity to the process but reduced the

CPU load compared to in-band virtualization. Out-of-band storage virtual-

ization also removed the potential disruption associated with decommis-

sioning an in-band device, as users are disconnected from their data while

storage is remapped. Most network-based virtualization solutions today

use the in-band architecture, probably because CPU power is relatively

plentiful compared to when storage

virtualization first appeared. Another

reason for the popularity of in-band

solutions is that theyre easier to

implement, which means faster time

to market and fewer problems.

STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION PRODUCTSVirtualization has become an essential

function for storage provisioning and

is included in some form with most

midsized and larger storage systems.

While there are many differences be-

tween arrays and their virtualization

technologies, the majority of these

device-based implementations dont

support disk capacity from other man-

ufacturers. Instead of listing the large

number of these storage systems, well

focus on the smaller category of het-

erogeneous storage systems. The fol-

lowing are examples of heterogeneous

storage virtualization as implemented

in hardware and software products

available from a variety of vendors.

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WHAT IS

SCALE-OUTSTORAGE?

Scale-out storage refersto modular systems that

combine processors and

storage capacity into discrete

physical nodes. This clustered

architecture lets processing

power expand with capacity as

nodes are added, and provides

for a more incremental, albeit

non-heterogeneous, growth.

While it could be called de-

vice based, virtualization in

the scale-out space is more

than a standard feature, its

required. It enables these

systems to scale non-disrup-

tively while user volumes

span nodes in the cluster.


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DataCore Software Corp.s SANsymphony is a network-based, in-band

software product that runs on commodity x86 servers. It supports hetero-

geneous storage devices via FC, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) oriSCSI, and connects to hosts as FC or iSCSI storage. Multiple-node clusters

can be created to scale capacity and provide high availability. The system

provides remote replication and storage services like synchronous mirroring,

CDP, thin provisioning and tiered storage.

EMC Corp.s Invista is an out-of-band software solution that runs on

a pair of servers (called a Control Path Cluster or CPC) and interacts with

intelligent switches from Brocade or Cisco. It can virtualize storage from

most major vendors, connecting to storage and host servers via Fibre

Channel. Invista provides mirroring, replication and point-in-time clones

between storage arrays.FalconStor Software Inc.s Network Storage Server (NSS) is a net-

work-based, in-band appliance that connects to heterogeneous storage

systems via iSCSI, FC or InfiniBand, and supports host connectivity with

Fibre Channel or iSCSI. Expansion and high availability are provided by con-

necting multiple controller modules. Besides WAN-optimized replication, NSS

also provides synchronous mirroring, thin provisioning, snapshots and clones.

Hitachi Data Systems Universal Storage Platform V (USP V) is a tier

1 storage array system that also provides in-band heterogeneous connec-

tivity to most major storage vendors arrays. It includes the kinds of features

and services expected from a tier 1 solution, including thin provisioning ofinternal and externally attached storage.

IBMs SAN Volume Controller (SVC) is a network-based, in-band virtu-

alization controller that sits on the SAN and connects to heterogeneous

storage systems via iSCSI or FC. Pairs of SVC units provide high availability,

and up to eight nodes can be clustered to scale bandwidth and capacity.

Each SVC module features replication between storage systems and a

mirroring function between local or remote SVC units.

NetApp Inc.s V-Series Open Storage Controlleris an in-band virtual-

ization solution thats very similar to a NetApp filer controller, but config-

ured to support heterogeneous storage arrays. It connects to a FC SAN on

the back end to consolidate as much storage as desired from existing

LUNs, and pools them into NetApp LUNs for block or file provisioning as

would a regular NetApp filer.

NetApp recently acquired the Engenio Storage Virtualization Manager

(SVM), a network-based, in-band virtualization controller that supports

heterogeneous storage systems. Details of how NetApp will market this

solution have yet to be announced.

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

Virtualize

your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

Hybrid

clouds loom

emote backup

nder control

Sponsor

resources



38/53

HANDLE WITH CARE

Because most storage virtualization products are in-band, care should betaken to understand the effective performance of the virtualization appli-

ance or cluster as this will be the gating factor to capacity expansion. In

addition, storage services or features will also consume CPU cycles, further

reducing effective capacity.

Storage virtualization is a powerful tool to reduce Capex by improving

capacity utilization or performance, but its biggest benefit may be on the

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

Virtualize

your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

Hybrid

clouds loom

emote backup

nder control

Sponsor

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FILE STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION

WHILE MANY STORAGE systems include file services, they virtualize

data at the block level. However, there are network-attached

products that can consolidate standalone network-attached

storage (NAS) systems. These appliances provide a global namespace

to users on the front end and map file requests to the right physical

NAS on the back end. These systems can also provide file storage tier-

ing and migration, some even to cloud storage providers. Examples of

file virtualization products include the following:

AutoVirt Inc. markets an out-of-band file storage virtualization

software product that runs on a pair of Windows servers or virtual

machines (VMs). It also provides a global namespace and a policy

engine for data tiering, migration and archiving. Being out-of-band,

it can be taken out of the environment without disruption.

