When Data becomes I-Rex, Where to run?

Pratima H

INDIA: Done-to-death. Now that can be very bad choice of metaphor when we are talking of Big data running amok. But there is more to data than the prefix ‘Big’. It is getting tough to handle, has taken advanced molars and has acquired berserk-speed levels today.

Having a T-Rex in back-up can be often and literally the last but also the best resort when data turns into this I-Rex.

In the report ‘The Broken State of Back-up’ by Gartner, Dave Russell, Vice President, Storage Technologies and Strategies, argued how data is flanked with so many new realities today and it is not just about availability or recovery or compliance anymore. It is now as much about recovery issues like application error, malware, hardware failures or other challenges like VM (Virtual Machine) back-up or storage consumption or power cooling or pricing that a good data plan needs to accommodate too. He augured, among other things, that Backup Re-architecture is taking place today and will continue for at least another 12 months and probably longer. Also, server virtualisation is a change event causing organizations to consider deploying new / different backup solutions.

When we pause and consider questions like ‘Is back-up complete? Is it ready and tested for restoration? Is it too incremental?; it looks like approaches of the past no longer suffice for present-day (much less the future) organizational recovery requirements as Russell was nailing. But if that is the case - how in the world will data back-up and protection live up to the new genetic code of the future?

This code is a deadly cocktail and one has to mix in cognizance for data sprawl in as much proportion as awareness of virtualisation’s onslaught, an increasingly cloud-y IT environment and the tendency of enterprises to jump at anything with an AAS (As A Service) smell.

New recovery scenarios need to confront not only a bigger animal but also one that is endowed with sharper abilities and stronger claws.

When CSC Research said that today's organizations face a tsunami of new data that will be 44 times greater in 2020 than in 2009, and that over 80 percent of this data will be spread across a wide range of secondary storage solutions, it was hinting well at the new strength and height of walls that need to be built to rein in the data-saurus of this century,

In a chat with Brett Roscoe, General Manager, Data Protection, Dell Software, we try to ascertain how dino-proof are today’s solutions and wonder that when it comes to taming data in the new world, is it all fiction or is a new pet indeed plausible?

The last one or two years have minced no words (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes) that disasters are no more a footnote for enterprises. Would you agree?

Yes, more and more people are now getting in the ready-mode, specially smaller enterprises, and have started looking at DR very differently.

Data protection in this AAS era – a challenge worth a shudder?

Cloud, as I see it, is providing value to the data protection story. When we think of applications on cloud or MSP models, protecting data in that environment can be a different ball game. We have designed products for those environments as well. We want to ensure that customers can have a secure recovery model and a cost effective way at the same time when it comes to data protection on cloud.

Has BCP (Business Continuity Planning) gone far from DR (Disaster Recovery)?

Well, BCP and DR lines are blurring now and the industry is watching how both taking and blending a lot of elements here and there. It helps BCP to be more real-time and robust.

Moving from tape-walls to Cloud-bubbles must have brought a lot of changes for data protection?

The market has really changed a lot. We are embracing the importance that Cloud is taking on. Customers used to depend on many more tools earlier but now back-up is more real-time and mission-critical-like so expectations have changed. The wish-list is getting bigger and different. They now ask- how many hours to lose before recovery or what RPOs or RTOs will matter. More and more customers are using AAS delivery modes for back-up and recovery. We are at top of that requirement in the market to equip them well. We also know that this market will keep changing and we want customers to have a user-friendly experience with cloud and be able to have cloud with off-site capabilities. We will continue to invest in Cloud and see this trend become more prominent in near future.

Does the new context align well with virtualisation?

We bring in a lot of integration for virtualised environments. Yes, most of the environments we protect today are virtualised ones and we are trying to offer lot of things. We try to protect applications at basic levels to physical or virtual restorations too. We want to be agnostic when it comes to physical versus virtual sets. At infrastructure level, we want to protect all kinds of environments and go as far as integrating tools at hypervisor levels.

How significant is the Dedupe DR series upgrade brought at Dell recently?

We are doing a lot to upgrade and bring value from our storage and hardware line of businesses. Dell is very excited to invest in modern and next-generation of DR and Dedupe products and appliance-based solutions.

Examples?

Dell’s Data Protection Products like AppAssure 5.4, NetVault Backup 10, DR6000, DL1000, and Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite are progressing well with current industry needs. Dell’s DR Series of deduplication appliances offers a good range like DR6000 for enterprise organizations, DR4100 for mid-sized companies and DR2000v for remote offices.