Is Traditional Backup Dead?

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1 1 Issue Welcome Message CommVault Paper: Traditional Backup is Dead Are You Prepared? Research from Gartner: The Future of Backup May Not Be Backup About CommVault Is Traditional Backup Dead? Why Modern Data Protection is the Best Alternative to Traditional Backup Welcome Message The explosive growth of data, the sprawl of virtualized environments and the demands on IT to deliver real value back to their businesses through information management and accessibility are causing the biggest change in backup and Bob Hammer recovery that the market has seen. These changes are unquestionably affecting every company which is still struggling with the complexities and inadequacies of traditional backup. In today s data-intensive environments, organizations are seeking truly innovative ways to increase operational efficiencies, lower costs and mitigate risks. Incremental improvements to traditional approaches are no longer acceptable because the consumers of data, at all levels, expect more. For the past 15 years, CommVault has been at the forefront of innovative change in the backup, recovery, and archiving marketplace. Our vision of modern data management, inspired by our unique Solving Forward philosophy, is transforming the way information assets are protected, stored, recovered, retained and accessed. We are the industry s only software company exclusively focused on modernizing data and information management. CommVault alleviates the problems caused by competitive point products by offering a unique, single view of all enterprise information, regardless of where it resides. CommVault has evolved its software by continually focusing on forward-looking solutions to the ever-increasing data protection and information management requirements of our customers and partners. This newsletter is intended to help you understand the nature and benefits of Modern Data Protection and ultimately, to help you realize a Modern Data Protection solution that best meets the needs of your organization. Featuring research from

2 2 To that end, CommVault explores the essentials of Modern Data Protection in the first article, Traditional Backup is Dead Are You Prepared? We also highlight the implementation of Simpana software at the Armstrong Group of Companies to show the positive impact of a Modern Data Protection solution in action. Finally, a companion article from Gartner, The Future of Backup May Not Be Backup presents their insights into new solutions that will augment and possibly even replace traditional backup software approaches. It s time to move to a Modern Data Protection solution to capture, move, retain, find, analyze and recover data from any storage tier. Doing so will not only cut operational costs, it will also give you complete access to your data and provide value back to the business through insights into information that enables better management decisions for activities like planning and budgeting.

3 3 CommVault Paper: Traditional Backup is Dead Are You Prepared? Introduction It s no secret that today s unprecedented data growth, datacenter consolidation and server virtualization are wreaking havoc with conventional approaches to backup and recovery. The rapidly intensifying demand for storage is putting a tight squeeze on enterprise resources whether your organization is grappling with too much data to protect in operational windows, physical space constraints, or concerns around cloud computing, backup and recovery are becoming increasingly complex, cutting into staff time and budgets and slowing operations. The amount of actively managed storage continues to expand at around 20% per year, and we see a long tail of besieged IT staffs dealing with growth rates exceeding 50%, says industry analyst Kurt Marko in InformationWeek Analytics State of Storage 2011 report. Clearly, conventional backup and recovery approaches are not robust enough to meet today s data and information management challenges, let alone those of tomorrow. A new strategy is essential. According to Gartner, a fundamental sea change is occurring in the recovery market. For vendors to have long-term success, they must plan to address the legacy requirements of traditional backup and recovery, while looking to expand their integration with and exploitation of snapshot and replication technologies. Enter, Modern Data Protection from CommVault, which has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant in Gartner s 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Disk-Based Backup/Recovery report. Modern Data Protection provides unparalleled advantages with its innovative and holistic approach to data and information management. CommVault s Simpana software exemplifies this modern strategy: It contains individually licensable modules all built on a single unifying code base and platform to analyze, replicate, protect, archive, and search your enterprise data and information. By leveraging the strengths of a single platform, each module, deployed alone or in combination with other modules, delivers unsurpassed feature-for-feature performance against alternative point-level solutions. What s more, CommVault s Solving Forward philosophy means Simpana not only solves your current data management challenges with a truly Modern Data Protection solution, but also builds in technology to meet future demands. Modern Data Protection: The Essentials Imagine trying to cram all your valuables into a rusty old metal box with a broken lock and no guarantee you can access them again when you need them. It s easy to see how such a scenario would overburden your IT staff and budget and risk massive data loss. If that s how you feel when you attempt to back up your corporate data the company s crown jewels with the same old backup software you ve been using for decades, it s time to explore the innovative approach called Modern Data Protection. First, some background. The exponential growth in the volume of digital information is resulting in almost unbridled growth in demand for storage capacity, says principal analyst Amy Larsen DeCarlo in a January 2011 Current Analysis report. Nor is there any sign of a slowdown anytime in the near future, with some industry estimates that individual storage volumes could continue to grow 90 to 100 percent year over year for the foreseeable future. Indeed, as data rapidly becomes one of the enterprise s most valuable assets, determining how to analyze, replicate, protect, archive, search and recover it whenever necessary is quickly becoming more complicated. The key to gaining control over today s data chaos is to lower the cost of data management, reduce risk of loss, and reduce operational complexity by developing a more complete, more granular understanding of your data. How? By leveraging management techniques designed to achieve efficiencies not previously possible. Quite a challenge. In addition to the everintensifying data growth you re no doubt experiencing, and the pressure to control and manage that data in huge volumes, you re being hit with burgeoning virtual server deployments, applications with enormous data requirements,

