An appliance approach to data backup

Appliance software now requires the obvious—only back up a file once. Backup software that still requires users to “periodically” start over and back up everything again is probably not using a relational database, or is not designed properly.

Finally, insist upon homogeneous client backups with the same software. Using different software for different O/S platforms is so 20th century.

Technology

It is important to understand the technology “musts”:

Deduplication: While duplicating backup copies marks antiquated backup software, the duplication of files across multiple users and systems also contributes to increased backup storage sizes. Using deduplication technology, customers can copy such duplicated files across a global environment just once for an entire company. With global deduplication in place, customers only need backup storage at three times their active production storage. Antiquated duplicating backup technologies force up to 50 times the backup storage requirement over actual production environments. Most new solutions still require five to 10 times the storage space without deduplication.
Replication: The copy of active files to a backup location historically requires the user to restore a backup file before that file can be used. Backup software “protects” the backup in an authenticated volume, safe from prying eyes. Replication has traditionally meant that a copied file is immediately accessible in its copied location, not requiring a restore. With the introduction of various forms of replication, users can offer immediate restore for the backup copy, and even the disaster recovery offsite copy of the backup. Another use of the term replication is applied to the disaster recovery copy of an entire machine’s set of data. Rather than having to restore a disaster recovery copy at a remote site, many solutions now offer users the ability to restore directly from their remote copy. Disk-based backups are largely the reason for the development of good replication technologies.
Virtual machine: The introduction of virtual machines into everyday IT computing has pushed backup to move rapidly beyond file or block level implications directly to full machine protection and restores. Backup appliances must incorporate both the virtual machine nature of such architecture and the different treatment of managing virtual machine backups. The options available need to be plentiful, because they each have their advantages.
Console: Console views of the IT space put both a dashboard and policy manager into the hands of operators and managers. Now, dynamic reporting, alerts and the ability to evoke myriad sets of views into the enterprise’s data protection rule the direction of consoles.
Cloud: The destination of backups used to be either disk or tape, sitting in either a local or off-site location. With the advent of cloud locations, the destination is now simply an off-site, accessible copy located just about anywhere. Storage is moving to unique virtualized “pools,” which allow users to change their minds about the type of storage they use, at any time. The cloud simplifies the decision-making process even further, because users can send off their copies of local backups to a remote location as either “private” or “public” clouds.

Hardware

The hardware parameters include not just the cool factors in server technology and the enterprise capability of the disk (SAS is probably the primary way to go), but how these pieces all work together and grow together.

Bundles typically fall apart at this juncture, because the slapping together of servers, storage, and networking do not attend to the dynamic changes of environments. First, networks are getting faster and more reliable. Next, servers are continuing to duplicate in capability every 18 months. Lastly, storage will always get cheaper and more dense over time.

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