Revinetix RevOS 4.0 Bridges the Physical-Virtual Backup Gap with All-in-One Solution

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

DCIG

By Jerome M. Wendt on December 8, 2011 9:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment

In the last few years, the need for backup software to support VMware has become almost a must-have for any backup solution to remain relevant in the years to come. The need for organizations to back up both physical and virtual machines means that addressing data protection has become increasingly complex. This is why the new Revinetix RevOS 4.0 provides an all-in-one solution to bridge the physical-virtual gap that other backup software solutions may not accomplish without increasing complexity.

VMware’s adoption rate has accelerated in enterprises of all sizes but growth is perhaps most pronounced   in small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Recent analyst surveys show that from 2009 to 2012, the adoption rate of VMware among SMBs will jump from about 28% in 2009 to more than 75% in 2012.

One side effect of VMware’s rapid uptick in adoption by SMBs is their new need for backup software that is specifically designed to protect their newly virtualized environments. This demand has resulted in a number of first generation backup software products specifically designed to protect VMware.   

Yet the downfall of many of these products is that they do not fully take into account existing physical environments.   While having separate dedicated backup solutions for virtual and physical servers may be acceptable in large enterprise organizations, it is not manageable or cost effective for small to medium sized businesses.   The ideal data protection solution for SMB is a single, easy-to-use, integrated backup solution that protects both physical and virtual servers and enables them to bridge this physical/virtual gap.

The addition of integrated VMware vSphere support into the latest Revinetix RevOS 4.0 gives SMBs this singular solution. While Revinetix could always backup individual virtual machines (VMs), this integration gives Revinetix the flexibility to more efficiently protect VMs at a much more granular and scalable level. To do this, Revinetix RevOS 4.0 offers three key new features:

  • Minimizes or eliminates the need to put agents on every VM. By integrating with the VMware vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), SMBs no longer need to put a Revinetix agent on every VM. Instead, they may use this new feature in Revinetix to track changes on each VM to do fast full or incremental VM backups by doing snapshots of the individual VMs.
  • Automatically detects new VMs for backups.  As new VMs are created, Revinetix now regularly queries either the VMware ESX/ESXi host or VMware vCenter for VMs in the environment. If a new VM is identified and is it not configured for backup, Revinetix will back it up using a default profile.
  • Deduplicates data at a more granular level. In RevOS 4.0, Revinetix expands its deduplication technology beyond the file level by deduplicating data at a block level. This feature is essential to driving up storage efficiency as VMware backups typically have above average levels of redundant data when compared to physical environments. This should result in Revinetix Sentio disk backup appliances being able to achieve up to 20:1 or greater deduplication ratios and store up to five times as much data as when using Revinetix’ file-based deduplication technology.

Current Revinetix customers will also be encouraged to learn that they can access all of this functionality as well. Existing Revinetix Sentio appliances may get this functionality with as little as an OS upgrade, though those models that are over a year old will require the introduction of solid state disks (SSDs) and more memory which are available as an upgrade from Revinetix.

However, as Revinetix makes these features available to protect VMs, it retains its historical strength of providing SMBs the simple all-in-one appliance-based disk backup solution that they seek. As Revinetix has always done, it continues to offer SMBs a single, turnkey solution that provides them with the backup software, software licenses and hardware that they need with the support to back it up.

The new ability of Revinetix to expedite VM backups, discover and backup new VMs and deduplicate data at a more granular level meet the new virtual backup demands of today’s SMBs in the same easy-to-use solution that also backs up their physical servers.

The adoption rate of VMware among SMBs is continuing to accelerate but that does not mean they are abandoning all of their physical applications any time soon. By continuing to deliver the all-in-one appliances that SMBs have come to know it for, Revinetix effectively bridges the physical/virtual gap that almost every SMB is looking to close. In so doing, the new Revinetix RevOS 4.0 provides a single affordable solution to which any SMB may confidently turn to backup both their emerging virtual environment and their existing physical one with a single appliance.

Revinetix RevOS 4.0 Bridges the Physical-Virtual
Backup Gap with All-in-One Solution
 – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Uncategorized, VMware, Virtualization | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The New Arguments for Using Removable Disk in Lieu of Tape for SME Archiving Requirements

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

DCIG

By Jerome M. Wendt on September 1, 2011 9:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment
Continuing (dare I say exploding?) data growth in small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) is forcing these size organizations to confront an issue that was primarily confined to larger organizations: data archiving. Chief among these issues, the question as to what media to store archival data on is one that needs to be answered. While many may assume that tape is best positioned to assume this role, there is a growing body of evidence that disk may be the most appropriate media for SMEs to use when archiving their data.

Every size organization is grappling with growing data stores and SMEs are certainly not exempt from that. As this occurs, they are finding that while they need more storage capacity for their primary data, they may need far greater amounts of storage capacity to store and retain their archival copies of data. 

Historically, this role of storing archive data has fallen to tape because of certain properties that it possesses. But what SMEs may fail to realize is that removable disk media now possesses many of the same properties as tape. As such, it may now actually be a better choice than tape for storing archival data. 

Consider the reasons that are typically cited for using tape and how removable disk now matches up.