4 4 heightened business demand to reduce downtime, greater regulatory and governance requirements, and emerging infrastructures and service models like cloud storage. All these factors impact your resources time, money, and personnel making current data management circumstances, and the ability to plan for future data management needs, even more critical concerns. Legacy approaches to data management have fallen behind in the areas of protection and recovery of these massive volumes, or addressed them only in piecemeal fashion. With enterprises in jeopardy of losing invaluable business data, and personnel and budgets stretched to the breaking point, traditional backup and recovery is broken. Some specifics: Most organizations today can t complete full or even incremental backups during their allotted backup windows. Streaming backup for key applications requires more network and processor power, and more time, than is typically available. Server virtualization projects and cloud initiatives cannot be fully implemented or started with legacy protection models. Edge data is not systematically protected. Managing backup activities is overly difficult because of a myriad of point products that have been cobbled together over time. Recovery is slow, and far from granular what s more, it s not a sure thing. The full vision of tiered storage has not been realized. The upshot: The enterprise needs an innovative, holistic approach to data protection. CommVault is dedicated to helping you meet this challenge by redefining the backup and recovery market with a single solution that enables you to efficiently capture, move, retain, find and recover data from any storage tier. We call this Modern Data Protection. The Trouble With Legacy Backup Legacy, point-level approaches that stream backups directly from production environments are fast losing their effectiveness because they can t solve the problems of massive data overload burdening today s IT environments. Enormous volumes of data lead to long backup windows, which often force manual or complex snapshot and scripting methodologies that turn into extremely complicated and time-consuming recovery operations: stage older backups, mount, hunt and peck, and wait. Even more frustrating, legacy backup doesn t globally address the proliferation of redundant data leading to excessive demands on network, storage and management resources. Legacy replication, if you can afford it, is complex, resource intensive or tied to specific hardware. There is no granularity into the data you are protecting, and no integration with the applications creating that data. This limits your ability and increases the time you need to restore and use protected data. Finally, legacy backup solutions are often dependent on a collection of loosely integrated tools and products that require scripting and individual management consoles. Not a pretty picture. The Solution: Modern Data Protection CommVault s strategy for meeting the challenges of data management in this new era is to venture beyond the models of the past beyond the limitations of disconnected legacy solutions with a single, modern platform that integrates application intelligence with heterogeneous hardware snapshots, indexing, deduplication, and FIGURE 1 Modern Data Protection: An innovative strategy to address enterprise data management challenges Source: CommVault

5 5 replication to efficiently capture, move, retain, find and recover data from any storage tier. See Figure 1. Making it even more appealing, this powerful, innovative solution is based on a single user interface and common code base that lets you improve recovery times, reduce costs, improve operations and consolidate budget line items. The ultimate benefit: Modern Data Protection frees you to focus your critical time and resources on your organization s broader business goals, by simplifying the data and information management process so can do more with less and ensure that you re poised to meet future storage demands. Each aspect of CommVault s Modern Data Protection strategy relates to an action essential to data backup and recovery as shown in Figure 2 Together, these actions form the basis of your approach to data and information management and inform the technologies you ll use. The process starts with application awareness CommVault uses its in-depth knowledge of applications and file systems to provide granularity into the data you are protecting, and to enable consistent, rapid copying of that data. Next, snapshot technology forms the core of the new data protection process. You must be able to create instant, application-aware recovery copies, even from heterogeneous hardware snapshots. And you need to be able to safeguard your critical information as you bridge the gap from physical to virtual server environments; rapidly deploy, grow and scale virtual servers; and implement critical applications within those environments. Modern snapshot integration improves recovery time and executes upon stringent Data SLAs, while dramatically reducing backup windows by offloading production resources for backup operations. Once you have snapshot copies of your data, embedded, global deduplication (a cornerstone of any Data Reduction strategy) eliminates redundant data to increase network efficiency and reduce storage infrastructure costs. This happens at the source and across the enterprise, without the need for rehydration during restores or off site, to maximize efficiency. Source-side deduplication can reduce up to 90% of the data moved over the network and as much as 50% of the time required to perform backups. With Simpana software, a single, virtual disk target can retain deduplicated backup and archive copies for efficient retention and fast restores. FIGURE 2 CommVault s Integration Across Data and Information Management: Easing the burden of data management Source: CommVault

