GSS Blog

Backup versus DR

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:50:00 -0500

In various conversations I have had recently, and even in the press, there seems to be a common misconception that if you backup your data you are ready for a disaster. There are situations in which this is the case but with the emergence of disk-based backup often this is no longer true. Knowing whether or not you are ready for a disaster is a matter of examining where your data resides.

Why is location so important?
Providing a safe location to store your data once it has been backed up is arguably as important, if not more so, than doing the backup itself. After all, if you backup your data but can't get it back you might as well not have backed up in the first place. Now, in terms of what constitutes a safe place for your data is really up to each individual to determine. However, there is only key question that everyone should ask:

1) If a fire, flood or other cataclysmic event occurred wiping out the source of my data is my backup in a different location?

And, this is why location is of such importance. Just because you have backed up your data does not mean that in the event of a true disaster (not just a personal disaster in the sense of "I've lost my PowerPoint presentation and I only have 5 minutes until the big presentation") you will be able to recover unless you have taken note of the location issue. This is also why disk-based backup, for all of its merits of improved backup performance and quicker restore times, is not disaster recovery compliant (at least not if you agree with the statement regarding location). That is not to say that disk-based backup can't work. Rather, it suggests that if you are going to rely on disk-based backups you may need to consider data replication technologies that will allow you to create a copy of that data on another disk system in another location. Of course, this is probably going to be quite a costly approach not only from the hardware perspective but also taking into consideration power, cooling, floor space, etc. Another option, albeit seemingly passe these days would be to use tape.

Tape, unlike disk (and I am excluding SSD for the time being), is portable. Given this, when you complete a backup to a tape cartridge you can take it to another site thereby satisfying the question of location. Tape, then, becomes one of the simplest ways of being able to legitimately claim that by simply backing up your data you are ready for disaster recovery. And, it's cheap. Some sources have cited tape-based backup solutions as being upwards of 23 times more cost effective than disk-based equivalents. This is not to say that tape does not have its issues since there is certainly many cases that can be made for the relative fragility of tape compared to disk. Yet, it should not be denied that tape does offer a shorter and more cost effective route to disaster recovery preparedness.

In the end, whether your preference is to use disk or tape backup (or a combination of both) never lose site of the fact that just because you have backed up your data doesn't mean you a ready for a disaster. Only when you can lay your hands on the media that holds your data when the data source has been obliterated can you truly say you are prepared. If you keep that in mind when the time comes you will be ready.

Interested in learning more? Join Gresham at Storage Networking World on October 12 as Christopher discusses how tape is not really dead as well as backups versus DR.

Are bigger businesses better when it comes to customer service?

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:15:00 -0500

Gresham Storage Solutions is not a large organization and even though we have a three letter acronym – GSS – we are not known by this name or held in the same regard as EMC, IBM, SUN, etc, so I frequently hear people say things like “we only deal with big corporations” or “who is Gresham”. This is the plight of many organizations of similar size to Gresham Storage Solutions; to be dismissed not because of product quality or organizational capability but because smaller organizations don’t fit the stereotypical purchasing mold that some organizations have chosen to adopt. If you recognize this as being something that happens in your organization, read on…
I want to challenge the wisdom of this way of working and suggest that not only does such a mentality hinder your organization’s ability to procure the best products at the most competitive prices but it often leads to an overall poorer experience in the short, medium and long term. And, it is really that post-sale experience where I think things begin to unwind quickly because, if we are honest with ourselves, when has technology worked perfectly? So, it isn’t a matter of if you are going to have to call upon your vendor to help you resolve a problem but a matter of when. How they respond should speak volumes to the true value the company delivers.

Who answers the phone when you call?
If you are accustomed to working with large organizations you are likely used to someone picking up the phone, taking your details, asking you what is wrong and telling you that someone will get back to you. If you are lucky, you might get a bit better service and be subjected to a list of questions to determine if your problems falls into the list of problems that your vendor already knows about and has a documented solution for. Okay, you might get your problem resolved but it will probably take more time than need be and you almost certainly won’t come away feeling like your vendor sees you as an individual or a particularly special client. But, isn’t that something that you should expect!
The advantage that firms like Gresham Storage Solution offers clients is the ability to be as responsive to your needs as a large firm while never losing sight of the importance of giving customers the sense that they are unique and their business is valued. It is a relationship that extends well beyond the initial sale. It is the recognition that every client is valuable and every relationship must be treated with the utmost care to ensure that relationship is retained. You may think that this is an obvious statement driven by some sense that smaller businesses are dependent on a limited client base and therefore cannot afford to be losing customers but you might be surprised to find that in many cases you would be wrong. Gresham Storage Solutions, for example, serves numerous Fortune 500 and Global 2000 accounts. We have customers in many of the countries around the world. If we lost a customer it would not put us out of business or hamper us. Despite that fact, we don’t take our customers for granted. Each client is important, not because they are another dollar on the revenue line but because they have instilled their trust in us and our products to improve their operations and lower their operating costs; to become a trusted partner; a trust that we do not want to break.

