TwinStrata Blog » vmware

Cloud Storage Arithmetic: 80% Faster Recovery

Nicos Vekiarides — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:59:07 +0000

The topics of ROI and cost savings frequently come up when discussing moving a portion of data storage infrastructure to the cloud. While it is good practice to compare the costs of purchasing dedicated infrastructure versus the pay-as-you-go cloud model to find the “break-even point” when the initial costs of investing in the cloud are replaced by month-over-month cost savings, the math really does not speak to the operational improvement businesses can experience from moving to cloud storage.

Let’s take our recent customer case study, where AFGE, the largest federal employee union in the United States, was able to reduce VMWare off-site restore times by 80% versus tape using a combination of CloudArray software and Veeam Backup software. How exactly should a business value such a substantial operational improvement in off-site backup? Well, here’s how AFGE values it:

“Now that we know the backup data is successfully and securely going offsite, we can rest easily. With the deployment of CloudArray, we were able to cut our storage costs, reduce data recovery times from one week to one day, and eliminate much of the manual work of handling all those tapes resulting in a savings of one quarter of a FTE,” said Taylor Higley, IT director, AFGE.

As you can see, there is a lot to be said about improvements in operational efficiency. While cost savings is always a relevant consideration in moving to the cloud, so is peace of mind in protecting/recovering valuable data.

Find out how your business can benefit from improved IT operational efficiency. Learn more about CloudArray.

BNMC Relies on TwinStrata CloudArray and Best Practices to Avoid Disastrous Data Loss

admin — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 15:34:23 +0000

Customer Success: Critical Business Data Saved

BNMC; a Mass. based strategic information technology (IT) network services company, selected TwinStrata CloudArray® to provide backup services for their clients. A virtual appliance that runs on VMware, CloudArray can be deployed for backup, archive, or disaster recovery/business continuity requirements. Key to effective and rapid data recovery in the event of a site disaster is CloudArray‟s metadata so protecting this critical information is top of mind for system administrators. Eryck Bredy, BNMC President & CTO, has always been an advocate of following best practices and one day, he averted a disaster as a result. You see, Eryck accidentally deleted the CloudArray VM he was working on, rendering it terminal. This VM had 1TB of customer data on it. But Eryck wasn‟t worried. He knew that he could easily recover the data with CloudArray since he did, in fact, follow best practices, and had backed up the CloudArray configuration data. And because there was a full copy of the data in the cloud, he knew CloudArray was imminently recoverable in and of itself. After accidentally deleting the CloudArray VM (CAVM1), Eryck simply imported a new CloudArray VM (CAVM2), reset t he cache, and restored the backup of CAVM1 to CAVM2. That was it. When CAVM2 was powered on, it replayed the metadata and back-filled its cache with the data from the cloud on an as needed basis. Because of the rapid and seamless recovery capabilities of CloudArray, BNMC business interruption was avoided. And since all user data was in the cloud, CAVM2 simply re-enabled access to it without incident.

“Bottom line – unfortunate incidents are going to happen. The important thing is to be ready when they do. Using TwinStrata CloudArray helped us mitigate the effects of losing critical data and enabled us to protect the trust our customers have in BNMC.” – Eryck Bredy, BNMC President & CTO

As widespread adoption of cloud services increases, it‟s comforting to BNMC to know that solutions like CloudArray are in place to help. For Eryck, the combination of CloudArray and BNMC best practices helped avoid a potentially disastrous situation for their clients, the loss of their critical business data.

Data Storage and Protection Strategies for the Cloud Era

admin — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:10:53 +0000

For SMBs considering traditional data backup and storage and/or for those struggling with an off-site solution, it may be time to consider the cloud as an alternative data protection solution.

Enterprise Systems Journal article by Nicos Vekiarides

Data protection and storage are substantial budgetary expenses for today’s small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs). With storage capacities increasing every year, businesses must look at leaner alternatives, especially in the face of shrinking IT budgets. For years, larger businesses have relied on remote data centers to protect and store their data, but the administrative effort, reliability concerns, and expense associated with traditional backup methods such as tape or off-site disk make this approach an unrealistic option for smaller organizations.

… to read Nicos’s full ESJ article: http://esj.com/articles/2010/11/16/Storage-and-Protection-Strategies.aspx

Five Reasons to Evaluate Cloud Storage for Data Protection Today

admin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:50:02 +0000

No doubt you have been hearing a lot about Cloud Storage, its advantages, and how it makes a lot of sense as a way to affordably move data offsite without having to deal with Tape or the expense of maintaining a second DR site.

But you still haven’t tried it.

You may be concerned about the security, or integration, or infrastructure costs. You may b e short staffed and short budget and just trying to keep up with daily demands. But you keep hearing about the benefits, and how it could help your operations today.