6 6 Next, Modern Data Protection provides the flexibility to maintain copies of your data on different storage tiers to meet different retention and recovery needs, ensure appropriate levels of protection over time, and enhance efficiency overall. It lets you seamlessly and automatically store some snapshots near the original data for quick, granular restore; move older backups off to less costly storage tiers; and preserve some copies as long as you need or are required to keep them. Integrated replication in data management software enables this flexibility by efficiently moving full or incremental block changes from hardware snapshot copies. It also significantly reduces the backup window while offloading server and network resources. These replicated copies can be contained in one content-aware, indexed store for both protection and archiving, which allows you to use existing or commodity disk, or even cloud storage services, to lower the total cost of ownership for retained backup and archive data, and to increase IT and business agility. Automation, role-based security, and reporting are also core tenets that factor into your Modern Data Protection strategy. To reduce storage and storage management costs, for instance, almost all manual activities should be eliminated through policy-based approaches and centralized administration that automate the movement of backup and archive data to the most cost-effective storage locations. Security is paramount, whether you re a Fortune 100 or a small or midsize shop. Consequently, a modern data solution must provide not only the means to secure data, both in flight and at rest, but the flexibility to let administrators selectively define which data different types of users are authorized to see and manipulate. Intuitive, global reporting is integral to the solution so you can better manage backup and recovery resources, develop a deeper understanding of your environment, and plan appropriately as needs evolve. Ultimately, of course, it doesn t matter how good your backup process works if you can t recover data quickly and efficiently. So the last key element in a Modern Data Protection solution is recovery management. A centralized control that enables granular recovery of files, s or documents from any storage tier improves recovery time and recovery point objectives. CommVault Simpana Software Delivers Modern Data Protection CommVault comes through on its promise to partner with you in meeting the challenges of enterprise backup and recovery in this era of rapidly evolving data and information management. See Figure 3. By embracing Modern Data Protection and CommVault, you will be able to: Reduce storage and storage management costs by leveraging your existing investments more efficiently, delaying costly storage and network upgrades, and enabling additional storage options, such as more cost-effective DAS, SAN and NAS disk tiers, tape, cloud and objectbased storage. Simplify the complex by eliminating manual scripting and processes; automating tasks that discover, deploy, and protect within your environment; and leveraging policy-based data protection and management. Manage data protection, recovery, and placement in heterogeneous hardware and heavily virtualized environments easily through application and storage-aware snapshots and persistent, global cataloguing across storage tiers. Speed protection and recovery through the use of snapshots, global, embedded deduplication, and efficient cataloguing. Ensure data is protected and managed in the best possible way to meet your corporate, regulatory, and governance requirements as a result of integrated archive, e-discovery, and data protection options in one solution that can seamlessly cover distributed client systems, remote/branch offices, and the central data center. Rely on automated alerts, security, standard, and customized search options, as well as easyto-use storage resource management reporting to make your dynamic environment more understandable and your data and information more manageable. CommVault s Simpana software eliminates the frustrations caused by poorly integrated legacy data management products, instead providing the benefits of a Modern Data Protection solution

7 7 FIGURE 3 Legacy vs. Modern Data Protection: Transitioning to a solution built for forward-moving businesses Source: CommVault

8 8 built on a single platform that enables you to analyze, replicate, protect, archive, and search data effectively and efficiently from any storage tier. The granularity it offers into your data gives you the clarity that s been so sorely lacking in today s chaotic data management state, enabling you to lower costs, reduce risk of loss and reduce operational complexity. CommVault s holistic Solving Forward approach offers unrivaled advantages over legacy data management systems and ensures that your organization is well poised for the inevitable data growth still ahead. About the Author Greg White is a Senior Manager of Product Marketing at CommVault who has worked in the technology industry in brand and product marketing for nearly 10 years, helping organizations of all sizes, verticals and geographies solve their IT challenges. During the last five years Greg has gained specific knowledge and experience in the enterprise application and storage areas where he has helped businesses find solutions for their data growth, management, protection, and retention challenges. Source: CommVault

9 9 Research from Gartner The Future of Backup May Not Be Backup Many organizations struggle with the effectiveness of their backup solutions. With the status quo for recovery deemed outdated, backup looks as if it will morph into a very different activity, with new technologies being deployed to provide improved data protection. Overview The top challenges and current trends for the backup market are described in this research. New solutions for augmenting and even replacing traditional backup software are emerging, with the future of backup poised to become something different from backup as we have known it for decades. Key Findings Most backup applications have been designed and optimized for an outdated environment and use case. Frustration over backup challenges led to a greater willingness to modernize, and to consider new technologies and vendors for data protection. Today, snapshot and replication is becoming an accepted replacement for traditional backup software for a growing number of organizations, and Gartner believes that this trend will continue. Many storage system snapshot implementations that are not used in conjunction with additional management modules lack some of the basic features that are taken for granted in a backup application. Backup software as we currently know it is unlikely to completely disappear; however, it could be relegated to an increasingly niche position in an organization s recovery strategy as snapshot and file sharing. In the future, application and OS and hypervisor vendors will take on a more active role in backup. Recommendations Before any additional investments are made in backup software, push incumbent and any considered recovery vendors on their current and committed road maps for new data protection capabilities, such as snapshot and replication (which could include continuous data protection [CDP], file sharing [with versioning] and cloud capabilities). Ensure that you understand the existing and expected data recovery capabilities that are provided by your key application providers, as well as what is delivered by your OS and hypervisor vendors. While perhaps not ready to handle the bulk of your requirements today, new features are being delivered that may warrant consideration today or in the future. Although snapshots are likely to play a more expanded role in your future backup solution, there are important variations and differences that must be understood to provide the needed level of protection. Strategic Planning Assumptions By 2014, at least 30% of organizations will have changed backup vendors due to frustration over cost, complexity and/or capability. By 2015, at least 10% of large enterprises will have given up on conventional backup/recovery software, and will employ snapshot and replication techniques instead. Analysis Introduction There are many challenges with backup solutions today. The top concerns are related to the cost, capability and complexity of currently deployed backup systems. Gartner hears daily from organizations that are seeking significant improvements in their backup practices, and we continue to hear that organizations feel that the backup process needs to be dramatically, not incrementally, improved. These issues, and seven steps for addressing them, are described in more detail in Best Practices for Addressing the Broken State of Backup. While that research was published just over one year ago, very little has changed since then, with the exception that data has continued to grow and service levels have typically increased. Given the current state of the backup market, we reiterate our strategic