  • Economical. On a cost per GB basis, tape used to have disk beat hands down, often by a factor of 10:1. But that gap had dropped precipitously in recent years, down to the point where the price per GB of removable disk is only 2 or 3x more expensive than tape for the same amount of capacity. However, removable disk may be more cost effective than tape. Even though their data is growing, SMEs typically only have hundreds of GBs of data to archive, not terabytes. Removable disk gives them the flexibility to buy disks that are smaller in capacity and matches their specific storage requirements which can make it more affordable than tape.Advantage: Disk.
  • Power and space efficient. Using tape to store data offline is both power and space efficient as a tape cartridge uses no electricity and consumes only minimal space. However, removable disk now has these same properties since it does not need to be powered on all of the time.  Advantage: Draw.
  • Portable. It used to be that tape was just about the only option for SMEs to use to move large amounts of data for offsite protection and disaster recovery. However, removable disk provides this same flexibility and actually one-ups tape. Archived data may either first need to be restored from tape to disk in order to retrieve it or it can take a long time to access the archived data on tape. Using removable disk, data retrieval is almost as fast as if it were on production storage. Advantage: Disk.
  • Durability. Drop it. Kick it. Move it. Write to it. Read to it. Today’s tape cartridges take a licking and keep on ticking. Except that today’s removable disk cartridges (RDX media specifically) has the same properties and even best tape when it comes to the total number of reads and writes. Advantage: Disk.
  • Infinite capacity.  If a tape cartridge fills up, no problem. Just insert a new blank one in its place. Except that with removable disk you can now do the same thing so tape can no longer exclusively claim this feature. Advantage: Draw.

Removable disk also provides at least one feature that tape does not offer: forward and backward compatibility. An issue that SMEs encounter when using tape is that when new, larger capacity tape cartridges are released, to take advantage of them they first have to upgrade their tape drive(s). However, upgrading their tape drive negates their ability to use their older tape cartridges since tape drives can only write to the current and the prior generation of tape cartridges.

Removable disk has no such limitations. It can read and write to any prior or future generation of disk drive since it offers a standard interface. This makes it more practical and even easier to manage than tape, especially when it comes to more quickly accessing, searching and retrieving archival data.

E-discovery and search are two other arguments for using disk instead of tape. Should an SME be subject to an e-discovery, their archived data will likely need to be accessed, indexed and searched, which will then lead to the retrieval of individual email messages or files. Since these are typically stored throughout the archival data store and not in just one location, this calls for random access to the data which plays to disk’s strengths, not tape. 

These arguments for removable disk have now become so strong that tape’s last and best argument for use is its longevity as it is rated to last up to 30 years. But even in this respect SMEs need to ask the question, “What archival data do I need to retain for 30 years?”

Most regulations to which SMEs are subject only require that they keep data for three to seven years. In this regards, removable disks now have 5 year warranties so they are usable for at least that period of time and the data on them is in all likelihood good for a couple of years after that. Further, because removable disk is forward and backward compatible, it is a relatively simple task to copy data from an older disk to a newer one if a longer retention period is required.

So a better question for SMEs to ask is, “What is the best way to implement removable disk in my environment so I can best take advantage of the benefits that it has to offer?” In this respect, SMEs should look to solutions such as what Revinetix offers as it combines the best of what both fixed and removable disk solutions have to offer.

Revinetix offers fixed disk for daily backups and short term archival requirements (~1 – 12 months in duration, depending on amount of data and business requirements.) However, it also supports the use of removable disk technology so SMEs can keep archival data in a near line or offline state to meet their internal or external retention requirements. 

What makes the union of Revinetix and removable disk based technology particularly appealing is two-fold. 

First, should an SME have to quickly respond to an e-discovery request, they can optionally attach removable disks to another Revinetix system. This frees the primary system to do the daily backups, backups and ongoing archival of data while enabling them to dedicate a second system to do data retrievals or e-discovery searches. 

Second, disaster recoveries get a lot easier and more predictable as well. Using removable disk means SMEs always have the right generation of technology at both the production and DR site so they can be confident they can recover. Further, removable disk opens up the possibility that SMEs can recover the application directly from it which may eliminate the need to have a separate storage solution at the DR site. SMEs could never do that with tape.

Tape is still a logical and cost-effective medium to archiving but its use cases are increasingly reserved for large enterprises. What SMEs will likely find is that new removable disk technology gives them all of the benefits that they associate with tape while preserving the benefits that disk affords. By using solutions such as what Revinetix offers, they can fold both fixed and removable disk technology into their environment and seamlessly manage them both.

The New Arguments for Using Removable Disk in Lieu of Tape for SME Archiving Requirements – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Archiving, Backup Solutions, Data Archiving, Data Protection, Data Retention, Disaster Recovery, Disk Backup | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Defining a Cloud as “Good” or “Bad” May Come Down to Whether or Not It Works

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

DCIG

By Jerome M. Wendt on July 29, 2011 8:45 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment
This past Thursday I became aware of David Linthicum’s Cloud Computing blog over at InfoWorld for the first time as a result of an email that was promoting a blog entry he wrote earlier this week. In that particular blog entry he warns why a shortage of cloud architects will soon lead to “bad clouds.” That’s interesting because I did not realize that the industry had really settled on what defines a “good” or a “bad” cloud.

As an individual who first majored and received an undergraduate degree in Theology before getting a second undergraduate degree in Computer Information Systems, the concepts of “good” and “bad” have always intrigued me.

You would think that having a degree in Theology would result in me believing that the lines between “good” and “bad” are pretty much black and white. Yet what I concluded from my studies is that while the Bible clearly defines some behaviors as “bad” or “evil” and others as “good,” there are a far greater number of behaviors (I would say an almost infinite number) that it deems as “acceptable.”

