Large enterprises are feeling the pressure of Big Data in every way possible. They have more data to store, more information to access and less time than ever to back it up, secure it and then recover it. It is in this area of backup and recovery that enterprises need better options to protect their data while also alleviating mounting security concerns. The Sepaton S2100-ES3 2925 with its new V7.0 software provides them with the match they want.
Trepidation Accompanies Big Data’s Arrival
There is no longer any doubt as to whether or not Big Data has arrived. It is here. A recent September 2012 survey of large enterprises (organizations with a 1,000 or more people) found that they had on average over 12,000 PCs and over 1,000 servers under management. This report also found:
- 62% of organizations had more than 100 TBs of data
- About one third (1/3) expected their data to double in the next 2-3 years
- 38% of their data was unstructured
This data growth has led to 89% of them creating a dedicated budget for a Big Data backup solution. Unfortunately this line item in the budget has yet to translate into any real spending as 72% have yet to deploy or even test a solution.
While 58% have determined that they are going to use these budgeted funds to expand their data storage infrastructure, they are still hesitant to move forward with testing or deploying any backup solution until they first identify one that:
1. Accommodates accelerating unstructured data growth. While unstructured data may only constitute 38% of enterprise data now, it is growing much more quickly than structured data (over 50% year over year.)
2. Accommodates continued structured data growth. Structured data growth also shows no signs of abating as structured (databases) and semi-structured (emails) data continues to grow at about 26% year over year according to IDC.
3. Satisfies mounting data security concerns. The Ponemon Institute described 2011 as one of the worst years on record for data security and predicted that the number of data breaches would continue to rise in the years to come.
A separate study found that, over a 24-month period, each Global 2000 company puts as much as $400 million of its data at risk as a result of new and evolving attacks on failed cryptographic key and digital certificate management. As a result, every enterprise has a reasonable chance of losing $35 million during that same period of time with high profile companies such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter all recently having been subject to attacks.
While storage systems hosting production data may need to satisfy these three concerns to some degree, storage systems that host backup data must satisfy all of them. Minimally every backup storage solution must scale to unprecedented levels as every terabyte of production data growth could generate four (4) times that much in backup data.
This necessitates that these systems also become even more efficient in compressing and deduplicating data than in the past. Further, they must perform well during peak backup times, scale to high levels of storage capacity and then securely store, retain and protect data in such a way that it meets today’s heightened security concerns.
Sepaton S2100-ES3 and V7.0 Software
The Sepaton S2100-ES3 and its V7.0 software push these trepidations about which storage solution to use to store Big Data backups aside. The S2100-ES3 gives enterprises access to two (2) petabytes of usable storage capacity available in a scale out grid architecture.
Configured as a private storage cloud the S2100-ES3 functions as a single logical storage system that draws upon its scale out architecture to provide the four following benefits.
- All data is compressed and deduplicated across the entire system.
This delivers higher deduplication levels, higher levels of storage efficiency and the most effective use of its available storage capacity. To handle these increased loads associated with Big Data, the S2100-ES3 introduces new, faster HP DL380p Gen 8 processing nodes and high performance Exar 1845 compression cards. The systems continue to use Hitachi storage arrays.
- Minimizes the need to monitor and manage the levels of available storage capacity. All backup data may be stored on the S2100-ES3. Organizations only need to start with a much storage capacity as they initially need and then add more as specific threshold capacities are reached. This facilitates a “pay-as-you-grow” model that minimizes or eliminates the need to purchase new units if all that is needed is more storage capacity.
- Minimizes the need to monitor and manage performance. Performance may be monitored, managed and added in the same way as capacity. This eliminates the often pain staking and complicated task of trying to balance the performance loads associated with backup jobs across multiple backup targets. Using the Sepaton-ES3, more performance may be added to it to increase backup throughput (up to 80 TB/hour using 8 nodes.) This can be accomplished without requiring an organization to remap existing backup jobs to another backup target.
- Flexibility to scale according to capacity and performance based on real-world demands. Every enterprise is different. Some will need their system to deliver extremely high performance. Some will need it to offer extremely high capacity. Some will need it to offer some mix of both.
Accommodating these varied and changing capacity, performance and, ultimately, cost constraints requires a choice in network connectivity choices. To meet these demands associated with protecting both structured and unstructured data, Sepaton gives companies the flexibility to use 8-Gb Fibre Channel, 1Gb (up to 4), 10 Gb (up to 2) Ethernet connections or both so they can get the most done.
Encryption without Adding Complexity or Slowing Performance
Possibly one of the most intriguing enhancements to the Sepaton S2100-ES3 is its optional encryption capability that encrypts data without slowing performance and supports the emerging OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP). The Sepaton S2100-ES3 supports encryption key management solutions that are that are compliant with KMIP 1.0/1.1. It is currently qualified on RSA Data Protection Manager version 3.x and Thales key Authority appliance v4.0 – with more in the process of being qualified.
Most organizations want to encrypt more of their data, not less. However this is difficult to do so without the environment becoming more complex since, before OASIS KMIP, each layer of data that was encrypted (application, network, backup, etc.) may require its own key management solution.
KMIP is an industry standard protocol for communication between EKMs and the encryption system. By supporting
KMIP-compliant EKMs, Sepaton elimi
nates vendor lock-in and added complexity.
Regardless of which EKM is used, the Sepaton S2100-ES3 secures data minimizing the risk of data exposure or loss that may occur when the attacks inevitable come. Further, using the new hardware available on the ES3, eliminating the performance penalty associated with using encryption.
Big Data Finds Its Perfect Backup Fit in the Sepaton S2100-ES3 2925
The Sepaton S2100-ES3 2925 gives enterprises the perfect backup fit as they look to realign their data center to meet Big Data’s particular demands. Offering more performance and new security options, enterprises get the secure, scalable backup solution that they need without the unwanted increases in complexity or management that are often associated with implementing these features.
The Sepaton S2100-ES3 2925 gives enterprises new found confidence that they can backup and restore their Big Data repositories within their existing SLAs. More importantly, they can do so knowing that their protected data is safe from prying eyes.