10 10 planning assumption that, by 2014, at least 30% of organizations will have changed backup vendors due to frustration over cost, complexity and/or capability. The greatest challenge with most backup implementations is that they were designed and optimized for a very different environment. The brute-force methodology of scanning the file system for any new and modified data often takes more than 10 times longer than the actual movement of the new data itself. Historically, a frequent full backup was much more practical, as file systems had fewer objects, and the size of the data was significantly smaller. Additionally, there was a great deal of predictable idle time (nights and weekends) in which to complete a lengthy backup job. Outdated approaches and concepts have become magnified in today s world. The top differences between the data centers of decades ago (for which most enterprise recovery solutions were designed) and what is often seen today are: Scale: The overall amount of data and the total number of files are much larger than in the past. Also, the number of applications has risen sharply. The average application size (and, in many organizations, the average file size) has become much larger. This growth of more and larger objects has made data capture more challenging. Rising SLAs: There has been a dramatic reduction in the available downtime to take a backup (known as the backup window ). For many companies, the backup window is now extinct, because there are no low-usage times/days for critical files and applications. The number of applications that have been deemed mission-critical has increased, as many organizations have realized that in order to provide a complete business function, many different systems are required to be operational. Also, in years past, communication systems (such as and BlackBerry devices) may not have been classified as top-tier applications, whereas today they typically are. Overall, the expectation, if not the official service agreement, is that all data will be continuously accessible, and the concept of any outage has become increasingly foreign. Therefore, there is no time to shut down the application and its services to take a backup. Changed and expanded environment: Vital data no longer resides solely in the data center. Remote and branch offices certain desktops and laptops, and even some smartphones and tablets may now have important information that needs to be protected. Increasingly, data is decentralized and geographically dispersed, which can make coordination and effective network transfer more challenging. Within the data center, virtualization has created new data management opportunities, but also new issues that must be taken into account, such as the need to ensure application consistency for virtual machine (VM) backups, the most appropriate way to capture and move a large number of VMs on a physical server, the need for automated discovery of new VMs, and an updated understanding of the current VM locations, as VMs are mobile and can move from server to server. Backup Market Trends All this has led to some very interesting trends in the backup market, some of which differ sharply from decades-old assumptions: Re-expanding the number of backup solutions and technologies: The historical desire to reduce the number of backup solutions (which typically have been three or four for an enterprise, but have been reduced to one or two) has now started to re-expand. as data centers have an expanded array of choices for what to spend their data protection funds on a plethora of backup software, disk-based appliances, CDP and server-based replication,

11 11 storage array snapshot and replication licenses, cloud services, etc. Much like in the 1990s, when organizations felt that their generalpurpose backup applications did not optimally support Microsoft NT and Windows, today we see data centers purchasing VM-specific backup tools to augment their corporate, standard backup software that they use for physical machines, as well as SharePoint and other application-specific backup solutions being deployed. Backup application switching: This has led to an increasing propensity to switch backup solutions, which Gartner believes will accelerate. We reiterate our prediction that, by 2014, at least 30% of organizations will have changed backup vendors due to frustration over cost, complexity and/or capability, which we first published in January, 2011 in Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Disk-Based Backup/Recovery. Decreasing backup data retention: Choosing a new backup solution has been made easier for many organizations as their backup retention has declined. In the past, backups were kept for years; however, beginning in 2009, retention periods began to decrease (see the Evidence section for additional details). Backup modernization: Frustration with current solutions and, in many cases, a recovery solution that is no longer able to properly protect the expanded number of applications, the increased amount of data or heavily virtualized environments has resulted in a worldwide backup modernization trend where organizations now feel that backup systems must be updated to meet expanding availability requirements. Deployment of new technologies and vendors: These deployments have resulted in normally highly risk-averse backup and recovery teams being far more aggressive about evaluating and going into production with new products and technologies. In some cases, these new solutions come from startup vendors with a limited installed base and corporate history, compared with backup market share leaders. A good example of this has been the extraordinarily rapid deployment of data deduplication in production environments. While the midmarket has been even more aggressive, this trend applies to large enterprises as well. Rising Enhancements and/or Alternatives to Backup Software During the past four years, Gartner has seen a very small, but growing, minority of organizations that has elected to eliminate backup software for many of their backup needs. Often, maintenance costs and capabilities have been the drivers for this trend. Below, we describe four backup alternatives that could be used to augment or possibly replace backup for some or all of an organization s recovery requirements. These four options are listed in the order of the current adoption level that Gartner observes in production use today. Snapshot and Replication Many organizations have augmented backup and recovery with the use of snapshot and replication products. Sometimes these solutions have been server-based software (e.g., Symantec Veritas Volume Replicator and Vision Solutions Double-Take), and sometimes they have been implemented as network-based products (e.g., EMC RecoverPoint and FalconStor Network Storage Server). Most frequently for enterprise workloads, the snapshot and replication solution is a storage array-based implementation. Gartner s worldwide surveys and end-user inquiries during the past three years have shown a growing interest in bolstering backup with additional data protection capabilities, and respondents most frequently cite network-attached storage (NAS) and block storage array snapshot capabilities as the technologies they are turning to. Large server virtualization environments, in particular, have seen a high adoption rate of storage controller snapshots. Sometimes, the snapshots are performed in concert with the backup application that has knowledge of the snapshot or replication activity; however, these new recovery tools typically are used independently of a backup product. Gartner has seen a small, but growing, trend toward organizations giving up on conventional backup software altogether in favor of snapshot usage. The top reasons cited for moving away from backup software were: (1) high maintenance fees (per host or per terabyte) for backup software, (2) host agent issues and (3) the need to pull more data across the network. Figure 1 is the combined result of a survey conducted at the annual Gartner Data Center Conference held in November 2010 in London and in December 2010 in Las Vegas, to which there were nearly 100 respondents. In these results,