These lessons as to what constitutes “good,” “bad” and “acceptable” in the spiritual realm have had an interesting carryover into the computer realm. Once I got into the world of computer science, I found most of my colleagues define computer architectures in terms of “good” and “bad” (though they may use terms like “smart” and “stupid” to describe them.)  For example, I find many UNIX folks consider Microsoft Windows a curse that mankind is forever doomed to suffer under while mainframe folks look at today’s distributed computer solutions as “tinker toys.”

Unfortunately it just is not that easy to look at a particular computer design and then label it “good” or “bad” (or “smart” or “stupid” as the case may be.) The same holds true when creating a cloud. After all, how can you create a cloud and holistically classify it as “good” or “bad” when each company’s definition as to what a cloud needs to do or provide may be different?

By way of example, here are a few attributes as to what I would define as a “good” cloud providing:

  • Appropriate service levels for each application
  • Data mobility
  • Data protection
  • Ease of management
  • Flexibility to independently scale capacity – memory, networking, processing or storage
  • Multi-tenancy
  • Security
  • Uninterrupted service

So assuming you agree with me there is a lot of room for interpretation as to how each of those features is delivered. Consider data protection. Data protection can be delivered in a multitude of ways – snapshots, traditional backup and replication just to name a few.

So are two of these forms of data protection “bad” and the other one “good”? Or do all of these forms of data protection fit within the spectrum of “acceptable”? I would argue the latter but it really depends on what the business wants to accomplish.

Even then, the business may not be (and likely is not) aware of all of the data protection options available in the market. As such, they are likely not going to have the “best” data protection solution as analysts like myself may define it and consider “good” implemented in their environment. More than likely they are going to have a solution that is “acceptable” to them.

Organizations should also not think that they can turn to vendors or solutions providers in anticipation of getting the “best” cloud available either. Vendors are typically limited to offering whatever solutions they have in their portfolio while solutions providers are motivated by a variety of incentives not the least of which is which of their providers is giving them the most incentive to sell their technology.

While I certainly do not think few if any solutions providers would purposely deliver a cloud that does not work (a “bad” cloud) if they can deliver an “acceptable” solution while making some extra money in the process, who is to fault them?

Defining any particular cloud design as “good” or “bad” is a risky proposition. If anything, the only clouds that are easy to define as “bad” are those that provide little or no business value or simply do not work. Conversely classifying a cloud “good” may be as simple as a cloud that works and meet the needs of both the business and the requirements of the IT staff that have to support it.

Defining a Cloud as “Good” or “Bad” May Come Down to Whether or Not It Works – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Computing, cloud backup | Leave a comment

VMware Starts to Build Its Case for Trusting the Cloud

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

DCIG

By Jerome M. Wendt on July 15, 2011 5:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment

VMware shared a pretty astounding statistic this past Tuesday when it rolled out vSphere 5. It stated that 50% of application workloads will be virtualized by the end of 2011 with that ratio continuing to grow at a rate of 10% per year for the next few years. That’s pretty remarkable considering ten years ago when I proposed starting to virtualize my prior company’s infrastructure that I was scoffed at by many of my peers.

There are any number of reasons why ten years ago people scoffed at my idea to start virtualizing my company’s environment. But the reasons that I cited as to why my company needed to embark upon a path toward virtualization still hold true today. Further, what I saw at that time, and which is becoming more evident with every passing day, is that applications that are NOT virtualized will be the exception not the rule.

Yet it is ironic that when I went to VMware’s website last night as I prepared for this blog entry, the slogan I saw on its website was:

It’s Time to Trust Your Cloud

You know what that implicitly tells me? People today do not yet trust the cloud even as they did not trust in its early form ten years ago. (Anyone remember the phrase “storage utility”?)

Frankly, ten years ago I did not trust the storage utility in its early form. At that time I could not answer some of the thornier questions that were thrown at me by my counterparts as to how virtualization (server or storage) would behave in a mission critical environment.

For instance, I had to field questions such as:

  • If a server has multiple paths ( say 8 ) to a storage subsystem, how does that work when the storage system is virtualized?
  • If virtualized storage is presented to separate AIX, Linux, UNIX, and Windowsservers on the same physical port, does that always work? Always??
  • Are all of the port flags on the storage array set correctly and is working in someone else’s environment who I can call and verify that with?

I could not answer yes to those questions at the time because I did not know. Further most of the vendors providing these storage solutions did not know either. So the status quo prevailed.

This is what I strongly suspect VMware is running up against as it has to deal with similar questions as it moves up the application stack. Granted, VMware proudly proclaimed in its webinar this past Tuesday that its OS is being used to host more business critical applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, SQL Server, and Oracle. But as that occurs, I can just see skeptical, battle-hardened IT managers who have been burned one too many times looking their VMware reps square in the eye and asking:

  • If I virtualize applications running on Linux and Windows OSes on a VMware server and each of these applications needs multi-pathing does that always work?
  • Are you sure VMware makes all of the interoperability issues go away? Are you absolutely sure?
  • If I have a virtualization application that has its data spread across 2 or 3 arrays from different vendors, does that work?

Those sort of questions have to make those at VMware squirm just a bit. While VMware may want to say that with virtualization all of those issues are virtualized away, it is never that easy or simple when you get into enterprise environments when a single application outage may result in millions of dollars of lost revenue or garners headlines on the evening news.

