Jerome M. Wendt: July 2008 Archives
Anyone who thinks tape is still the right primary target for backup only needs to watch a video on NEC's website that includes a testimonial from Orlando, FL, based TLC Engineering. In this testimonial, TLC shares some of its experiences using tape as its primary target for backup and recovery and the hassles associated with it. The situations that the individuals on the video describe are almost comical but, from past experience, I know that TLC's experiences are more common than not. (read more)
However my intent is not to leave readers hanging or fretting as to what storage systems they can select that take this problem into account. The NEC HYDRAstor is one such product that has taken steps to address this issue. HYDRAstor includes a feature called Distributed Resilient Data™ (DRD) that is able to offer more protection than RAID 5 or RAID 6 without their rebuild performance drawbacks. Because HYDRAstor is based on a grid storage architecture, it can by default survive the failure of not only multiple disk drives but also multiple Storage Nodes. The default setting is 3 disk drives or 3 Storage Nodes if multiple nodes are present (based on the video on the HYDRAstor web site, it looks like a company needs at least 12 nodes for a company to have assurance it can recover from the failure of 3 different nodes). (read more)
Almost any disk-based solution - deduplicating or otherwise - is going to expedite backups and recoveries. Sure, some solutions may deduplicate better or do it faster but at the end of the day most companies are at the point that putting in place any disk-based system that supports replication and deduplication is better than dealing with the current backup pain. However what companies often fail to account for is how fast their backup data stores grow when they start backing up data to disk. More than once I've talked to system administrators in companies where "undisclosed" or "hidden" departmental application servers start to come out of the woodwork once department managers hear that corporate IT backup processes actually work. (read more)