But you still haven’t tried it.

So without any further ado, here are 5 reasons you should download and evaluate today:

1. It’s Easy.

All you have to do is go to www.cloudarray.com and click the “SignUp Now” now button. You will be asked a few short questions, and then you will be issued a license key good for 30 days you can use to activate your trial. You will also be able to download a copy of our Virtual Appliance for Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware, or Amazon EC2. Simply download the files and install them in your favorite HyperVisor. You won’t need a VMware expert, or Network expert, or MS expert, or even a storage admin to get up and running. Basic system administration skills are all that is required.

2. HyperVisors are Free.

Now some of you are thinking that you don’t have an existing Virtual Infrastructure (VI) and you don’t want to build one just to evaluate a new piece of software. Fair Enough, but you don’t need to build a complex VI to run CloudArray. CloudArray can run on just about any 64 bit platform with a modern operating system. For example, while it will run in Hyper-V or ESX/ESXi of course, but it will also run in VMware Workstation, and it will even run in VMware player. VMware player is free, although you shouldn’t expect much performance out of it, and stability might also be an issue, but it will work. Also, ALL VMware products, from vSphere all the way down to Workstation, can be downloaded for a free 60 day trial. None of these downloads and installs requires any advanced product knowledge. All are easily installable and have defaults prebuilt that will get you up and running.

3. It’s Secure

If you will be using real data as your test load, you can configure CloudArray to encrypt the data before sending it to the Cloud Service Provider. CloudArray uses 256 bit AES encryption, and you retain the keys (they don’t get sent to the CSP or to TwinStrata at any time). You won’t even have to worry about deleting the data when you are done. Just delete the keys and you are safe and secure.

4. You don’t even need a CSP

If you are just getting started, you probably don’t have a relationship with a CSP. We can help you there, and will provide temporary credentials so you can store up to 100GB of data for 30 days at a public CSP without charge.

5. It integrates easily

Once your new CloudArray storage appliance is up and running, you can integrate your existing applications with Cloud Storage as easily as you would mount a new volume. Step one is to create a new LUN and assign it to a server. Step 2 is to mount that LUN on the server and assign it to your application to use. There is no step 3 required. Go ahead and use your new volume just as you would local storage.

Coping With Shrinking IT Budgets: Automated High Availability for Offsite Backup

admin — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:12:45 +0000

Some of the biggest data management challenges facing IT stem from having to deal with smaller budgets for staff, storage capacity, and tools - at least according to a recent Storage Networking World survey. With less IT dollars to spread around, I’ll pile on by including in the fray the inability to economically and reliably protect vital backup and restore operations from unplanned downtime situations. In the SME world this can easily become complex and costly at the same time. The ability to affordably bring enterpirse class high availability to your data protection operations can begin to eliminate user downtime. And if you can automate the whole process the business becomes more efficient and disaster resilient with a stronger bottom line to show for it.

The recent announcement that CloudArray has been qualified to work out-of-the-box with VMware HA solutions allows you to better protect your busines information 24×7 without major investments in costly resources. With support for multiple VMware availability options, TwinStrata’s CloudArray ensures your off-site data protection operations are uninterrupted and cost-effective with continuous data access in the cloud.

Additionally, when CloudArray is configured with VMware HA or Fault Tolerance you can also think about eliminating complex manual recovery steps (staff), reducing storage acquisitions (capacity), and flat out improve productivity (tools).

Sounds like you may not need to worry too much about shrinking IT budgets afterall.

Election Day Lunch & Learn Seminar – See the Results: How Your Business Can Leverage Cloud Backup Services

admin — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:46:49 +0000

For anyone local to the Waltham MA area, TwinStrata will be participating in a BNMC hostedcomplementary Lunch & Learn Seminar along withVMware, Vizioncore/Quest Software, and Hosted Solutions about how your business can leverage Cloud Backup Services – affordably, reliably, and easily. The seminar will discuss solutions for Enterprise-class data protection and disaster recovery using your existing backup infrastructure, TwinStrata’s CloudArray, and the private and secure cloud infrastructure at Hosted Solutions. BNMC offers their Cloud Backup Service powered by the CloudArray technology which delivers cost-effective and seamless managed storage services optimized for performance, multi-site availability and elastic storage capacity at a substantial cost-savings over traditional cloud storage solutions.

The BNMC Cloud Backup Service using CloudArray greatly enhances your business resiliency by providing seamless “zero-U” iSCSI storage that “stretches” your backup infrastructure or your VMware High Availability into the cloud. The solution plugs right into your existing VMware environment (as a virtual machine) or can be added as a separate appliance in a physical environment to work alongside your existing backup infrastructure to protect all assets.