VMware is admittedly probably already doing this in many environments. But this slogan tell me it recognizes it has an uphill battle to convince corporate IT that it is ready to assume the rest of these workloads. VMware is probably coming to find out if it does not know already that once you get into some of their environments, it is rarely Plug-N-Play but more like Plug-n-Pray.

All of the testing in the world cannot prepare you for the idiosyncrasies that each of these environments is bound to have and that VMware is going to encounter first hand and for the first time. To VMware’s credit it admittedly already has a lot of experience to draw upon as it prepares to fight these battles.

But every enterprise has its skeleton applications in the closet that, as VMware runs across and virtualizes them, will likely cause even those internal to VMware to shake their heads and marvel how these enterprises have operated all of this time in the state they are in.

VMware painted an exciting picture of the future this week and I do firmly believe that VMware will evolve to become more than just a provider of virtualization software but a key enabler of the cloud. But VMware’s biggest journey may yet lie in front of it.

It now needs to convince people that it is time to trust the cloud. Whether or not VMware succeeds in persuading enterprises of that concept remains to be seen but if VMware does (and it is arguably in the best position to do so) then we will likely in the next few years see what my former colleagues thought was ludicrous less than a decade ago.

VMware Starts to Build Its Case for Trusting the Cloud – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Computing, VMware, Virtualization | Leave a comment

Who Owns the Cloud?

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

DCIG

By Jerome M. Wendt on June 24, 2011 8:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment

There seems to be this almost naïve assumption out there that once “the cloud” is built everything in the computing world will be better. While I certainly agree with that to a point – cloud computing and cloud storage technologies stand to solve some very thorny problems within IT – there is one question that companies seem to be turning a blind eye to: “Who owns the cloud?”

This came into focus this past week when I was talking to a client representative from a value added reseller (VAR) that provides storage product and services a number of nationally known companies. While business has been extremely good for his company in recent months, I could sense he was literally shaking his head on the other end of the phone as he was talking to me.

He is currently dealing with one client that is buying goo-gobs of storage from his company which theoretically should thrill him. But having known this individual for a long period of time, he is not just looking to make another sale or sell more. He wants his clients to utilize and get value from the products and services his company provides and, in this particular case, he does not see it. In fact, he sees this company wasting them.

He is aware of a number of instances where they are buying net new storage and only getting 10% utilization rates on that storage. This is not because his client is awash in money or can afford to waste these resources. They cannot. Rather it seems to him that purchasing authority and the ability to question buying decisions has been stripped from the company’s Procurement department and turned over almost entirely to the IT department.

Now this might seem like a good thing to some IT departments who are caught up in the inner bureaucracy that exists in many corporations. Just the idea that they have the authority to spend without being subject to the Procurement’s department constant oversight and review might seem like a godsend. But with that authority needs to come some accountability or, in this case and maybe more importantly, a vision of what they are building and how all of the pieces fit together.

This is my friend’s concern. It is not that this client of his is not using what they are buying – the client is at least using 10% of the storage capacity that it is purchasing. But he is watching in amazement as different factions within this company acquire very similar products and then only use a small percentage of what they are purchasing.

Ironically, these storage products that they are purchasing are supposed to prevent this very thing from happening. These are “cloud storage” products that facilitate the deployment of scale-out, multi-tenant, multi-petabyte solutions and can be confidently shared between multiple users, departments and business units without compromising data integrity.

Instead what he is apparently seeing is the deployment of multi-petabyte solutions that are compartmentalized, segmented and definitely not shared. This is due to each IT department having its own budget and purchasing authority and operating under the assumption that no one is going to tell them how they should manage and spend it.

So even though each IT department may be in the process of building its own cloud, it does not appear at the corporate level that it has any vision or consensus as to what its broader corporate cloud computing or cloud storage infrastructure needs to look like. Rather each IT department and/or business unit has the freedom and authority to buy the storage solutions that meets its specific needs.

This might even be acceptable if the company had a vision statement as to how all of these storage solutions will eventually roll up and work together as one (which it might but I seriously doubt it.) Instead it appears each IT department director is thinking tactically as to how they can use cloud storage solutions to solve the problems within their sphere of influence without worrying about the broader strategic impact on the organization and the cloudy mess they are creating.

It is when I look at situations like this that I point back to a blog entry I wrote exactly a month ago regarding the four datacenter megatrends for the decade of the teens. One of those was that the future is cloudy and it is for this reason: in most organizations no one yet owns the cloud.

Individuals within organizations think and act far too tactically for there yet to exist a master cloud or even a master vision into which all of these clouds roll up into or are governed by. While I am certain there are exceptions to this generalization, having worked in organizations of all sizes, the thought of having disparate clouds is still less intimidating than having a master plan with a primary cloud into which every cloud must eventually plug into and an individual responsible for managing it all.  

Now do I believe the latter will happen where eventually every storage cloud will become part of one larger, overarching storage cloud? I do. In fact, I believe that overarching cloud architecture already exists and I have recently blogged about that solution.

But I also believe that this scenario with individual IT departments and business units building their own clouds needs to play out first. It is only after companies have spent millions and likely billions building out these clouds such as my friend described that they will look at the new cloudy mess they have created and begin to ask, “How do we fix this?”  Then the cost justification and political will to build and own such a central cloud will emerge. It just may take another 5 – 10 years before that happens en masse.