12 12 which are skewed toward the large enterprise environment, nearly two-thirds of the respondents stated that they have plans to augment backup software with snapshot and replication solutions, and one-third of those polled indicated that they plan to replace backup software with snapshots and replication. See the Evidence section regarding trends during the past three years at 11 Gartner conferences around the world on the use of snapshot and replication technologies. Snapshot Advantages A major advantage of snapshots over backup software is that they scale very well, independent of the amount of data that needs to be protected. For large applications, this can be very valuable, because the backup duration is not significantly increased as the size of the application increases. Many organizations also use snapshots for very large file systems that may have millions or even billions of small files, where the time to scan the file system becomes significantly longer than actually moving a copy of any new or modified data. This scan time can sometimes account for more than 95% of the elapsed time required during a traditional backup job. An advantage of array- and network-based snapshots is that the data collection impact is moved off of the application server, and data does not need to move through the server network. For highly transactional systems, the relief in required processor, memory and network resources can be vital in order to keep time-sensitive operations flowing properly. As server virtualization takes on more production workloads, this same decrease in required resources becomes more important as the number or density of VMs per physical server increases. Because the resource requirements are reduced, this approach can also mean that an organization is able to take more-frequent copies of its data with many companies now taking hourly or every-other-hour snapshots of critical systems. Another benefit is that there is also a very positive impact on restore times, as data can be moved rapidly, or, in some cases, there is no data movement, and instead, the snapshot is mounted and the application is pointed to the new data source, leading to a near-instant recovery. Snapshots combined with space-saving technologies (such as compression and data deduplication) mean that replicating data to another system requires much less bandwidth. This makes the more frequent use of replication FIGURE 1 Plan to Augment or Replace Backup Activities With Snapshot and Replication Technologies Replace Augment respondents Source: Gartner (September, 2011) Percentage of Respondents Yes No

13 13 feasible, because the network resources are reduced, and some companies have elected to replicate to multiple other systems (sometimes, one on-site for fast failover, and another at a distant location) for greater disaster avoidance. Snapshot Cautions The first item to note regarding snapshot technologies is that simply taking a snapshot by itself usually does not equate to providing the security of a traditional backup. Most storage system snapshots are capturing a copy of the new and changed data by keeping a table with pointers to the new and old blocks of data. This means that a hardware failure, such as a disk drive, a disk drawer or an issue with the entire storage system, results in data loss. Action Item: When snapshots are used, replication should also be employed to move the snapshot to a secondary location to mitigate against local hardware issues. The best practice, as with traditional backups, is to have two or more geographically dispersed copies of the data, with the distance between the copies being driven by the possibility of natural and manmade disasters in the region. When snapshots and replication are used to keep backup copies, by design, all of data is often located and stored in the same system or fault domain. If this storage array, snapshot or replication software fails or becomes corrupted, all of the backups (or, in this case, snapshots) can become invalid. Therefore, there is still a strong case for having a second level of protection that incorporates physical separation, such as periodic copies to high-capacity, encrypted enterprise tape systems, or a deduplicating disk target. These tape copies of snapshot data can be used as the recovery copy of last resort when primary storage systems and their snapshots and replicated snapshots fail. It is advisable that snapshots and replicated copies be physically separated. This second level of offline tape protection is most suitable in very large-scale storage environments, where customers have hundreds of terabytes of data, or the data is highly critical and cannot be recreated. These second-level copies can be run in the background, because they do not copy from the active data, but rather make copies of the snapshots. This physically separated second layer is managed by the manager of managers (MoM) as described below. Action Item: Periodically copy snapshots to tape to provide an additional layer of protection should primary and secondary storage systems become unavailable or corrupted. Some snapshot solutions can require manual or scripted integration for proper application protection. Through Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and storage system software add-on modules, this has become less of an issue than in the past, but just capturing a copy of data that is not in an application-consistent state could lead to a version of the data that is either not recoverable or that requires application logs to be applied before the data is usable. This is not a new issue, because application integration is also important for backup software, but it is important enough to restate so that logical errors at the time of the data capture are not first discovered at the time of data recovery. Many storage system snapshot implementations that are not used in conjunction with additional management modules lack some of the basic features that are taken for granted in a backup application. Application integration, centralized reporting, and an integrated catalog for easy search for individual items and data versioning are prime examples of functions that may be lacking. Additionally, some implementations require the manual preprovisioning of snapshot storage, and then the manual cleanup of snapshots that are no longer required. Note that some vendors offer software modules that can provide some or all these capabilities; however, some vendors may not. The key take-away is that all snapshots are not created and managed equally. One last item worth mentioning is that the speed advantage of very fast movement of a very small amount of changed blocks can be eliminated if the entire structure of the data changes. For example, when a database is reorganized, many, if not all, of the blocks can be updated and moved, resulting in a snapshot in which a full copy of the application will be required. This is not different from the case for backup software, but it requires consideration so that data capture durations and space requirements are well-understood in advance of deployment. Action Item: Understand that, while snapshots are likely to play a more expanded role in the future of your backup solution, there are important variations and differences that must be understood to provide the needed level of protection.

