Posts Tagged ‘backup to cloud’

Data Protection with Cloud Storage: B2D2C is easy and affordable

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

by Greg Roody

Data Protection is a natural fit for cloud Storage since it affords you a low cost, offsite, service oriented storage model for a function that is critical to your business.

Data Protection isn’t  a complex operation.   It’s the process of ensuring that applications and servers can be restored in the case of a failure or loss of some kind.  Backup is a good example of a typical DP application, but certainly not the only one.  DP is a lot of things, risk reduction, securing your assets, business continuity and disaster restart.

But at its core, DP is about Continuance, Restart, and Recovery; not backup.

Traditionally, backups are spun to tape, and then shipped to offsite storage for safe keeping.    Tape  is well known and understood, but has a lot of drawbacks.

First, it’s a serial media.  You physically have to advance the tape to a specific location to begin to read off data you are looking for, so restore operations can be slow.  That’s assuming the tape is even readable (studies have claimed up to a 40% read error rate)); if either the index or data segment you are looking for is corrupt, you won’t be able to restore the data.

And of course, someone has to find the correct tape at the offsite storage location (remember the Iron Mountain tape losses?) and then ship them back to you.  All of this elongates the recovery process and  increases risk and expense.

A better way – B2D

In more advanced environments, customers will use a backup to disk (B2D) or B2D2T process in place of traditional tape backups.  This has several advantages, first, since the data you want to recover is online, it is extremely easy to find and restore just the data you are looking for.  Secondly, it is far more reliable than tape.   A 1 in 3 or even 1 in 10 chance of not being able to restore the data you need from tape is not a very good metric.

But B2D alone also has disadvantages.  First, it’s a local solution only.  Unless you replicate that disk (very expensive since you need infrastructure in two data centers), you have no offsite copy of your data.  B2D2T is an alternative here, you gain the benefits of short term storage on disk and long term archival offsite, but you are still burdened with the expenses and unreliability associated with tape.

B2D is Good, B2D2C is better

If you could extend your B2D solution to offer low cost, secure, and reliable, offsite storage at the same time, that would be the best of both worlds.  And in fact, B2D combined with CloudArray from TwinStrata enables you to do just that.

With fully cached volumes, you not only have a local copy of your disk based backups, but you gain an automatic offsite copy at your Cloud Storage Provider (public or private).   Of course it’s secure as well.

Even Better, you already have the Backup Software

Chances are, whatever backup product you are currently using to write to tape can be used to write to CloudArray storage volumes (and ultimately to the Cloud).  Almost every major backup application vendor now supports a B2D option in their software, and most will run concurrently with local tape operations.  You may have to upgrade to a later version of their product, but you won’t have to rip and replace your current backup solution.

Adding the Cloud component is easy

To configure the two to work together, all you would need to do is create a local CloudArray volume and mount it to your backup server.  The backup application can then be configured to write to this volume just like it would any local volume, and CloudArray will then copy that data safely to your Cloud Storage Provider.

If a restore becomes necessary, it would be serviced directly from the local cache, and you wouldn’t need to go out to the cloud at all.  Since CloudArray cache is persistent and can be dedicated to specific volumes, there is no risk that your backup data would be flushed out by another more active volume.

In the event of a local site disruption, the Cloud resident backups could be restored to any location of your choice, even a Cloud  Computing environment such as Amazon EC2.

Data Protection is about Recovery.  Reducing risk, and decreasing costs.  It isn’t about doing unnatural acts with Robocopy because that is the only tool that will work with your gateway software.

CloudArray can be used today with leading backup application products such as Net Backup, Backup Exec, Veeam, Visioncore, and a host of others.  Visit www.TwinStrata.com for a free trial.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Intelligent Storage Cloud, backup | No Comments »

VMware Use Cases for Cloud Storage: more than you think…..

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

by Greg Roody

]We get asked how VMware environments can take advantage of Cloud Storage often enough that I thought I’d mention a few options here for use cases that make financial and operational sense.