Online Registration for the event: http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventId=903608

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

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:08:48 +0000

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.

Join us for an upcoming Webinar on 7/22 – Using VMware Data Recovery with Cloud Storage

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:50:28 +0000

Attend this valuable session and learn how you can use VDR and CloudArray software to quickly and economically backup your VMware VM’s to Cloud Storage

CloudArray(tm) from TwinStrata and VMware VDR provide simple, fast and secure off-site backup for VMware environments to your choice of cloud storage providers

* Simple: CloudArray interfaces natively to VDR
* Efficient: Deduplication and only changes sent over the network
* Secure: Data encrypted at-rest and in-flight
* Fast: CloudArray cache or local copy for fast restores
* Available: CloudArray snapshots create additional copies in the cloud

One of the most common headaches for VMware administrators is backup. With many VM’s running on an ESX/ESXi host, you don’t want them all consuming system resources to push backup data to a traditional backup server. VCB is one possible answer, but it requires a substantial investment in Backup Application software, and a Tape or local B2D (Backup to Disk) solution to manage. With the arrival of vSphere you have the no-charge option of using VDR to backup VM images to disk using changed track updates with a native Dedupe capability.

When combined with CloudArray from TwinStrata, the B2D is actually done to a CloudArray volume and stored at a remote Cloud Service Provider (or to your own Private Cloud infrastructure). This Hybrid solution is best termed B2D2C.

Click the link below to Register for this valuable webinar:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/609674248

VMware announces VDR 1.2: Even more reasons to use it with CloudArray

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:03:50 +0000

By Greg Roody

VMware announced a new version of VDR today that has a lot of improvements and new functionality. In a nutshell, the new release supports:

a file level restore client for Linux virtual machines
ability to run up to 10 VDR appliances per vCenter Server instance
ability to fast switch between the deployed appliances via the vSphere Client plug-in
Better deduplication performance

They also addressed a lot of issues reported by customers since the initial release.

In support of this new release, we have placed a new release of CloudArray on our download site. If you haven’t evaluated VDR yet, now is a good time. Combined with CloudArray, you can quickly and easily store your VMware restore files on Cloud Storage, wither Public or Private with complete security.

This can extend your BC/DR capabilities to offsite storage without the expense of provisioning a second site or handling and managing tape.

Details of VDR 1.2 can be found at http://blogs.vmware.com/uptime/2010/06/new-vdr-release-out-today.html.

Fun with Cloud Storage: EMC “Atmos in a Box” with CloudArray

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:39:18 +0000

by Greg Roody

With EMC’s recent announcements of Atmos-VE (virtual edition), and the ability to set up Atmos as a VM for either production or test, the possibilities for evaluating a Private Cloud environment for free just became easier.

Well, to be clear, Atmos-VE itself isn’t free, you have to buy it, but “Atmos in a Box” (AiaB) is free and publically available for people to try and learn on. We have actually been using it for quite a while for development and test, and it works very well.

Luckily, I don’t need to describe the solution for you since Chad Sakac does an excellent job in his Virtual Geek blog. He also provides download and installation instructions if you would like to try it.

And of course, CloudArray™ will connect to your AiaB environment as easily as Atmos-VE or any of the Atmos hardware based services available from our partners like AT&T Synaptics, Hosted Solutions, or even Atmos On-line (www.atmosonline.com). You can even use CloudArray to move data between Clouds if that becomes necessary.

So what does CloudArray bring to the table for Atmos?

Atmos itself, like other Cloud Storage platforms, communicates natively with clients using a rich set of API’s. You are of course free to develop new applications using those API’s, or you can use CloudArray as a SAN gateway to your Atmos storage device. Any application server in your environment that can mount volumes using iSCSI can connect to your Atmos storage pools, without the need to reprogram them or manage them any differently than you do today. You gain self service provisioning, reporting, zero footprint snapshots, compression, encryption, and all the other advanced features that CloudArray provides.

And since CloudArray is also a VM based software solution, there is no requirement to lay in a lot of very expensive, sole-purpose hardware to either evaluate or deploy a solution. CloudArray is free to try for 30 days, so lay in your AiaB environment, add CloudArray, and start using your Private Storage cloud in a purely test environment. Since it’s all virtual, you already know the drill to move from test to production.

CloudArray is a natural companion to Atmos in building your Private Cloud. Applications like Exchange 2010, Oracle, backup and archive solutions, and virtually any legacy application can start to take advantage or your new infrastructure.

You have real business applications that can benefit from Private Cloud Storage. CloudArray can help you connect them.

Give it a try, it’s all free (some assembly required however).