14 14 Native OS and Hypervisor-Centric Protection There are examples of OS and virtualization hypervisor backup solutions being used by the midmarket and portions of the large enterprise. Two prime examples are Microsoft s Data Protection Manager (DPM), which originally released six years ago in September 2005, and VMware s Data Recovery product, which debuted with vsphere 4 in May Arguably, neither of these solutions has made dramatic inroads in becoming the backup solution of choice in any market segment; however, each has had a level of adoption that cannot be ignored. These providers have the benefit of already being in the data path, and have other control points to leverage, such as file system, volume management and VM metadata. For VMware, this scenario is reminiscent of Veritas Software in the 1990s, which leveraged its file system, volume manager and clustering capabilities into a market-share-leading backup portfolio. Microsoft has, thus far, almost completely unexploited the backup attack points that it possesses: highly pervasive OS, middleware and application portfolio (Active Directory, Exchange, Internet Explorer, SharePoint and SQL Server), and the potential for its Azure and Office 365 cloud platforms to provide protection capabilities. OS and/or hypervisor vendors could elect to get serious in the data protection market, and to offer improved and more-scalable solutions that could change the dynamics of the backup/ recovery space. These vendors possess bundling and delivery methods that other providers in the backup market often lack. They could become disruptive, in that the buying center is changed from the storage team to the server organization something already happening for VM protection, and in fact, through bundling, could essentially make backup appear to be free of charge. Action Item: Keep apprised of future data protection capabilities as new releases and bundles are delivered, to see if more-compelling capabilities are delivered currently or will be made available at a later date. Through currently available bundles (e.g., Microsoft System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise and System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter, or VMware vsphere Essentials Plus), many large enterprises may already have no-charge backup solutions that could be worth evaluating for a portion of the recovery requirements. File Sharing Gartner has seen a rise in the number of cases in which midsize enterprises and portions of large enterprises are using file-sharing and synchronization tools to supplant traditional backup applications. While initially targeted at the endpoint (desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone) use case, some vendors have transcended this narrow focus to offer broader capabilities. Application support is lacking, but using a database dump to a flat file that is synchronized can overcome this (albeit a two-step process). The relatively recent addition of file versioning has made these tools even more acceptable for backup. This is because multiple recovery points can be maintained for added protection and rollback. Gartner has seen an increase in the number of midsize organizations that are using this approach instead of backup software, and even a few enterprises that have considered this concept for hundreds of terabytes. File-sharing solutions (such as Dropbox, SpiderOak and SugarSync) are increasingly being mentioned by Gartner clients, and VMware s Mozy is in beta with Stash, for its announced file sharing and synchronization feature that is planned for release in 4Q11. Note that other storage vendors have hinted at providing filesharing capabilities as well. Action Item: If file sharing and synchronization are of interest as a data protection method, ensure that appropriate security (encryption) and scalability can be delivered. Alternatively, consider implementing a private file-sharing capability to avoid these issues. Application-Centric Protection Application vendors, such as Google, Oracle and Microsoft, may become more significant players in the backup and recovery market. Although Microsoft s capabilities (see Native OS and Hypervisor-Centric Protection section) have largely been described via its DPM solution, Oracle has some data protection software features, in addition to its disk and tape devices, and is leveraging embedded OS, storage and file system technologies, which incorporate snapshot and replication techniques into its Exadata and