How does your vendor respond when problems happen?
As I already said, chances are almost 100% that it is not a matter of if you are going to have a problem with a system you have bought but a matter of when. Therefore, it is imperative that you have confidence in your vendor’s ability to respond to your issues in a timely fashion and resolve them equally quickly. Here is another time when I would suggest that bigger does not mean better and, in fact, usually means quite the opposite.
Think back to that call you made to your three-letter vendor (i.e. EMC, IBM, etc) asking them to come on site, how long did that take? I am guessing that you will say that they were really quick but what did they do when they got there? Did they spend the time to understanding your problem and resolve it or did they spend the time to determine that it wasn’t their problem and told you to call someone else? I am guessing that it was probably the latter. This is yet another difference that more agile and responsive businesses offer over bigger organizations – the willingness to go beyond the confines of our own little section of real estate in a customers environment and explore where else the problem might lie; to uphold the spirit of the partnership with the customer that is based on knowing that when the going gets tough both parties are fully committed to seeing things through to resolution. Gresham Storage Solutions prides itself on approaching every problem with this degree of commitment and care. It is what sets us apart and makes us the trusted advisor of Fortune 500 accounts.

Do you have that confidence in your vendor? Do you receive that level of customer service? If you do, congratulations. If you don’t, you are probably being served by some large organization that is happy to take your money and tell you that they will be there for you when you need them most but when put to the test will likely fail to live up to your expectations. The easy way to avoid this type of bad experience, spend time understanding what your vendor is really willing to do for you; whether they really want to and can be a trusted advisor.

When the money dries up, print some more

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:46:00 -0500

It might sound like I am encouraging you to commit a federal crime but trust me, I don't want you to go to jail. What I do want to do is help you identify ways to take advantages of inefficiencies in your current storage environment that will let you discover hidden pockets of money that can be used more wisely.

First, it is important to understand that if your organization has imposed budget restriction on you that have essentially meant that your money has all but dried up, there are things that you can do to continue spending. The only real exception to this might be a situation where you find ways to cut costs and rather than being allowed to reallocate those funds you are merely praised for helping to improve the bottom line. Either way, you are either going to find money that you can spend, hopefully, more wisely or your are going to be hailed as a hero - it's win-win situation.

How do you get started?
To get started you need to gain a good understanding of your data storage environment. Some questions to help you are:
1) How many tape drives do I have?
2) How many hours per day are those tape drives in use?
3) How much money do I spend on those drives on a monthly basis?
4) How much money do I spend vaulting tape media?
5) Do I have existing bandwidth and connectivity to a remote facility that I could use for electronic vaulting?
6) How much disk am I using to store archive data?
7) How much disk do I have that isn't fully utilized?
8) How much money am I spending keeping disk spinning that isn't doing anything?

These are only a handful of the questions that you might ask but this should give you the basic idea. The important thing here is to understand your assets and the extent to which they are being fully utilized today.

What's next?
Once you understand how well your assets are being utilized you can begin to ask the question, how can I improve current asset utilization? You may also want to look for products that can help you in this pursuit. Backup Virtualization products such as Clareti Storage Director provide an excellent opportunity to dramatically improve the utilization of Tier 2 assets. Equally, Backup Virtualization products offer the further benefit of decoupling the backup operation from the data being written to physical tape meaning that you can use your tape drives outside of your regular backup window. Of course, this means that you have to ask another question and this is where printing money starts to become a reality.

If you were able to get all of your backups done in your current backup window but could use a far greater period of time to get that data onto physical tape, how many tape drives would you really need? How effectively utilized would those devices be in such a world?

For most people, the answer can be startling. It is not uncommon to see a reduction in the number of tape drives that is required in excess of 75%. How much money would you save if you could decommission 75% of your existing tape drives? How much money would you have just printed to be able to invest elsewhere?

What about looking at your existing disk storage? Implementing a Backup Virtualization product will require some form of disk cache. Rather than introducing new disk into your environment, what if you could use what you have today? Any worthwhile Backup Virtualization product will allow you to use disk of your choosing and certainly this is the case with Clareti Storage Director. But, the important thing here is that you don't need to purchase more than what you already have. You only need to make better use of it.

