The Case Study on Yottabyte Backup Agents and Disaster Recovery

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1 Case Study Global Manufacturer Hybrid Cloud Solution Streamlined for Disaster Recovery Backup/Restore/Data Deduplication/Synchronization

2 Introduction...3 The Backup and Restore Problem...3 Business Objectives for Better Backup...4 Search for the Right Backup Package...4 A Streamlined All- in- One Solution...4 Diagram: Global Manufacturer's Yottabyte Hybrid Cloud...7 Revolutionary Solution, Big Benefits...8

3 Introduction The Americas region of an international manufacturer and distributor of motor vehicle safety systems is headquartered in the U.S. and has 26 R&D, production and sales centers across the U.S., Mexico, Brazil and China. It is essential that the terabytes of data generated in these regions be protected with regular backups that permit efficient restore procedures for disaster recovery. And since this organization is in the automotive industry, that data must be retained and accessible for the product lifetime plus 20 years. The Backup and Restore Problem Unfortunately, the organization experienced operational and technical challenges when it came to dealing with its terabytes of data. The region had a managed-service arrangement for data backup and restore operations; backups were performed using a commercial backup package that was managed by a managed service provider. To restore data, an end-user submitted a request to the IT department, which, in turn, initiated a ticket with the provider. While this outsourced solution allowed IT to concentrate on supporting core business objectives, it became evident over time that the company needed more control over its data-protection processes. During the course of the contract, the service provider was sold to another managed-service provider, which was later bought by a different company, resulting in a long chain of reseller layers, and numerous changes in managers and operating procedures. Although the service was supposed to be administered by the provider, it became increasingly cumbersome and expensive for the customer to use. The worst problem was backing up SQL files, which at the time were upwards of 350GB and change frequently. The customer's policy is to keep three days of backup locally, using flash files on the SQL servers. But dealing with hundreds of large flash files became problematic, and the company had to back them up in turn to the service provider. When we started with the service, we only needed to give them a little information, but as time went on, administration became a full-time job for me, said a Company representative. When I needed help, I'd call one company, which would call another company, and so on. Although we had a back-end product, hosting it was a pain in the neck. Backup in particular became more and more time consuming as data grew tremendously. Daily backups from the company s 26 Americas locations that started at 5 p.m. local time and had to be complete by 8 a.m. In many instances, site backups took 24 hours or more to complete. The customer also realized that IT needed to perform restores internally, on demand, without the latency of interacting with an outside entity.

4 Business Objectives for Better Backup Clearly, the organization s Americas operation needed a new, more agile and cost-effective backup and restore solution that would allow internal control of the process while not requiring overly complex implementations or cumbersome ongoing administration. And it needed a provider that could directly administer the service. The first step in looking for a new solution was to develop a list of business objectives: 1. IT had to provide cost-effective, distributed, scalable backup of more than 80 terabytes of information. 2. Backups had to be replicated to offsite locations for disaster recovery preparedness. This entailed synchronizing tens of thousands of remote files, some over high-latency connections. 3. The solution had to enable an improved global data retention policy: o Daily for eight days o Weekly for five weeks o Monthly for one year o Yearly for three years 4. Effective backups for large T-SQL/MS-SQL files were required, since available storage space on SQL servers was limited. 5. The solution had to have a scalable architecture to accommodate an anticipated data growth of 30 TBs over the next three years. Search for the Right Backup Solution The customer considered popular backup packages but found that none of them really met their requirements. Most alternatives required a collection of software packages, licensing agreements, hardware and storage purchases, and/or specialty appliances. Furthermore, separate packages were needed for each individual task: deduplication, snapshots, VM backups, client backups, synchronizations and so on. The company wanted a more streamlined solution that did not require integrating various vendors and technologies, learn multiple interfaces, and maintain numerous licensing agreements and support contracts. A Streamlined, All- in- One Solution When the customer learned about Yottabyte's hybrid cloud solution, based on vendor-neutral virtual data center software, the customer realized they found the all-in-one solution they were looking for. Or as a company representative put it, Yottabyte was a no-brainer for me. Yottabyte software defined datacenter incorporates storage, compute and networking elements, built with Yottabyte s powerful file system at the core, ystor delivers end-to-end data storage and protection. Provisioning, backups and snapshots, deduplication, synchronization, NAS functionality and encryption are all part of the software package, which has a single-point, intuitive, web-based interface for centralized administration. The easy-to-use system lets the customer administer its own backups internally at a departmental level, and sends long-term

