TwinStrata Blog » DR

How to simplify off-site backup for virtual environments

Nicos Vekiarides — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:00:46 +0000

If you happen to be managing a virtual server environment, such as VMware or Hyper-V, you are probably aware of the importance of backup software to protect your valuable applications and data in case of disaster. You may also be keenly conscious of the unique needs that virtual server environments pose, such as virtual machine sprawl, contention for server resources and spiraling data growth (often duplicate data), in which case there is probably no need to spend a lot of time touting the benefits of Veeam Backup & Replication.

Over the past few years, Veeam has become the leader in backup for virtual environments offering class-leading consolidated and highly efficient backup and replication that was designed and optimized to handle the special requirements associated with ever-popular virtual machine backups.

Starting with Veeam as a foundation, is it possible to make backup and recovery even simpler? Well, one of the challenges of backup is moving backup data off site for disaster recovery (DR) purposes. You might settle for the manual and rather unreliable process of shipping tapes or media offsite with the hope of getting your data back in a reasonable period of time should a disaster strike. Alternatively, you might build out a disk-to-disk backup infrastructure that extends off site to a secondary or collocation facility, housing additional storage equipment that you own and manage (learn more in my recent article Data Protection and Backup: The Shortcomings of Disk-to-Disk). But perhaps you are looking for a faster, simpler way to achieve your off-site DR objectives, without manual and unreliable processes and without significant capital and administrative investment.

What if you could simply add off-site storage for backups without the need for tapes and without the need for a secondary site? What if at the touch of a button you could access secure off-site cloud storage that is bandwidth optimized with local-key encryption and offers instant recoverability virtually anywhere and a choice of cloud providers. That is TwinStrata CloudArray.

Needless to say, we were recently happy to announce that every copy of Veeam Backup & Replication now comes bundled with a free CloudArray virtual appliance up to 1TB. Backing up virtual server environments just became simpler and the need for tapes and offsite facilities may quickly become a distant memory. Each CloudArray appliance can scale to Petabytes of data with an iSCSI interface that allows seamlessly storing backups or archives. CloudArray also offers additional storage capacity wherever it is needed. If you are a backup administrator considering off-site backup and DR options, consider a better, simpler option that only takes minutes to deploy. Try Veeam with your free CloudArray virtual appliance and let us know how simple off-site backup for your virtual environment can be.

Cloud Storage for Multi-site Consolidation, Part II: DR Anywhere

Nicos Vekiarides — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:00:40 +0000

Part I of this series examined how multi-site consolidation of data storage using the cloud can benefit your business, emphasizing consolidated disaster recovery (DR) as one of the key benefits. In this installment, we dig a bit deeper into the benefits of DR with cloud storage.

If your business already spans multiple sites, you may think about using one of your existing sites for DR. However, you may want to think again if you have to double your fixed storage capacity. Enter cloud storage and instead your secondary data copies can reside in the cloud on a pay-as-you-go basis. Using a cloud storage hybrid appliance, like CloudArray, you can instantly access data from any site if a primary site experiences a disaster. With Cloudarray’s automatic and secure configuration backup, a quick download is all it takes to restore access to data from any site — and you are up and running in minutes.

However, even with a secondary copy of data in the cloud, using one of your existing sites for DR may not be a viable option for a number of reasons, including:

Insufficient bandwidth/scale to aggregate replicated updates or provide access during a disaster
Insufficient dedicated servers to bring up all critical applications during a disaster
Lack of administrative staff to build and support a secondary site

With these constraints, using the cloud as the DR site can be a very compelling alternative. Recovering applications in the cloud means no dedicated DR infrastructure: no servers, no storage, and no staff to maintain that infrastructure. Since CloudArray runs in the cloud, accessing your data in the cloud is just a simple as accessing from a new location.

Is there a catch to using the cloud for DR? One consideration is the process of restarting your applications in the cloud. In a virtual environment, if your cloud provider runs the same hypervisor you run on-premise, the process of recovering applications involves moving virtual machines. On the other hand, if the cloud provider runs a different type of hypervisor or you are operating in a physical server environment, conversion utilities or third party software may be necessary to restart applications in the cloud. Either way, DR in the cloud is an option worth considering.

So what’s next beyond consolidated DR? How about multiple access points to your data across sites or the cloud for other use cases? Stay tuned for Part III…

Cloud storage for multi-site consolidation – Part I

Nicos Vekiarides — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:00:18 +0000

Imagine running a business where data storage is distributed across 20 geographically separated sites. How do you efficiently manage those sites? What happens when one site runs out of storage capacity? What if one site were hit with a disaster or flood? Surely there ought to be a centralized disaster site to protect against site outage or data loss, right? And who manages each site? Would there be an administrator at each site or traveling from site to site?