How about your existing IP network? Is there bandwidth that could be used to remotely replicate data to one of your other facilities? How much money would you save in being able to eliminate your tape vaulting service? Many products, Clareti Storage Director included, provide the ability to remotely replicate data so not only are you gaining reductions in tape hardware and better utilizing existing Tier 1 disk but you are now able to fully utilize your existing network. Operational capabilities go up, costs from maintaining a complex infrastructure go down.

And this, then, is really the point. If there are inefficiencies in the way that you are using your existing assets you are spending money but in such a fashion as to suggest that you might as well be burning it. When organizations take away your ability to burn any more money, rather than getting upset, see it as an opportunity to find money by addressing those inefficiencies. And, while it will take some of your time to go through the necessary analysis, I can almost guarantee that you won't regret it. After all, the likelihood is that you are going to find ways to save your company money and that money will be either available to reinvest elsewhere or simply make you a hero for improving the bottom line.

Key Points

Being in business means spending money. The question is are you spending efficiently?

Most business have too many assets that aren't being used efficiently and this costs them more money than need be

Eliminating inefficiencies saves money (and time) and gives you the ability to make investments elsewhere

Backup Virtualization is an area in which investment should be considered because it leads to efficiency

The importance of delivering value rather than volume

Thu, 28 May 2009 15:33:00 -0500

We are in a tough economy where the 'do more with less' mantra reigns supreme...and, in fact, is often a necessity to ensure survival. It is odd, then, that so few vendors seem to understand the importance of delivering value rather than volume. It seems that they would rather overlook this fundamental shift in the market. It seems that many vendors would rather sell you more of just about anything (i.e. deal in volume) rather than looking at how they can help you get better results from what you have today (i.e. deal in value). And, while this problem is widespread throughout the IT industry, let's focus on how this plays out in the world of data protection specifically.

As an example, let's look at data deduplication. Data deduplication has been heralded as the solution to the problem rampant data growth. In theory, it is a great solution. In reality, its general applicability as the solution to all data storage woes is grossly overstated. In fact, the issue of volume described above is very pertinent. See, the issue with data deduplication is that no one can really tell you how well any piece of data will deduplicate. As a result, it is necessary to buy more disk than you would expect to need as a safety measure. One example I heard from someone recently indicated that data deduplication had been so effective in their environment that they were only using 5% of their available disk. Congratulations, but now I am confused. Surely that person had to pay for 100% of the disk. So, by my calculations that means they overspent by 95%? Now, I know it is not that cut and dry but, hopefully this emphasizes my point - throwing a lot of disk at something in, for example, a data deduplication play may deliver some benefits but it will also likely deliver some significantly higher costs than would be required by taking a more measured approach and assessing how existing technology might be used more efficiently first.

This, then, highlights the volume problem. Volume is all about throwing more at a problem; more disk, more tape, more switches, etc. The problem with volume is the "more" part of the equation since "more" also comes with more cost! And, quite often, more does not actually allow you to do more because it simply adds to the complexity and administrative overhead of an existing solution.

But, there are alternatives. Backup virtualization products seek to leverage existing resources, consolidate them in such a fashion so that they are easier to manage and can be accessed from a centralized single device instance. Such products often employ a small disk cache to act as a staging area for data in a store-and-forward like fashion. They do not, however, serve as the final resting place for data and therefore can involve other technologies - tape, disk and even data deduplication appliances. By acting as a gateway between backup applications and data storage systems they can mask the weaknesses of older technologies. To get a better idea of what I am getting at here, think of an old computer trying to run a new version of Windows. Most of us have had this experience and it is frustrating because once Windows loads, and the application we want to use loads, it probably works great. But, starting up the system is horribly painful and takes forever. So, do you throw out the computer and buy a new one. That is what Dell would love for you to do. But, what if there was software that you could install that would make everything work like you had the latest greatest computer but still using your old machine and it only cost a fraction of buying a new machine? That is the opportunity backup virtualization systems offer.

And that is where value comes into the equation. Backup virtualization enables you to identify ways to do more with what you have today presenting you with an opportunity to realize a clear return on a more modest investment. It lets you see where your money has gone and you can see that you are in a better position for having spent it. It recognizes that people have hardware that is underutilized and deployed in inefficient ways and it offers a solution. Backup virtualization delivers value rather than volume and that is what sets it apart.

What path will you choose? Are you content buying into the "more, more, more..." volume way of life or are you ready to get with the times and truly do more with less. I suspect your CFO wants it to be the latter.