5 backup to the Yottabyte cloud while administration does not weigh heavily on existing staff resources. The customer implemented Yottabyte scale-out building block appliances at each of its 26 sites in the Americas. Each appliance is constructed using commodity hardware 1U, 2U or 6U rackmount servers with various TBs of capacity-optimized disk storage and provides the proper WAN/LAN access to servers and workstations at all sites. Each appliance is connected to the company VPN as well as to the Internet, for off-site backups to the Yottabyte cloud for long-term storage. Connection speed and latency vary at each location according to need. The Yottabyte solution also includes the Yottabyte Web Admin Interface, which enabled the customer to specify a backup solution exactly suited to each site s unique needs. 1) Central Repository for Backup Data. Data volumes were provisioned for centralrepository backups of all existing servers. Enabling the Yottabyte's deduplication option ensures that only deduplicated data is stored on the Yottabyte appliance, thus maximizing the use of local storage and ensuring efficient data transmission over the WAN or LAN. At each location, existing Windows and Linux servers are backed up to disk storage via Yottabyte Backup Agents. 2) Appropriate Configuration. The Yottabyte Backup Agents were configured and scheduled as desired for each location. o Due to the limited local storage space of MS-SQL servers, one of the core requirements was to ensure that Yottabyte Agents could process T-SQL backups to CIFS shares. o Agents also back up the laptops and workstations of C-level managers to share paths that are always accessible to the appropriate manager for "self-serve" restores. Shares were configured as necessary (NFS, http/https), with appropriate user/group security settings, allowing clients and applications access to data on storage appliances. o Data volumes and shares were also created for using the SAN functionality of the Yottabyte building blocks. 3) Pulling Data Across the WAN. Yottabyte Backup Agents could not be installed in some systems, such as HP-UX and EMC VNX SAN systems. In these cases, Yottabyte configured agents locally on storage appliances to reach out across the network and pull the necessary data into deduplicated volumes. 4) Quick Synchronization to the Cloud. All sites were configured to synchronize data volumes to Yottabyte s cloud, thus producing off-site copies for disaster recovery purposes. Since deduplication was enabled on the data volumes and Yottabyte software leverages deduplication across network connections, bandwidth is conserved and offsite sync operations completed in a much shorter time than with the previous third-party solution. Because the customer knows its data is in the cloud, data does not need to be stored locally for as long as it once was.

6 5) Snapshot Profiles. Snapshot profiles were configured and applied to the data volumes at each site with appropriate run and retention scheduling. Yottabyte's job scheduling engine allows the granularity needed to conform to global corporate retention policies, with daily, weekly, monthly and yearly elements. Profiles were set to automatically label snapshots by date and delete older snapshots appropriately to enforce policy. These snapshot profiles allow compliance with SOX and JSOX requirements while making compliance easier to achieve. 6) Security Configuration Minimized. Reports were configured at all locations to feed back through a central notification system built into Yottabyte s software. By funneling all reports through a single appliance, the customer was able to minimize the amount of security rules configured on network and mail systems. And users no longer have to worry about deleting backups that should not exist or restoring old backups. 7) Native AD Integration Tools. Active Directory (AD) integration requirements were achieved by utilizing native AD integration tools shipped with Yottabyte software. This allowed the customer to remain compliant when using service accounts for T-SQL backups, Admin UI login auditing and NAS share access. 8) Easy disk acquisition. If a site is running out of disk space, Yottabyte makes storage elastic and provisions more on the appliance; IT does not have to go through a long capital acquisition process to add storage space. The customer s team appreciates the flexibility and control they gained with Yottabyte. Before, I had a black box with no key; I couldn't make any changes to my backup and restore system. Now I can make changes, check backups on the fly and do them at different times of the day, depending on what time zone the Yottabyte appliance is in. Backup time is scheduled individually on each server, so if CAD designers in one location are working on a project until 8 p.m., I can quickly and easily accommodate their request for later backup. And since Yottabyte is responsible for storage, we're no longer purchasing 500K disk arrays by the dozen.

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8 Revolutionary Solution, Big Benefits After working with the Yottabyte software defined datacenter solution for a year, the IT team is convinced that they made the right decision. Yottabyte is revolutionary from the operational and cost standpoint a customer representative said. Its return on investment was far better than anything else we were pitched, it has freed up an extraordinary amount of time, and at a minimum its price has saved us 60 percent compared to the other solutions we investigated. The flexibility of the Yottabyte platform is another plus; storage can grow to petabyte-scale through the simple addition of building block appliances. This more than satisfied our requirement to accommodate three years of data growth, which is estimated at 30TBs. In fact, growth has already greatly exceeded expectations. After using the Yottabyte datacenter solution for only a year, we smoked our anticipated three-year growth rate, said the IT representative. But the solution has scaled easily to keep pace with our storage needs. The customer achieved another of its primary objectives: minimizing the burden of backup and restore on the company's existing, already taxed technical resources. Because Yottabyte combines multiple features in the same product, the entire system can be administered through a single web-based interface, eliminating the need for extensive training of personnel as well as the need for complicated procedures and cross-vendor integration. Recovery times have improved dramatically. Backup and snapshot data are presented in a live environment: There are no tapes to load; no rehydration of data is needed. When a restore request is submitted, directories or individual files are made available to the end user via a readonly share or even a web link; IT personnel do not need to move or copy files to another location. End users can parse through directory trees and multiple snapshot instances to find and restore a file or folder quickly, even if they are not sure of its exact name, location or time. This completely eliminates multiple iterations between end users and IT staff to locate the desired item. The customer leverages the SAN/NAS functionality of its Yottabyte technology to deliver extremely inexpensive SAN storage at each branch location. In addition, the full VM management functionality of the Yottabyte platform allows for server consolidation at each site, providing additional resource efficiency and cost savings. Our Yottabyte implementation has had a huge impact on staffing and productivity, said a company representative. Every one of our 26 North and South American locations has at least one backup administrator and sometimes two in larger locations, and they spent a lot of time swapping tapes in, erasing old data and so on. This was a huge burden that staffers no longer have to bear. Yottabyte has also been a Godsend for me personally. Instead of spending all day on backup, I now do it in five minutes.