15 15 Exalogic systems. To date, Google offers no real native protection for its Google Apps. Google, Oracle, and Microsoft, and others, such as SAP, could become more active in data protection, as they already possess deep knowledge of what the application is doing, and how it is interacting with the file system and volume manager. Action Item: Understand the existing and expected data recovery capabilities of your key application providers, as well as what is delivered by your OS and/or hypervisor vendor. While they are perhaps not ready to handle the bulk of your requirements today, new features are being added that may warrant consideration now or in the future. The Future of Backup Software If any combination of the four technologies discussed above finds its way to widespread adoption, the backup software market as we know it today could be significantly altered. Not only would revenue streams change, leading to possible declines in research and development, but also the decision maker and operational owner for recovery could shift, or at least become a shared responsibility. If this comes to pass, then the scenario list included in the Backup Software Becomes Niche section could also come to pass; however, there are also possibilities listed directly below and in the Backup Software Fights Back section that could keep backup software relevant. Backup Software Morphs to a Manager of Managers In February 2007, Gartner published Recovery Will Move to Disk-Based, Manager of Managers Approach by It was here that we first noted that many different recovery techniques were beginning to be used in combination with traditional backup and recovery. We also pointed out that snapshots, in particular, were becoming more compelling for backup use cases. The basic premise of the MoM backup concept is that traditional backup software products transform into recovery management solutions that may not own all the data capture and data transfer techniques that are used. This means that, in addition to traditional tape- and disk-focused backup and recovery for application, file and image data, stronger support for VM, server-based, storage array-based, intelligent switch-based, and/or network-based snapshot and replication capabilities are added. There would be a MoM, which is a common and established concept in the network and system management world, whereby a hierarchy of federated tools feeds into each other, percolating up to an overall master manager that coordinates the activity of the other submanagers, which, in this case, takes some combination of VM, server, network or storage platform snapshots, and optionally replicates these snapshots to another location. There have been backup products that have provided varying levels of this capability for years. Examples that supported at least two storage platforms include CommVault Simpana, EMC NetWorker, HP Data Protector, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and Symantec NetBackup. Syncsort BEX supports NetApp. In most cases, snapshot support was limited to only a few file systems or storage arrays often, the file system or storage array that the vendor produced. Features included centralized scheduling, reporting and monitoring, as well as a unified console from which to recover data from a variety of backup targets (tape, backup disk, storage array, etc.). A key value proposition is the ability for the backup application to catalog the individual objects in the snapshot, providing a best of both worlds approach to the fast and resource-friendly nature of snapshots, with the ease of individual file recovery, application awareness for consistency, and overall management and coordination features of backup software. Few backup vendors offer this level of integration. It should also be noted that another interesting capability that backup software management brings to snapshots is the ability to catalog and write snapshots to physical tape to retain them over time. For many organizations, tape remains an attractive, low-cost medium for an additional copy of the data, or as a destination for longer-term retention. Historically, these backup vendors reported only 3% to 8% adoption of such capabilities in their installed bases. Part of the challenge in the past was that this functionality may have been ahead of its time for the general market. The bigger inhibitor to adoption was more likely that the storage arrays that were supported were often very expense in terms of the hardware and snapshot/replication licenses. Fast forward to today, when even midmarket storage platforms offer snapshot and replication, sometimes at no charge. At the high end of the market, the price for licensing these features on an array has substantially declined in the past five years. In its last few releases, CommVault has been the most aggressive vendor messaging this, driving the MoM concept in its Simpana backup software

16 16 and promoting it in its marketing. Simpana offers snapshot management and object cataloging capabilities for about 20 storage platforms from eight vendors (taking out rebranded OEMs). In May 2011, NetApp announced SnapProtect, an OEM of CommVault s snapshot management capabilities for NetApp storage arrays. Although CommVault has been relatively quick to support a broad range of established and newer storage platforms, it is possible that other backup vendors could firmly embrace this concept and bolster their messaging and support matrix as well. Symantec NetBackup supports 10 storage array types from five vendors (again, taking out rebranded OEMs),and was earliest to market with this functionality, delivering array-based along with server-based snapshots many years ago; however, the vendor has not added newer arrays or been vocal about having this capability. Gartner believes that the MoM approach is a must for enterprise backup software vendors, to avoid customer erosion in upcoming years. Unless backup software significantly integrates with and leverages server-, network- and/or especially storage arraybased snapshots, and backup software costs are perceived as being more affordable, Gartner believes that, by 2015, at least 11% of large enterprises will have given up on conventional backup/recovery software, and will employ snapshot and replication techniques instead. Backup Software Fights Back Over the years, backup software has mostly attempted to work harder, not smarter. However, there is a scenario in which backup vendors deliver radically improved capabilities to remain relevant. At Symantec s Vision 2011 conference in May, the vendor publicly alluded to just such a possibility when it announced the intention to smash the backup window in 2012, and issued a press release stating that Symantec plans to destroy the backup window and transform large-scale recovery with the introduction of a new technology that is anticipated to perform 100 times faster than backups today (see the 3 May 2011 Symantec press release, Breaking the Backup Window: A Plan for the Future ). The speculation is that capabilities from Symantec s portfolio of file system, volume manager, server-based CDP, deduplication and, of course, backup software could be combined and extended to offer richer capabilities, to be called NetBackup Accelerator in an upcoming release of NetBackup. While Symantec possess a broad range of assets and the largest backup market share, other backup vendors could look to become more innovative in their offerings in an attempt to radically enhance the value of their backup software. Just such an example is Syncsort, which could possibly extend the block-level incremental and application-aware extensions that it provides for NetApp s storage array-based snapshots to other third-party storage platforms. Action Items: Contact your current backup solution provider to understand what capabilities may have been delivered in recent releases that you may not be fully exploiting. Gartner does not recommend purchasing products based on future capabilities. When contacting your backup solution provider, it is also appropriate to get briefed on relevant road map items; however, immediate purchasing decisions should be based on shipping capabilities as features can sometimes be trimmed back and/ or pushed out to a later release date. Backup Software Becomes Niche If backup software largely remains as we know it today, it is likely to take on a more limited role in the overall recovery process and will risk becoming totally obsolete. Other solutions would rise to become more accepted and prolific, handling the majority of data protection needs. Organizationally, this could be as subtle as a subset of backup activities moving from a dedicated backup administrator to the primary storage manager, or as profound as all of the availability requirements becoming the responsibility of the application or server administrator. Action Items: To the extent that due diligence with legacy and candidate backup software vendors proves to be noncompelling, in terms of functionality, or unacceptable, in terms of cost or time frame, then backup software should be viewed as a highly tactical investment while the recovery market evolves. If business requirements are far ahead of current product capabilities, then backup software should be viewed as a highly tactical investment as the recovery market is going through a phase of evolution. Conclusion Recovery nirvana would be a blend of the strengths of backup software (such as centralized