Backup

I’ve covered using CloudArray with VDR here before, so I won’t dwell on this other than to mention that any backup application that makes use of the new vStorage API’s,  performs deduplication and can write to disk is an excellent choice to reduce backup expenses as well as gain an offsite storage component with Cloud Storage.

Archival

Another interesting use case is archival of older VM’s, Templates, or infrequently used VM’s such as test environments.  In these cases, you can use Storage vMotion to migrate the datastore for these VM’s from your primary SAN to Cloud Storage.  They will still appear as though they are local to your ESX server, but the data will be kept resident in offsite Cloud Storage.  If you need to use them at any time, they can either be used with their datastore on Cloud Storage or they could be migrated back for the time they are needed.  You can also Clone VM’s, or Clone VM’s to a Template with the target being cloud storage volumes.

Migration/Replication

By now you are seeing that Cloud Storage can be an excellent way to store VM’s you don’t need immediate access to, either by using a backup product such as VDR or by simply archiving your VM’s.   But there is another valuable use for Cloud Storage use as well; as a migration “swing” set.  For example, if you have some VM’s that you want to transfer between datacenters, or even between ESX hosts, you can use Cloud Storage as a place to first write the VM files from one host or site, and then read them to another host or site.

Pay as you go, provision it yourself

Remember, Cloud Storage is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.  If you need a few TB of storage to do a migration, you will only pay for the storage you actually use until you destroy it.  Additionally, it is elastic and can be self provisioned.  You don’t have to make a request to a Storage Administrator to provision and assign the storage resources.  A VMware administrator could easily manage this themselves.

Is Cloud Storage ready for VMware?  Absolutely, and so are you.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Cloud Storage: Why it’s all about the ecosystem

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

What makes today’s “storage as a service” providers more likely to succeed than those of 10 years ago? On the surface, much can be said about technology improvements and nearly ubiquitous bandwidth availability as catalysts for customer acceptance and adoption.  Layer on top of that proven economies of scale and a pay-as-you-go model from Amazon and other providers and you no longer have a promise but rather a very real and very attractive cost model for many businesses.

Why ASPs had it tough

While technology and cost savings are making a difference, an often neglected differentiator between the xSPs of yesteryear and the XaaS ecosystems of today may be the actual presence of an ecosystem versus a monolithic provider. Consider that an application service provider (ASP) who decides to bring a end-to-end solution to market needs

  • Economic and scalable infrastructure
  • Application expertise, and
  • A way to bridge the solution to the enterprise

A rather ambitious undertaking, I’d say. Tradeoffs in any of the above areas may reduce the business value or compromise the end solution.

Let’s look at a more concrete example relevant to storage. Say I have developed unique technology that reduces my data sizes by up to an order of magnitude. If I wanted to roll this technology into a data backup solution following the ASP model, I would (1) build the backup application software, (2) build the data reduction technology that connects to storage and (3) build out the storage infrastructure to house the data. Rather than attempting to tackle all three steps myself, I could turn to the existing ecosystem to leverage others’ core strengths and expertise in order to optimize the overall solution.

Enter the ecosystem

Working within the ecosystem, my technology could leverage best of breed cloud storage, replete with availability and cost efficiency options from a number of mature storage providers. But what if I could also leverage existing backup software so that IT administrators weren’t forced to rip and replace, not to mention learn new solutions?  And what if I could deliver my solution as software that bridges a customer’s existing technology to their choice of multiple best-of-breed cloud providers? For starters, I benefit from a significantly faster time to market, the ability to retain focus on enhancing my core value proposition, and access to a larger addressable market due to ease of integration. Users benefit from a broad array of choices, no lock-in, lower costs and user-friendly integration. Sure, competitors could join the ecosystem but that only further benefits end-users by enabling additional choices.

Sound interesting? You bet.  The intelligent storage cloud is all about combining the best of the best, whether it is the expertise of service providers, solution providers or enablement providers.  The power of an ecosystem is that it is much greater than than the sum of its parts.