Who Owns the Cloud? – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Cloud, Virtualization | Leave a comment

How Virtualization May Be Helping Keep the Internet Afloat

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

DCIG

By Jerome M. Wendt on June 17, 2011 8:15 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment

As I was watching the local 10 o’clock news last night to catch up on the latest on the flooding in the surrounding Omaha area, I was hit by a piece of unexpected news. The Army Corps of Engineers had earlier in the day released a map and began to warn residents that a major portion of downtown Omaha could be under as much as 10 feet of water should a levee that borders the Missouri River fail. Yet what many do not know is that the Omaha area is the home for datacenters of many of the world’s largest and most well-known Internet companies such as Google, Paypal and Yahoo.

Omaha Flood Evacuation.JPGThe factors that contribute to making Omaha attractive as a site for many of the world’s largest data centers are numerous.

  • Abundant amounts of land (it is not called flyover country for nothing!)
  • Ample bandwidth
  • Central US location
  • Educated workforce
  • Multiple sources of power (Despite the flooding, there are a number of dams on the Missouri river that provide a lot of power to the Midwest)
  • Well-protected. (The Strategic Air Command is just to the south of Omaha.)

Of these six factors, the one that probably contributes making Omaha most attractive as a location for datacenters is it’s ample supply of bandwidth. As has been explained to me, when the Cold War was still going on, the US government ran large amounts of fibre optic cable into the Omaha area to supply the Strategic Air Command (SAC) with sufficient telecommunications connections for the Air Force.

But when the Cold War ended, the US government no longer had a need for all of these telecommunications lines and made them available for sale. It was at this point large telecommunications providers scooped them up in anticipation of eventually making them available to the public.

So while this ample supply of Internet bandwidth is certainly not the only reason that datacenters for some of the world’s largest Internet companies are located in the Omaha area, it continues to be a contributing factor.

Yet when I share this information with people, the first question that they often ask is, “Aren’t tornados a concern?” They certainly are as Nebraska is in Tornado Alley. But having worked in and visited a number of data centers in the Omaha area for these companies, they are typically built like fortresses and in locations that make the possibility of them being affected by a tornado a remote possibility.

The larger potential natural disaster that companies with datacenters in the Omaha area have to manage is what they are seeing right now: Floods. The entire eastern side of Douglas County where Omaha resides is bordered by the Missouri River. So while Omaha and even most of Nebraska has not seen unusual amounts of rainfall this year, the Missouri River is fed by rivers as far north as North Dakota and as far west as Montana.

Well it just so happens this year that the Missouri River was hit with a double whammy. First, the Dakotas experienced an unusually large amount of rainfall in April and May that filled the reservoirs along the Missouri River. Second, there was an unusual amount of snowfall this past winter in Montana. That snow is now melting with all of that water draining into the Missouri River and putting Omaha at risk.

So why is virtualization helping to keep the Internet from going underwater? Again, it is not for the reasons you may think. When these datacenters are built, the planners know where the flood plains are in the Omaha area. To the best of my knowledge no datacenter is located in the flood plain even though local Omaha landmarks such the airport, the north city power plant and even the new home of the College World Series were built there and are now potentially at risk.

Rather the way that virtualization is helping to keep the Internet afloat is by enabling administrators and engineers to remotely manage these sites and not requiring them to come into work every day for the simple reason that a number of them cannot get to work. The floodwaters have left portions of the Interstate system around Omaha under water which are the major arteries on which people travel to get to and from work, especially those that live to the north of Omaha.

i-29 detour.JPG

Normally not being able to come to work for a few days is not a problem but as high as the water levels are and as much water is being released upstream, it may be August and even December in some cases before the flood waters recede and these roads are accessible. Even then, it is unclear now if they will be passable once the flood waters recede and how long it will take to repair them.

How Virtualization May Be Helping Keep the Internet Afloat – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Cloud, Disaster Recovery, Virtualization | Leave a comment

A Controllable, Manageable Cloud

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

DCIG

By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Lately I have spent quite a bit of time talking about and defining different cloud terms. But the last few weeks have provided me with some additional perspective in terms of what people are looking for from “the Cloud.” They don’t just want “the Cloud” – they want the ability to manage the cloud and be in control of the data they put there and that inability to do so is what still gives users pause about “the Cloud.”

In talking to a number of users over the past few weeks about “the Cloud” and what they want from it, it is clear this is the strategic direction they want to take their organizations. But the feedback they also provide is that “the Cloud” is more hype than reality in their environments and that they have to progress very slowly and cautiously down this path for a variety of reasons that include:

  • They want to control and manage “the Cloud.” While some companies are ready to turn over the control and management of some of their data to a third party, most are not. IT administrators and directors want to retain and feel like they are always in control of their data but as they move it to the cloud they still feel like they are giving up too much control. The last thing they want to feel is powerless should something go wrong and right now cloud providers are not yet giving them that assurance.
  • They want a single portal from which to control and manage “the Cloud.” It seems that this portal is becoming vCenter. IT staffs are not growing (though I am getting conflicting information on that point) so organizations need to continue manage more with the same people. To facilitate this ideal the guys who support the infrastructure do not want to use multiple portals (vendor provided or other) to manage their cloud infrastructure, they want one. Since most organizations started virtualizing their server infrastructure with VMware and are using vCenter to manage their VMs, they want their cloud storage infrastructure to plug into vCenter so they can manage their storage from that portal as well.
  • They first want to build clouds in-house. Before they hand off any of their business critical applications or application data to a third party, they are building private clouds in house. To a certain degree, this defeats one of the purposes of a Cloud model.  They still have to lay out CAPEX dollars to build this cloud-enabled infrastructure instead of going directly to an OPEX model that theoretically provides it. I attribute this decision to two factors. First, most storage vendors are not setup at this point to support an OPEX model and, second, users view it as less risky at this point to build their own cloud as opposed to hosting it with someone else.
  • The storage buying decisions are becoming very complicated. It used to be when buying storage arrays the decision pretty much boiled down to what volume management features you wanted on an array (LUNs, LUN groups, RAID options,) how many FC ports you wanted and how well it performed. Now storage array buying has become a highly complex exercise. Those other features are still part of the equation but features such as sub-volume tiering, thin provisioning, snapshots and replication as well as integration with data protection software are all part of the discussion and must be reviewed individually as all of their features may be used in a virtualized environment to deliver on the ideal of the cloud such that it operates as a utility and applications and their data are constantly available.

Users like the idea of “the Cloud” and are gravitating in its direction but they are not willing to take a leap of faith in the hopes that a cloud provider will be there to catch them should they fall. Instead they are taking a much more measured approach toward implementing the cloud giving preference to those solutions that enable them to implement the cloud in such a way that they can manage and control it.

A Controllable, Manageable Cloud – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Cloud, Virtualization | 1 Comment

A Practical D2D2D DR Plan for Real Life Disasters

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

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By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Recent news tells us that disasters can happen anywhere at any time to anyone. So as more companies adopt disk as their primary backup target, they need to ensure they can do disaster recoveries in locations other than their primary site. Revinetix’s replication and removable disk features ensure that companies can recover at remote locations should the primary site become inaccessible.

Tsunamis in Japan.Floods in the Midwest.Super cells and tornados throughout the South (and even the North!) As these news stories make headlines, they should serve as a reminder that no business, even small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), are immune from disasters and the need to recover from them. But as more SMEs adopt disk as their primary backup target, they need a practical D2D2D (disk-to-disk-to-disk) solution that ensures they can recover from a disaster should it occur.

You know backup to disk has gone main stream when one attends a Tape Summit such as I did a few weeks ago and even the tape vendors in attendance are publicly admitting that using tape as a primary backup target is, for the most part, dead. But part of the reason tape backup vendors are throwing in the towel for using tape as a primary backup target is because of experiences such as what one Revinetix user recently shared with me.

He had used tape for years prior to switching to Revinetix and its disk-based backup solution three or so years ago. Since making that change, his company’s backups complete successfully with nightly incremental backups completing in less than hour.

Doing restores is no longer an issue either as he says he sometimes completes file restores while he still has the user on the phone. All he does is bring up the backup software GUI, navigate to the file the user wants restored, right-clicks on it and, “Presto!” the file is restored.

There are of course other intangible benefits that backing up data to disk brings with it. In the case of Revinetix, it deduplicates backup data so it minimizes backup data stores by enabling companies to store tens of TBs of backup data on disk. But in the case of this user, the biggest benefit he realized is the ability to sleep peacefully at night knowing that backups were completing successfully.

As we talked, recent events were also on our minds (probably more on my mind than on his as a tornado ripped through the neighborhood of my childhood home 4 weeks ago.) One of the limitations we saw that disk has is its immobility. So while backup and restores to disk are definitely faster than tape, the backup to disk does not help if a disaster occurs and all of the backup data is residing under a pile of debris.

No one likes to think about the possibilities of disasters or that disasters will happen to them. But these are pictures of what used to be a heavily forested area less than a mile from where I grew up in central Wisconsin. If you had told me in late February that all of the trees and homes there would be nothing more than rubble by the end of April as a result of a tornado tearing through the neighborhood, I would have seriously doubted you. But pictures don’t lie.

Wisconsin Tornado Damage Wisconsin Tornado Damage

Yet this is nothing compared to the devastation that occurred in the South where the Wall Street Journal’s website has horrific pictures from Pratt City, Alabama. Also, if I have my facts correct, that same storm that spawned the tornados that leveled Pratt City, Alabama, dumped tons of water on the Upper Midwest which resulted in the Black River in Poplar Bluffs, MO, overflowing the top of a levee. This appears to be contributing to a judge approving a plan to blow up yet another levee which will flood Missouri farmland in the hopes that it will leave an Illinois town further down river unscathed from flooding.

Then, even if you are not directly affected (in the case of the tornado in Wisconsin, none of my immediate family’s property was destroyed or damaged), disasters make it difficult to get around. My mother was away when the tornado struck and could not get home for two days as all roads (primary, secondary and tertiary) to her house were blocked by fallen trees and debris and my brother who lives nearby was stuck at his home without any power.

While I have not seen any reports about the difficulty in moving around, the same situation probably holds true in Alabama and Missouri as well. If power lines and trees are down or roads are under water, even if your place of business is unharmed, it may be almost impossible to get to keep your business operational if you cannot access it or all power or routes to it are cut off.

As this applies to disk-based backup, if data is backed up locally and never moved offsite, your data might be perfectly safe but your business still might fail. This is why a solution like Revinetix includes D2D2D so data stored on disk can be moved offsite to account for these types of situations when your business is either destroyed or simply becomes inaccessible because of the scope of the devastation in the area.

Revinetix gives users two ways to account for these types of situations with its D2D2D feature.

  • Removable disk drive. Administrators can configure Revinetix to copy backups to any external hard disk drive (HDD) that is connected to the Revinetix solution via a USB port. Once copied to the HDD, the drive can then be moved and stored offsite. Users who will want to take advantage of this feature are those that have no secondary site, need an affordable disaster recovery plan, want media they can re-use for years (the same disk drive can likely be re-used for 5 – 10 years, assuming it has sufficient capacity) and it is easy to setup and do.
  • Replication. Replication is the other D2D2D option that Revinetix offers. This is intended for those users that have a secondary remote site and a WAN link. They can then configure Revinetix to replicate backup data to this secondary site thereby eliminating the overhead with manually handling HDDs and transporting them offsite. When a disaster strikes, data recovery is as easy as enabling the Revinetix D2D2D appliance at the secondary site to become the primary appliance with immediate access to business critical data.

Backup to disk is great but as recent weather events and natural disasters illustrate, there is still a need to move backup data offsite. One can be directly (building destroyed) or indirectly (power off and roads closed) impacted by a disaster but both can have the same net effect: the inability to access data to bring the business back online. Using one or both of Revinetix’ D2D2D features, users can still implement disk-based backup with the assurance they can get their data offsite and be able to recover no matter how a disaster affects them.

A Practical D2D2D DR Plan for Real Life Disasters – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Data Archiving, Data Backup, Data Recovery, Deduplication, Disaster Recovery, Disk Backup | Leave a comment

Cloud! Cloud! Cloud! A Not so Authoritative Look at What “Cloud” Terms Mean

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

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By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Cloud. Cloud! Cloud!! That’s all I hear these days. Cloud computing. Cloud storage. Private Cloud. Private Storage Cloud. Public Cloud. Public storage cloud. Hybrid cloud. Hybrid storage cloud. Enterprise cloud. Consumer cloud. Cloud archive. Cloud backup. You name it, there is a cloud term to go with it. Further, no matter which vendor you talk to, everyone has a cloud solution even if the product looks just like it did five years ago before the cloud craze began. So it begs the question, what do these cloud terms mean???

I am probably as guilty as anyone else in the use (or maybe I should say overuse?) of the term cloud. But technically almost anything can fall under the definition of the term “cloud” if it is applied broadly enough. So I thought what I would do today is define all of the aforementioned cloud terms I used at the outset of this blog.

Now please do not view this blog entry as an authoritative or exhaustive definition for any of these cloud terms. Rather it is more of a tongue in cheek look at how these terms are being used and misused in the industry and how easy it is easy for anyone (analysts, media, users and vendors included ) to slip into the habit of slapping the term “cloud” on anything that has a on/off button on it.

Cloud computing. This can be applied is any device that connects to the Internet, has a CPU and some memory and can run programs that can store data to storage that resides somewhere (locally or remotely.) So if you own a desktop, laptop, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, or smartphone, face it, you are doing cloud computing. However as I was writing this, I noticed my wife sent a print job to the printer next to my desk. While I am not yet willing to lump laser or inkjet printers into the realm of cloud computing, that day may be already be coming.

Cloud storage. This is any device connected to a network that can accept data from a device that is located somewhere else on the network. While that definition is again pretty broad and a stretch, trust me, I just heard a vendor pitching me again today that they do “cloud storage” even though they need someone else’s NAS gateway in front of their storage array to do “cloud storage.” OK, so that means my externally attached USB Western Digital drive is now officially “cloud storage” since I can share it from PC over the network so my wife and kids can access it. Give me a break.

Private cloud. The consensus on this term seems to be that whatever applications are running and whatever resources that are using reside behind a company’s fire wall. The resources that applications utilize when running in a “private cloud” consist of servers, network and storage but not necessarily all three and are somehow aggregated together so the collective power of all of these resources can be harnessed. Exactly how it is possible to run an application in a private cloud without all three of these components, I don’t know, but I have been assured it is. So long as it is behind a firewall.

Private storage cloud. The difference between this term and the previous one is that it is storage that resides behind a corporate firewall. The presumption is that all of these storage resources can be collectively aggregated so they function as one big logical pool of storage. Just so long as this pool of storage does not get too big then you have to create another private storage cloud which defeats the whole purpose of creating a private storage cloud in the first place. But as long as we nod our heads at the appropriate point in PowerPoint presentation, shake hands and smile, all of these technical details magically go away in a private cloud. Again, so long as it resides behind a corporate firewall.

Public cloud. The definition of this term is eerily similar to the one for private cloud except that now all computing resources (server, network and storage) reside outside of the corporate firewall. However based upon the recent upheaval we have seen in the public cloud storage provider market, where these resources reside and how secure or available they are seems to be of no concern. Just so long as when you go to access whatever application you are running in the “cloud” and it turns on, life is good.

Public storage cloud. Again, eerily similar to private storage cloud in that it again only applies to storage resources but, like the public cloud definition, it must reside outside the corporate fire wall. The only problem is it can’t just reside anywhere outside the corporate fire wall. I spoke to one user a few weeks ago who was looking at using a public storage cloud but found out that it had data centers in Europe and the US and mirrored data between the two for availability.

That sounds like a highly available and redundant solution if there ever was one except for one minor problem: he had data that had compliance restrictions associated with it and putting data in both locations would put his company in a bit of a legal bind.

So any storage outside of the corporate firewall should be considered public storage cloud. But just don’t put it too far outside of the corporate fire wall. Or too far away for that matter because if it ends up inside of someone else’s domain (no relation to a cloud) it can result in a thunderstorm.

Well, I was going to define the rest of these terms but I want to watch the rest of the first round of the NFL draft with my son so this just became a two-part blog. Look for part 2 sometime next week.

Cloud! Cloud! Cloud! A Not so Authoritative Look at What “Cloud” Terms Mean – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in cloud backup | 4 Comments

Cloud Providers Do Not Deserve the High Opinions that Some Users Have Unwittingly Granted Them

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Jerome_Wendt

DCIG

By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

The recent outage at Amazon Web Services coupled with the news that Iron Mountain is exiting some of its storage cloud lines of business has created quite a stir in the storage industry. But many of the conversations in which I have been involved have centered on how some users have been – consciously or unconsciously – applying enterprise expectations to the services that existing cloud storage providers offer. So the questions becomes, "Who is responsible for creating these unrealisticly high expectations – cloud service providers, users or some combination of both?"

When it comes to setting realistic expectations around cloud services, I think the majority of people want to expect the best. They expect the cloud to always work. They expect it to always be "On." They for the most part do not consider that their data may ever be lost or that one day the service provider will ever say "See ya" or "It’s not our problem.’

But clearly somewhere along the way some users have developed a high opinion of cloud providers. People began to believe that the lights at Amazon and Iron Mountain were always going to be on and that, any time, day or night, they could fire up their applications or access their data at one of these respective cloud providers and access the applications or data they have stored there.

A great example of this can be found on the following thread that was started last Friday on an Amazon forum by a cardiac monitoring company. According to this thread, the lives of hundreds of home-bound cardiac patients that it monitored were at risk because this company was running its application in the Amazon cloud. 

Now whether this thread is accurate or not, I don’t know. But it illustrates how apparently at least one company had built its business on the the faulty premise that accessing its servers, data or both in Amazon’s cloud would always be available.

But should this have ever occurred? In other words, why did this company believe for one minute that it could successfully run its business hosting its applications or data with Amazon?

Look at how Amazon Web Services began. Some time ago Amazon looked across its data center and said, "Hmmm, we have a bunch of excess compute and storage capacity. Maybe if we make this excess capacity available over the web at a deep discount price, we can recoup some of our operating costs."

Nothing wrong with that idea and frankly, I think it was brilliant. But I doubt what Amazon fully expected was how many businesses and people were looking for such a service. Nor do I expect that Amazon expected it to grow so fast and for businesses to start hosting applications like cardiac monitoring in the cloud. 

It was just supposed to be cheap, available compute and/or storage capacity accessible over the web. Instead it morphed into something else and while I also suspect Amazon has improved the quality of its data center services, it apparently has not closed the gap.

A similar principle applies to Iron Mountain. Iron Mountain is money generating monster and knows how to turn a profit. Living in Omaha, NE, it was big news over here when Warren Buffett (also of Omaha fame) invested in Iron Mountain because he saw how it operated. It just makes money hand over fist.

So when it got in the cloud services business a few years ago, guess what? It expected to make money. And when it wasn’t making money, or at least as much money as it expected to make, it apparently decided to close the doors to some of its lines of cloud storage business. Steve Duplessie over at ESG made a similar point in a blog entry he wrote back on April 12 where he surmised that Iron Mountain figured out  it cannot make any money selling capacity so it got out of the business.

So going back to the question I raised early on in this blog entry about expectations regarding the cloud. Who set these expectations that Amazon and Iron Mountain would always be on and their cloud services would never go away? And maybe more importantly, why did users believe them?

To a certain degree, Amazon and Iron Mountain share some of the blame. As I was writing this blog entry, I was on the Amazon Web Services website and I did not see any big, bold disclaimer saying, "Hey everybody, if you host your applications or data with us, it could all go up in smoke at any moment! So make sure you have a secondary data center to fail everything over and good backups." 

Nor did I see any similar disclaimer on Iron Mountain’s website saying, "Warning! Warning! If Iron Mountain does not make an obscene profit on the data we are storing for you, we are going to shut down some or all of our cloud services without any notice. This will force you  to go into crisis mode and scramble to move your data over to a cloud storage provider that is satisfied with lower profits than we are."

Of course, I would not necessarily expect either of those companies (or any other) to put such disclaimers on the front page (or anywhere) on their website. You might as well close the doors to your business as post language like that.

However because neither they nor any cloud provider post such warnings on their website, users have to be more skeptical than ever. At this early stage of the cloud services game, they need to be willing to do more research than ever to vet out the quality of the provider with which they are storing their applications or data. 

Right now it appears some users are consciously or unconsciously granting enterprise level expectations of availability, performance, reliability, support, etc to cloud providers. However as Amazon and Iron Mountain make clear, they have not really proven themselves worthy of being awarded such a distinction for reasons that can now be seen just be looking at the history of these two companies. 

So as users go forward with deploying applications and data in the cloud, they should be wary. Cloud providers are not created the same and just because the cloud provider is large or well-known does not mean that it is going to be there when you need them. If anything, these recent episodes suggest exactly the opposite may be true.

Cloud Providers Do Not Deserve the High Opinions that Some Users Have Unwittingly Granted Them – By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG (DCIGInc.com) http://revinetix.dciginc.com

Posted in Cloud, Data Archiving, Data Backup, Data Recovery, Disaster Recovery, Disk Backup, Restore, cloud backup | Leave a comment