Avere Systems Inc.s FXT is a heterogeneous, scale-out NAS appli-

ance implemented in clusters of up to 25 2U modules, each containing

primarily solid-state (DRAM and solid-state drive) storage. The FXT

cluster supports a global, tiered file system, typically encompassing

NAS systems from other manufacturers; it also provides file virtualiza-

tion across platforms.

F5 Network Inc.s ARX products are a series of in-band file virtual-

ization appliances that can consolidate multiple heterogeneous NAS

devices behind a global namespace, supporting CIFS and NFS protocols.

They also provide a policy engine that can automatically move files

between NAS systems, locally or to the cloud, based on file attributes,

activity or other criteria.


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Opex side. It can simplify storage management, even across platforms,

and reduce administrative overhead. Virtualization can also make storageexpansion a relatively simple operation, often done without taking storage

systems down or disrupting users. 2

Eric Slack is a senior analyst at Storage Switzerland.

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

Virtualize

your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

Hybrid

clouds loom

emote backup

nder control

Sponsor

resources



40/53

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41/53

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

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Storage

ech evolves

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your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

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clouds loom

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nder control

Sponsor

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dUE TO THE wide distribution of corporate data across sites, organizations

with remote offices/branch offices (ROBOs) are often challenged by the

demands associated with backup and recovery. Enterprise Strategy Group

(ESG) recently surveyed more than 450 IT professionals regarding people,

process and technology at ROBO locations (2011 Remote Office and Branch

Office Technology Trends, June 2011) and found that 59% of firms with few-

er than 10 employees at ROBOs

function without any local IT

staff, even though 71% indicated

that on-site storage is leveragedat some point in the backup

processes at these locations. Both

disk and tape storage systems

remain the go-to components

of most ROBO data protection

strategies, but newer wide-

area/remote backup technologies

are garnering more serious con-

sideration as a primary means of

data backup. Specifically, 26% of

organizations currently back up data from these locations over the WAN

directly to a centralized corporate site vs. a mere 7% employing this

methodology back in 2007.

Those with more storage capacity at ROBOs cited improving backup and

recovery processes as a top IT priority. For example, ROBOs with more than

25 TBs of storage capacity ranked this as their No. 1 priority, those with 1 TB

to 25 TBs of storage capacity ranked it second and ROBOs with less than

hot spots | lauren whitehouse

Both disk and tape storage

systems remain the go-tocomponents of most ROBOdata protection strategies,but newer wide-area/remote backup technologiesare garnering more seriousconsideration as a primarymeans of data backup.

Options for ROBOs: Choose abackup method for the agesSatellite offices and workers are changing the look of companies

of all sizes, and backup technology is changing to keep pace.

Learn which strategy is best for your remote office, and

whether remote copies and tape are necessary or not.


42/53

STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

Virtualize

your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

Hybrid

clouds loom

emote backup

nder control

Sponsor

resources


1 TB ranked it fourth. Data growth is a contributing factor. The top ROBO

data storage challenges include keeping pace with overall data growth, theneed to improve backup and recovery processes, and storage system costs.

ROBO DATA PROTECTION STRATEGIESThere are many options available when planning and configuring a data

protection strategy for ROBOs. Choices will depend on the availability of

on-site staff, the volume of data to protect, corporate policies regarding

retention and privacy/security, available bandwidth and the capabilities

of the backup infrastructure.

Centralized backup with no ROBO-based copy: With this option, datais backed up directly to an off-site corporate location, such as a corporate

headquarters (HQ) data center, with no on-site copy. All backup data is cen-

tralized and under the direct control of the IT organization. This ensures the

security of the backup copies, and the ability to enforce requirements for

corporate or regulatory mandates. It also eliminates the need for local

backup infrastructure and personnel. The downside is that the bandwidth

required between sites to transfer daily backup streams could be costly

and/or it could take considerable time to transmit backup data to/from the

central siteunless source deduplication is employed to reduce the vol-

ume of data transferred between sites. Thats probably why ESG research

found this to be the top method for companies with 1 TB or less of data to

protect.

Software as a Service (SaaS) with no ROBO-based copy: Data is

backed up to a third-party service providers cloud storage directly over

the WAN, with no on-site copy. Similar to a centralized backup strategy,

this approach maintains only a remote copy of data for recovery. After the

initial configuration via a Web-based application, data is automatically

backed up over a WAN connection at scheduled intervals to the service

provider. Because data is transmitted over the WAN and theres no on-

premises copy, the pros and cons of the SaaS model are similar to the HQ

centralized approach; however, backup data custody is with a third party,

so you have to be comfortable with everything that accompanies that

strategy. The most important thing here is to make sure you understand

your service-level agreements (SLAs) and that they work for you.

Local-only backup: Data is backed up to on-site storage with no off-

site copy. This approach ensures a duplicate copy of data is made, but

doesnt provide contingencies for a possible outage at the site. In the


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STORAGE

Lax laptop

backup

eed for speed

State of

ackup dedupe

Storage

ech evolves

Virtualize

your storage

ackup options

for ROBOs

Hyb

storage mag online august 2011 final

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