Strike A Balance With Snapshot Integration
By David West, Vice President of Marketing & Business Development, CommVault
In listening to all the market rumblings, I realize there's more said and written about backup than any other topic. A quick tour of Delicious, where thousands of IT and storage professionals share knowledge and ideas, underscores this backup fixation. Of the 369,960 links tagged "backup," only 11,274 are tagged "backup+recovery." I'm worried that the market is so focused on backup that we fail to recognize what's really important... the "AND RECOVERY" part.
Why is recovery so often overlooked in the endless dialogue on backup? Is it because backups are more top-of-mind since they are performed regularly throughout the day and companies are constantly struggling to meet their operational backup windows? Or, is it because recoveries can be even more complex, costly and cumbersome than most backup and archive operations?
We need to strike a better balance between backup and recovery so IT managers don't have to choose between meeting shrinking backup windows and supporting multiple recovery points. That's why we've included new features in Simpana 8 that incorporate the capabilities of hardware-based snapshot technologies within a broader data management foundation.
Many of our customers already have taken advantage of the snapshot functionality in many storage arrays to expedite recoveries and reduce disruption to production environments. What we've heard over the years, however, is that creating and managing each new application and storage array causes headaches as it requires lots of manual scripting and customization to produce and maintain point-in-time copies of critical data.
To alleviate this pain, we've integrated snapshot management so it can be handled within one policy management framework, which extends to the creation of multiple tiers of backup data on disk and tape. The result: the ability to create application aware and data consistent recovery copies directly from NetApp and EMC CLARiiON and DMX Snapshots–bypassing production servers and virtually eliminating backup windows. The overarching benefits: recover data to the production environment from any tier using a point-and-click process. This unified method of managing snapshots removes backup window constraints while also eliminating the need for manual scripting.
When we rolled out this capability to Simpana 8 beta customers, the value was instantly clear. "I'm throwing out all the custom scripts we'd written previously to manage snapshots of our Oracle database," one wrote. Another customer eagerly shared plans to add more snapshots to his environment now that he didn't have to worry about customizing the process for each piece of equipment. Clearly, the pain point with snapshot technology has been the overhead to manage the operation across disparate storage arrays dispersed throughout a corporate network.
With snapshot integration, all recovery points reside in one place. By managing heterogeneous hardware-based snapshots from a single pane of glass, it's possible to achieve better scalability, near-instant backups, more granular and seamless recoveries as well as fully balanced data protection. Who wouldn't want to take advantage of that? For those who have tried our approach, what do you think? I'd be thrilled to hear from you.