Intelligent Storage Cloud diagramAt the end of the day, an ecosystem means more choices, cost-savings and better technology for the end-user.

What do you think is the key differentiator between the storage clouds of today and the early storage service providers?

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Intelligent Storage Cloud | 1 Comment »

5 Reasons to Back Up Your Data Remotely with CloudArray

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

With a variety of ways to back up your data off-site, ranging from tape transport to online backup software, why back up to cloud storage via CloudArray™? If you consider all options, there a number of good reasons to choose CloudArray for off-site backup and we thought we would share five of them:

5) It works with your existing backup software. You’ve already made the investment in backup software because it meets most of your needs. Why change your backup process, deal with a learning curve and risk losing functionality? Simply point your backup jobs to CloudArray disks, which appear local, and CloudArray takes care of securely moving the data off-site.
4) Network bandwidth is expensive. Even if you have lots of external bandwidth, you don’t want backup to monopolize it. Cloudarray caching minimizes the amount of bandwidth that goes through your external internet connection. The cache can use any type of local storage with cache sizes ranging from a few GB to a full local copy, providing a very fast first line of restore without going to the external network. Compression/deduplication further reduce your bandwidth requirements and some of our upcoming technology that minimizes bandwidth may just knock your socks off.
3) Your data needs security. With CloudArray, data is not only encrypted in-flight via SSL, but it is also encrypted at-rest when it is stored at your provider. That means every bit of data that leaves your premises is encrypted and stays that way until you need it back.
2) Access your data when you need it, where you need it. When we say Compute Anywhere™ access, we mean your data is instantly available on-site, off-site or even in cloud compute, such as Amazon EC2. All you need is an instance of CloudArray software, your configuration credentials and our one-button restore process. Unlike most online backup, your data is not just stored in a one-way vault that requires hours or days to retrieve a single file. Unlike tape, your data is available immediately, not just for disaster recovery, but also for validation, test or development purposes. When was the last time you validated your backups?
1) Cost savings and choice. There are no capital or administrative expenses for the off-site data stored by CloudArray; no dedicated hardware or facilities. CloudArray gives you a choice of cloud storage providers so you always have access to the best pricing on the planet. Want Amazon RRS starting at $0.10 GB/mo? No problem. Want to rotate backups across multiple providers? We can do that, too.

Finally, CloudArray is simple to use. It’s a downloadable virtual appliance you can start using in 30 minutes.

Still need convincing? Try CloudArray free for 30-days. It’s on us, including all the cloud storage you need.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in backup | 1 Comment »

VMware Backup: VDR to Cloud Storage might be just right for you

Friday, June 4th, 2010

by Greg Roody

VMware Data Recovery (VDR) isn’t new, it’s been around since the release of vSphere as a no-charge option, but it is gaining some new attention as a means of not only doing de-duplicated B2D but also as a means of storing those backups remotely to Cloud Storage.  In effect, combining VDR with a Cloud Storage option like CloudArray™ will achieve B2D2C in a simple, secure, and cost effective way.

VDR has its limitations to be sure; it only supports 100 VM’s and 2TB of de-du[ped/compressed target data (VMware does see up to a 10:1 comptression ratio however) per VDR instance and it doesn’t support linked vCenter servers or linked clones.  But even within those limitations (it’s a first generation product, and you can be sure VMware will improve it and expand its reach), it can be a very viable solution to real headaches you are fighting today.

One big win for VDR is that not only does it perform de-duplication, but it also does changed track updates.  What this means is that the notion of Weekly Full backups and Nightly Incremental is gone.   After you create the first image backup (and remember, it is doing block level de-dupe so even that is a much smaller image than your source), every backup after that only sends the changed data which is again also de-duped.   VDR also maintains restore points based on every backup run, so you still have multiple restore points to choose from, just like with traditional backup solutions.  Of course, it’s all disk based so there is no need to manage tapes.

Now combine that capability with CloudArray, and you can remotely replicate those backups to a Cloud Storage provider (Public or Private).   This provides a critical element for a BC/DR strategy without the direct expense of maintaining a second location.

