Recently I have had number of engaging conversations regarding how backup management is evolving. On the upside, many of the challenges associated with managing backup are definitely on the decline. But there are aspects of managing backup that are probably never going away and which every size organization needs to be prepared to manage indefinitely.
A little over two (2) years ago I did an interview with ExaGrid System’s CEO Bill Andrews about the same time that EMC and NetApp were engaged in a bidding war over Data Domain. In that interview Andrews expressed concern about EMC winning the battle for Data Domain and how that might negatively impact ExaGrid. But as EMC and ExaGrid both respectively announced overwhelmingly positive numbers this week, it turns out that EMC’s acquisition of Data Domain has served both companies well.
About a month ago I started to put some thought and research into what might emerge as the top trends of 2012 by keeping a notebook next to my keyboard so as ideas struck me I could jot them down. Now as I look at the four trends that made today’s short list, they ended up being on the surface ones that I hear, write and talk about every day.
Using the “cloud” for backup is the primary context in which people think about the cloud when asked about it. Yet if forced to list what features an “enterprise cloud-based backup provider” offers, it is questionable if one could do so. So as DCIG prepares to release its inaugural Buyer’s Guide in 2012 on Enterprise Cloud-based Backup products, one of its first tasks was to define what constitutes an “enterprise cloud-based backup” offering.
Today DCIG and SMB Research are pleased to jointly announce the availability of a new, comprehensive DCIG 2011 Midrange Deduplication Appliance Buyer’s Guide that weights, scores and ranks over 30 deduplication appliances with starting prices that range from $20,000 to $100,000. This Buyer’s Guide gives small, medium and large enterprises the resources they need to assist them in making what is becoming a critical buying decision: selecting a disk-based solution that deduplicates their backup data.
A couple of weeks ago I was getting a briefing on Atempo Live Navigator regarding its deduplication and near-CDP features that are specifically targeted for desktops, laptops and file servers. But since that conversation, it struck me that CDP and near-CDP technologies have been around for years which got me to thinking. Why is it that traditional approaches to backup persist even as arguably better approaches to data protection such as CDP and near-CDP struggle to get traction?
Regardless of whose numbers or what percentages you believe, it is clear that the adoption rate of server virtualization is accelerating with more organizations virtualizing their production application servers than ever before. But as this occurs, new demands are being placed on data protection solutions to more efficiently and quickly complete VMware virtual machine (VM) backups. To meet this emerging end-user requirement, EMC Avamar 6.0 has enhanced its virtual proxy server pooling capabilities to better automate and simplify the scheduling and management of VM backups.
Over the last few months I have been talking to a number of end-users about their implementations of deduplication technology. In the process of doing so, they have provided me with valuable insight into how they are implementing deduplication when using disk-based targets that deduplicate data. Based upon that feedback it appears that most are adhering to the following five guidelines as they implement deduplication in their environments.
Over the last few months I have been doing a series of interviews with end users and then preparing more formalized DCIG case studies based upon these interviews. In these particular instances, all of the end users have been EMC Data Domain users but what I have found particularly intriguing in my conversations with these end users is that while “data deduplicaton” initially grabs their attention, after EMC Data Domain gets implemented, it simply becomes the icing on the backup to disk cake.
In the last few years more backup software vendors have abandoned traditional methods of software licensing that is based upon the total numbers of applications, CPUs, servers or some combination thereof. Instead they switching to a capacity based software licensing model where users get all of their product’s software features and then only pay a monthly or annual fee based upon the total amount of storage capacity consumed.
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