17 17 management, scheduling and reporting) and the speed, scale and efficiency of platform-based snapshots that are assisted by metadata cues from the application and OS and/or hypervisor. Such an end state will take time to play out, and organizations will have to balance trade-offs against the need for scalable, production-ready recovery enhancements. Data protection of the future will likely require more coordination across backup, primary storage, application and server hypervisor management teams, to blend the available technical options and addressable budgets to best meet the most critical availability requirements. Change typically happens slowly in the riskaverse area of IT storage management. While the adoption of new backup alternatives is on the rise, few technologies completely disappear, with a good case in point being tape in the backup process. Technology and products in a risk-averse world have a long tail associated with them; however, the increased velocity of modernization, and the embracing of new technologies and providers, means that any future backup investments should be made with an eye toward a future where the alternatives presented in this research become more vital in your data protection strategy. This means that before any additional investments are made in backup software, incumbent and any considered recovery vendors should be pushed for their current and committed road maps for new data protection capabilities, such as snapshot and replication, file sharing (with versioning), and potentially cloud capabilities. Note that current capabilities are most important, followed by committed road maps with near-term delivery dates. Future visions are interesting, but also volatile, Action Item: Understand exactly what combination of applications, OSs, hypervisors and storage arrays are supported by any new, compelling recovery capability in a considered solution. This is vital because new features often have a narrow support matrix associated with them. Evidence Each year, Gartner analysts collectively handle close to 1,000 inquiries on backup, and host four to six conferences in multiple countries at which backup issues are discussed. In addition to live customer interaction, Gartner conducts worldwide surveys, electronic polling at conference sessions and general kiosk polling at Gartner conferences several times per year regarding backup issues, technology trends and vendors. For the past four years, all these data points have shown a rising interest in and an increased deployment level for snapshot and replication as a means of providing backup and recovery. Since 2008, Gartner has held 11 backup modernization roundtables in five cities around the world. In every case, at least one out of 10 participants had already abandoned traditional backup products in favor of NAS snapshots for some or even all their data protection needs (participation in these roundtables is typically limited to between 10 and 15 attendees). At the June 2011 Gartner Infrastructure and Operations Management Conference, this number rose to four out of 17 participants (nearly 25%). While these 11 roundtables are not scientifically accurate, they have proven to be very consistent with the large volume of end-user inquiries that Gartner has handled on this topic during the years that we have been conducting these sessions. The data collection method for Figure 1 was a kiosk survey conducted at the annual Gartner Data Center Conference held in November 2010 in London and in December 2010 in Las Vegas. Only respondents who had intimate knowledge of the storage management software plans within their organizations were invited to complete the survey. Respondents were limited to IT organizations software and IT services vendor personnel and consultants were excluded. As noted in Survey Analysis: 2010 Data Center Conference, Storage Software Needs Driven by Virtual Machine Recovery, Deduplication and Backup/Archiving Retention Policies, more than 200 respondents from Gartner s European and North American conferences reported that 42% of backups are retained for 90 days or less, and 57% of data is retained for six months or less.

18 18 About CommVault A singular vision a belief in a better way to address current and future data management needs guides CommVault in the development of Singular Information Management solutions for high-performance data protection, universal availability and simplified management of data on complex storage networks. CommVault s exclusive single-platform architecture gives companies unprecedented control over data growth, costs and risk. CommVault Simpana software employs individually-licensable modules designed to work together seamlessly from the ground up, sharing a single code and common function set, to deliver superlative backup and recovery, archive, replication, search and resource management capabilities. More companies every day join those who have discovered the unparalleled efficiency, performance, reliability, and control only CommVault can offer. Information about CommVault is available at CommVault s corporate headquarters is located in Oceanport, New Jersey, in the United States. Is Traditional Backup Dead? is published by CommVault. Editorial supplied by CommVault is independent of Gartner analysis. All Gartner research is 2012 by Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. All Gartner materials are used with Gartner s permission. The use or publication of Gartner research does not indicate Gartner s endorsement of CommVault s products and/or strategies. Reproduction or distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner s Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity on its website,