With CloudArray, you have the option to maintain a full local copy in CloudArray cache, or a partial copy. The advantage of maintaining a full local copy is that you will never have to go to cloud storage to retrieve your backed up VM's unless you have a major site disruption. In either case, you have the option to take snapshots in the cloud, thus preserving older restore points and allowing you to maintain the consistency of the backup set in the event something happens to your on-line copy.

If needed, these remote backups can be restored to any location you choose, even from instances running on Amazon EC2.  This greatly expands your options if a disaster recovery site ever needs to be stood up.

Of course, being a B2D2C solution, the need for tape is eliminated, as is the need to manage those tapes or transport them to offsite storage facilities.  And since the backups are on-line, you can restore from either local cache or the Cloud without having to schedule a truck to go and try to find them.

It’s non-disruptive

There is no need to upgrade or rebuild your current environment to start using VDR.  It’s a simple appliance deployment and a plug-in, both included with vCenter and vSphere.  From the CloudArray side, it’s a simple appliance deployment and client UI install.  Along with some simple configuration steps, that’s all you need to start backing up your VM’s to cloud storage.  You can even retain your current backup environment, using VDR on only those VM’s you want at any given time and slowly converting over.

Fast. Simple. Secure.

You  can literally go from no solution to a complete VDR solution with CloudArray in under 30 minutes.   Included will be full AES 256 bit encryption to the target Cloud Service Provider.   You can watch a short 10 minute demo here (http://www.twinstrata.com/VideoCloudArrayVMwareVDR) of the major steps required to configure and use it.

And once you have CloudArray installed, you can also use it as primary VMFS storage or as RDM devices for any use with VMware.  That means that you can use SVmotion, cloning templates to cloud storage for safe keeping, or just build new VM’s directly onto cloud storage.

More Information.

Visit http://www.twinstrata.com/VMwareVDR.html for more information on using Cloud Storage with VMware, including customer use cases and real world applications.  You can learn more about VMware Data recovery at http://www.vmware.com/products/data-recovery/ , and you can follow discussions about VDR at VMware’s blog, http://blogs.vmware.com/uptime/.


Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Amazon S3 RRS Cloud Storage — Secondary storage tiers at 33% savings

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Amazon recently announced S3 RRS starting at $0.10/GB per month, a very palatable 33% less than S3 standard storage. What’s the catch? RRS means reduced redundancy storage, a tier of storage that maintains fewer copies of data than Amazon S3 standard service. According to Amazon, S3 standard storage provides “99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year” and can sustain “the concurrent loss of data in two facilities.” RRS storage provides “99.99% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year” and can  “sustain the loss of data in a single facility.”

Why is this interesting to CloudArray customers? Because many CloudArray solutions involve secondary tiers of storage in the cloud with full copies of primary data on-premise. In these cases, RRS is a great cost-saving tradeoff for the secondary storage tier in the cloud with very little impact on overall data availability thanks to the full on-premise copy.

It is important to use this new tier of storage wisely. For those solutions using primary tiers of storage in the cloud without full onsite copies, it may make sense to stick with the standard S3 service.

Because CloudArray makes storage providers and policies flexible and transparent, our customers now have the benefit of a more cost-effective tier of storage for backup, data replication and business continuity solutions to Amazon.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in backup, replication | 2 Comments »

CA ARCserve qualified with CloudArray – Store ARCserve data in Cloud storage

Friday, January 8th, 2010

We continue to see a growing interest in Cloud storage from the end user community. Responding to growing requests, we recently qualified CA ARCserve Backup software with CloudArray. Below is a link to a presentation that steps you through how ARCserve software together with CloudArray protects virtualized and physical server environments. We also included a 3-year TCO summary on CloudArray vs. existing backup and replication solutions. If you are using ARCserve or any other third party data protection software solution, we’d like to hear from you on the challenges you are experiencing with your current solution. Enjoy the presentation.

Enable CA ARCserve to store and retrieve backup data to Cloud storage using CloudArray™ software

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »