Data Protection Solutions: Finding the Right Fit
Jane Martinsons, PRISM International staff writer
Jeremy Zhang, director, product management, Iron Mountain, Boston, MA, believes that making the most of data protection solutions is like solving a customized puz- zle—you need to figure out the right combination of tape, disk, and cloud-based solutions for your business and customer needs. Sometimes solutions fit neatly together, but often it takes work and guidance to find the best fit.
“You have to be very careful using tape, disk, and cloud in
a way that meets both your business and budget needs and provides the best performance you can get out of those strate- gies,” Zhang said. He recommends considering:
Tape Tape is “still a very relevant media” for storing, retaining, and moving large amounts of data, but its role in data backup and archiving has changed significantly, Zhang said. “You can- not just go back to the old way of using tape as your primary backup media and then retain the tape for 10 years. That’s the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately many companies are still do- ing that today.”
Rather, records and information management (RIM) com- panies need to assess their archive needs, including their re- tention of and access to data, as well as their budget to cap- ture and store data “in the right way, using the right media and technology,” Zhang said.
Like any data protection solution, tape has its advantages and disadvantages. Although tape stores large amounts of data and provides low-cost, long-term retention, companies must keep up with frequent changes to tape format and capaci- ty. “How can you avoid locking yourself into that tape media or format situation? LTFS [linear tape file system] helps, but it does not solve hardware backward compatibility and software version problems,” he said.
Disk
Zhang said that although disk storage is straightforward, de- duplication and snapshot synchronization technologies make disk rather appealing right now for information backup. “It is highly effective in terms of backup and recovery, if you use it in the right way,” he said.
Moreover, when it comes to disk mapping, companies must consider how they plan to use primary storage media to store large amounts of data. “What are you going to put onto that— everything?” he asked. “Many companies do that because they don’t have a good backup, disaster recovery, and information
“You have to be very careful using tape, disk, and cloud in a way that meets both your business and budget needs.” —Jeremy Zhang, Iron Mountain
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archive strategy and they treat all data the same. That is a horrible mistake.
It’s expensive to put all the data on primary storage me-
dia, and they probably can’t meet their recovery point objec- tive (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) by doing that.
“When you use primary storage, avoid overloading it. Make sure that you match the right backup applications and tech- nology to the specific application and recovery service-level agreement (SLA) requirement,” Zhang said.
Private Cloud Versus Public Cloud
RIM companies are choosing to use either the private cloud or the public cloud to archive, store, and back up data—or a combination of the two solutions, Zhang said. He suggested that companies first consider:
• Access: “When you think about the cloud, you have to think about how you’re getting in and out. Don’t lock yourself into it. What is your true cost of ownership? What is your Plan B when you need to move to another platform?”
• Expense: “Public cloud is like a utility; you can use as much of it as you want. Private cloud is more expensive to set up and operate the infrastructure. At a certain scale, private cloud is more efficient and provides better control to enterprise users. However, for unpredictable applica- tions and demand, it makes better sense to leverage public cloud to reduce the overall cost.”
• Control: “Companies that consider the private cloud usu- ally want to take control of and manage their information and infrastructure. However, if you want to control every- thing, you may be surprised by limitations such as not be- ing able to expand capacity because of CapEx [capital ex- penditures] and infrastructure constraints like space, power, and cooling.”
Zhang recommends that when RIM companies consid-
er their overarching storage, backup, and archive needs, they align their technologies correctly and figure out the connec- tions among them.
“How will you move information from disk to tape or re-
cover information from tape back to disk? With new ways to store data on disk and the hybrid private-public cloud, IT de- cision makers need to fuse tape, cloud, and disk to ensure that they have the right architecture and data-center setup that al- lows them to best leverage those media,” he said.
“Many of our customers facing the challenges of support-
ing innovation and growth of this business are trying to figure out how they can put all these structures in place,” Zhang said. “Think about innovation, big data, business intelligence, and revenue growth targets that our senior IT customers are facing. If you’re not aligning your offerings to their current and future needs, you’re missing the boat. You will become a small part of a bigger IT puzzle. Become a big puzzle piece.” n
PRISM International
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