If these questions give you the impression that multi-site storage management across sites can be a headache, you are right. What can you do to ease this management burden?

For starters, you can use cloud storage in place of a traditional siloed storage infrastructure. Here are some of the key benefits cloud storage can deliver to simplify your multi-site infrastructure:

1) Accessibility to an unlimited pool of storage from each site that grows on demand– meaning never having to worry about running out of capacity
2) A centralized disaster site with unlimited bandwidth and multi-datacenter redundancy, network optimization and data security — a very complex undertaking to build out yourself
3) A centralized portal that can monitor and proactively alert you on the health status of each site — without an onsite presence

How can cloud storage do this? Via software or hardware hybrid storage appliances like CloudArray, that provides optimized data access from each site combined with a central point of management. What’s more, CloudArray lets you recover your data virtually anywhere– on-premise, off-premise or even in the cloud using pay-as-you-go compute resources, all in minutes.

There is indeed a better way to manage growing data storage needs across multiple locations. Are there even more benefits? Stay tuned to learn more in Part II of this series.

Cloud storage: Why the whole is greater than the sum of parts, Part I

Nicos Vekiarides — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:00:32 +0000

When you spend twenty years in the data storage industry, you’re no stranger to disaster recovery plans and their importance. A disaster recovery plan is an essential best practice when building a data storage environment because, let’s face it, disks may fail, storage arrays may fail, entire data centers may fail and, yes, even a cloud provider may fail; but these occurrences are neither controversial or shocking.

It so happens that cloud storage is an excellent way to enhance and augment your disaster recovery plan. A storage architecture that follows best practices does not rely on a single data center. With cloud enabling technology, like CloudArray, cloud storage is a simple and secure off-site extension of your data center. When combined with an existing data center, the cloud enables a multi-site data protection and DR strategy that rivals those of large enterprise companies. A virtual disaster recovery site is a very compelling use case for cloud storage where the resulting “whole” really is greater than the sum of its parts; the availability of the combined data center facility is greater than the availability of either your existing data center or the cloud.

Now given the extent of public outcry around the recent AWS outage, one can mistakenly conclude that the unthinkable has happened or, alternatively, one can see a case for maintaining best practices that “design for failure.” Using cloud is not an excuse to abandon best practices or to push the burden of the availability of your business to a cloud provider. Unless your SLA specifies the cloud provider is taking full financial responsibility for business loss from outages, you are responsible for an “off-cloud” disaster recovery strategy, whether that strategy involves using more than one cloud provider or using your local premise as the other site.

Cloud storage is a way to enable tremendous advantages for your business. A good starting point is using the cloud to enhance/augment rather than replace existing infrastructure. If you do, I’m certain you will be pleased with the results.

Still not a believer? Look for part II of this series, where our CTO, John Bates, gives you a technical lowdown of why the whole is greater than the sum of parts…

TwinStrata to Present at EMC World and Interop This Week

admin — Mon, 09 May 2011 12:59:32 +0000

TwinStrata’s CEO, Nicos Vekiarides, will be presenting at EMC World and Interop this week in Las Vegas. Please join us if you are attending either conference to learn how your business can benefit from cloud storage:

EMC World:

Five Ways Every Business Can Benefit from Cloud Storage
In the face of shrinking IT budgets and continuously expanding data storage needs, companies of all sizes are turning to cloud storage. With advantages including a pay-as-you go model, the cloud is often the best way to extend storage infrastructure and increase overall IT agility. This presentation examines key benefits that cloud storage, from providers like the EMC Atmos partner ecosystem, can bring to an organization and discusses considerations around hybrid clouds, use cases and ways to accelerate deployment.

WHERE:
Atmos Cloud Pavilion Theater
The Venetian
Las Vegas, Nevada

WHEN:
Tuesday, May 10, 2011, 4:30-5:00 p.m.

EMC World web site

Interop:

“Cloud Storage: DR for Free – Everything in Parallel” Panel Discussion
On-demand, utility-based storage allows for pay-as-you-go economics that CFOs are finding irresistible, and could pave the way to the cloud for many enterprises. Vekiarides and three other industry leaders will discuss how cloud storage is disrupting traditional backup and disaster recovery solutions for businesses of all sizes and shapes.

WHERE:
Lagoon B
Mandalay Bay Convention Center
Las Vegas, Nevada

WHEN:
Wednesday, May 11, 2011, 10:15-11:15 a.m.

