Darwin meets data storage: televaulting provisions storage as a utility

Computer Technology Review,  Oct, 2004  by Eran Farajun

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In the first edition of "The Origin of the Species", Charles Darwin never used the term "evolution". Instead, Darwin focused on the concept of "divergence" wherein new species with specialized characteristics emerged from the same main source; they didn't evolve from a secondary species. To illustrate this concept, Darwin used the Tree of Life with multiple branches, and the tree representing the core species or product. When divergence occurred, the tree (not an individual branch) sprouts a new branch--creating a distinct, new species instead of an offshoot or evolution of an existing branch.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

The principle of divergence is well established in the computer industry: printer technology diverged into laser, inkjet and workgroup "species," while personal computing technology diverged into desktop, laptop and handheld branches. In fact, data storage has its own tree of life (Figure 1), which illustrates the divergence of the storage industry, including the divergence of data protection software which has added distinct branches for tape backup, mirroring, replication, D2D and now televaulting technologies.

Distributed backup is a unique, diverged arena from the familiar data center-focused backup, with its own unique set of pain points challenging IT administrators. The fundamental problem for administrators is how to effectively manage the data protection of remote data islands scattered around the country or around the world. To date, the common solution has been to try to make traditional tape-based backup solutions work in these dispersed data islands, but the results are unacceptable.

Many remote sites lack dedicated IT staff to manage and enforce good backup practices and policies. Even if backups are run regularly, they often ignore data stored on individual PCs and laptops and focus only on server-based storage, leaving a large volume of critical corporate data at risk. In fact, one of the most critical backup pain points can more accurately be characterized as a data restoration pain point: offsite vaulting of backup tapes. This is a multi-faceted issue that begins with the problems associated with the insecurity of transporting the tapes to a remote vaulting site and proper inventory management of those tapes. Even on the rare occasions when this process is managed properly, it still leaves enterprises with a major problem--unacceptable long time-to-recovery windows. Having critical data unavailable for hours or days translates into direct negative economic impact on business operations, including customer service, end-user productivity and transaction processing.

Software licenses and agents pose another problem for backing up remote sites. Whenever a new PC is added to the network, a new (and typically costly) backup agent must be installed, and any backup software upgrade is a complex process. This software license model can pose a major expense to an organization, and if the backups are rarely performed at remote sites, the license fees are totally wasted. Finally, the old model of tape-based backup performed within a specific backup window is unrealistic in the current 24X7 global environment. A better solution is needed, which explains the technology divergence into distributed televaulting.

Televaulting is a new backup paradigm architected specifically for geographically dispersed environments. Moreover, televaulting is based on a utility service provisioning model to deliver distributed backup/restore with centralized management and a unique pricing model that enables the IT organization to transform backup from a cost center to a profit center. The prime benefit of televaulting is that it enables enterprises to operate in large, complex geographically dispersed network environments to effectively and affordably manage and protect data offsite from one centralized location. Televaulting also allows enterprises to assign actual backup/restore costs to appropriate users within the organization. In essence, the corporate IT group operates as a backup "service provider" to remote data islands--such as departments, branches, and satellite offices within the organization who become customers and are billed according to consumption. The licensing model for televaulting software is unprecedented for the backup market: the data-collection software is free. Users pay a one-time perpetual license fee based only on the actual compressed capacity of data that is centrally stored aggregately across all sites.

The basis of the enterprise televaulting data protection platform is an agentless software architecture that eliminates the cost and complexity of loading a software agent on every target server and desktop that needs to be protected. Instead, the enterprise simply requires two software components: DS-System software loaded on a standard server located in the data center, and one or more DS-Clients based anywhere in the world and connected via an IP WAN. No additional client software is required for the individual target machines that are backed up at the remote site. As shown in Figure 2, the DS-Client runs on an existing Windows or Linux server and collects data to be protected. The DS-System runs on a Windows, Solaris or Linux host used for online storage, management, monitoring, and billing processing.