Interop conference web site

Interop Speaker/Session Info

TwinStrata and PEER 1 Team Up to Deliver Enterprise Class Cloud Storage

admin — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:14:42 +0000

TwinStrata conintues to broaden its partner ecosystem with leading cloud storage providers. Here is yet another example…

NATICK, Mass. and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — TwinStrata, Inc., the leading innovator in iSCSI SAN, data protection and disaster recovery solutions using cloud storage, today announced it has achieved Bronze Partner Program status with international hosting provider, PEER 1 Hosting (TSX: PIX), further demonstrating TwinStrata’s continued commitment to supporting the industry’s key cloud storage providers along with their customers.

Read the full press release…

Why a Massachusetts High School Picked TwinStrata CloudArray over Competition

admin — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:26:33 +0000

Kyle Jones, technology manager, Essex Agricultural and Technical High School in Hathorne, MA tested cloud gateway products from Nasuni and TwinStrata to meet specific IT budget and operational objectives. The reasons TwinStrata won out are worth reading about, especially if you are part of a small to medium size business considering cloud storage for either offsite backup, archive, or disaster recovery and business continuity.

Mr. Jones was interviewed recently by TechTarget Senior Site Editor, Andrew Burton where he discussed his requirements, offsite storage/data protection options, and why CloudArray was a better business and technology solution choice to handle the school’s backup to cloud storage needs.

You can read more about it here: High School Deploys TwinStrata CloudArray Cloud Storage Gateway

TwinStrata CloudArray Picked as Finalist in Storage Magazine/SearchStorage 2010 Products of the Year Competition

admin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:13:40 +0000

Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) Software and Services: 2010 Products of the Year Finalists Announced

From nearly 200 entries, the judges of Storage magazine’s and SearchStorage.com’s 2010 Products of the Year awards have selected 43 products as finalists including TwinStrata CloudArray. CloudArray was selected as a finalist in the Backup and Disaster Recovery Software and Services category which covers backup, recovery, DR, snapshot, replication, electronic vaulting, and archives.

TwinStrata CloudArray Enables Westway to Easily Cut Storage Costs Without Compromising Data Protection

admin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:27:03 +0000

Westway is a company located in New Orleans, specializing in Bulk Chemical Storage and Liquid Feeds. The numerous challenges they faced included trying to figure out how to establish a way to flexibly add storage as they grew without breaking the bank and reduce onsite infrastructure complexity and costs – all targeted at cost effectively satisfying data storage and retention requirements while ensuring full data control and access and rapid recovery.

The accompanynig case study discusses Westways’ experience using CloudArray for offsite data protection that reduced their overnight backups to just a few hours making.

Enterprise class online backup and cloud storage just got easier in the Big Easy. Read more:

Cloud Storage Performance: I/O Does Matter

admin — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:57:42 +0000

One of the first decisions you will need to make when tuning your environment for Cloud Storage I/O is what page size you will use to perform writes to your Cloud Storage Provider (CSP). This is one of the configuration parameters you will enter when configuring a new volume in CloudArray.

Page sizing is an important consideration, and represents the smallest unit of data that will be sent to your CSP from your CloudArray appliance, or read back when needed. Choose a size that is too small and you may have to do a lot more I/Os if you need to move a lot of data in bulk. Choose a size that’s too big and you will move more data than you need to.

For example, if your application needs to read a lot of small chunks of data that don’t already reside in your CloudArray cache, then CloudArray will have to issue read requests to the CSP for each of those chunks. If each chunk was 64K in length, and they weren’t contiguous, then CloudArray might have to issue 4 separate read requests for that data. If the data were contiguous, then only 1 read request would need to be made.

Larger Page Sizes will result in more data being read than is needed for the current operation, but it may help performance if that data is needed at any point while it is still in cache. In CloudArray, you can choose variable page sizes from 128 KB (default) all the way to 2 MB. 512 KB is the recommended value for backups and in cases where there is a lot of sequential I/O.

If you do a lot of random small block I/O, you should choose the smaller default page size. This will prevent having to move a lot of empty data between your CSP and the CloudArray appliance. A large page size here will cause slower overall performance since a lot more pages will have to be written to accommodate the data requirements. Likewise, if you are doing backups, you will want the 512 KB (or larger) page size. This will result in fewer overall writes compared to a smaller block size and performance will increase.

This can have an impact in your cost model as well, but nowhere nearly as much as some vendors selling file system-based appliances would have you believe. Some CSP’s will charge a small per transaction fee for each read or write request you make. For Amazon S3 for example, the charge is $0.00001 per write transaction. And so for a 1TB backup, that amounts to 8,388,608 x 128KB transactions, or $83. If you used a 512KB page size, that would amount to 2,097,152 write transactions, or $20 for the write transaction costs. Reads are cheaper by an order of ten. That’s a far cry from the $1K+ figure for a 100GB write that another vendor would cost you.

Visit www.TwinStrata.comfor more info about CloudArray.