A CommVault Green IT White Paper Going Green with CommVault Data Management Solutions: Improve Data Center Efficiency and Reduce Costs

Transcription

1 A CommVault Green IT White Paper Going Green with CommVault Data Management Solutions: Improve Data Center Efficiency and Reduce Costs

2 Contents Efficient IT is Green IT 3 Data Growth Unmanageable Sprawl 4 Data Center Consumption 4 Data Management Inefficiency 4 Data Management Efficiency 6 Going Green with CommVault 8 CommVault Walks the Walk 9 Five Enterprise Data Management Policies That Help Successfully Drive Green IT Results 9

3 Efficient IT is Green IT Green IT is taking on a new level of importance in the enterprise. This strategic business issue is garnering the attention of executives and IT personnel alike. And, according to a poll conducted by CIO.com, IT executives cite social responsibility (38%) and cost reduction (37%) as virtually even primary Green IT drivers. 2 IDC reveals almost 80% of executives say Green IT is growing in importance and economics leads the drive for Green IT adoption. 1 That means Green IT is good news for the enterprise, and for the entire enterprise, not just for IT. Green IT is a good business decision. And, a good Green IT strategy does more than aim to heal global ecosystems and the environment. A truly good Green IT strategy creates new, real and measurable consumption efficiencies, improving enterprise performance, and tangibly minimizing enterprise costs today, and in the future. The raised visibility of Going Green within IT does not necessarily come from being a model citizen, or concern for the environment, but more from dwindling resources and increased costs. Power, cooling, and floor space needs are critical requirements to support the growing demands of the business. The explosion of data growth driven by business demands puts a tremendous strain on IT resources and Green IT strategy. Historical methods of simply adding new hardware and software to support existing and emerging business applications are no longer a viable option. Green IT initiatives now often include projects looking at how to access and manage data more efficiently across areas such as disaster According to a poll conducted by CIO.com, recovery, compliance, backup, ediscovery, and archive. IT executives cite social responsibility (38%) and cost reduction (37%) as virtually even Inefficient management of applications and data significantly primary Green IT drivers. compounds the data growth challenge and improving upon this, affords a real opportunity to make an immediate and tangible impact on Green IT strategy. For example, the historical disparate approach of deploying and managing separate data and information management technologies generates unmanaged, redundant data copies sprawled across the enterprise which increase storage acquisition and operational costs.all leading to the need for more power, cooling, and floor space. In contrast, a singular, approach to enterprise data management increases storage efficiencies, eliminates redundant copies of data, which reduces space, power, and cooling requirements. Unified Data Management is a key component of a go-to-green IT strategy that can deliver immediate and long-term results. 1 IDC Press Release, Green IT a Natural Fit for Enterprise Executives, IDC Says, Doc # prus (October 2007) 2 CIO.com, Green IT Survey (March 2008) 3

4 Data Growth Unmanageable Sprawl ESG estimates database information is growing at roughly 25% per annum while unstructured Business success demands data. Transaction, service, manufacturing, production, administration, etc., all generate data, including files and s, is growing at and rely on data. The consequence is that enterprise data roughly two to three times that rate. 3 requirements are growing at an incredible, increasingly unmanageable pace. ESG estimates database information is growing at roughly 25% per annum while unstructured data, including files and s, is growing at roughly two to three times that rate. 3 To keep up with data growth requirements, most enterprises begrudgingly invest in more and more storage hardware, requiring a bigger and bigger data center footprint. While technologies such as virtualization and consolidation reduce data center footprint, they do not address the fundamental problem poor data management tools make it impossible to gain visibility into data dispersed across the enterprise. These tools also do not help IT store and manage ever increasing amounts of data while reducing storage footprint and cost. Data Center Consumption The EPA views data center energy efficiency as a function of [what] any organization needs to do good planning and implementation of best practices that already exist. It doesn t take a big budget and bleeding edge technology to go green and benefit economically. The US Department of Energy (DoE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimate that US data centers consumed 1.5% of all electricity in the US in 2006, equivalent to the demand of 5.8 million typical US households and requiring the output of about 15 base load power plants. 4 And, data center power demand is growing by about 12% annually. Under estimates, if current trends continue, US data center electricity consumption will nearly double by 2011, requiring the equivalent of an additional power plants just to meet demand growth. Interested parties like the DoE and EPA advocate reasonable solutions for improving data center efficiency. They estimate that companies can boost US data center energy efficiency by about 20% simply by improving operational management. The EPA views data center energy efficiency as a function of [what] any organization needs to do good planning and implementation of best practices that already exist. 5 The bottom line? It doesn t take a big budget and bleeding-edge technology to go green and benefit economically. Efficient data management is an ideal starting point. Data Management Inefficiency Exponential data growth leads to parallel growth in data storage and data management requirements all of which consumes more physical and human capital. Today s enterprise stores data all over the place which leads to many copies of redundant data stored across a variety of hardware platforms. 3 ESG Research Report, 2008 Digital Archive Report (January 2008) 4 DoE, Data Center Energy Efficiency Program Presentation (May 2008); EPA, Report to Congress (August 2007) 5 EPA, Report to Congress (August 2007) 4

5 Original Copy Shared Copies Archived Copies Backed Up Copy Replicated Copy Chart 1: Inefficient Data Management Some analysts estimate that as much as 80%-90% of an organization s As much as 80%-90% of an backed up and archived data is redundant. Just 20% redundancy organization s backed up and alone, considerably wastes valuable enterprise resources. archived data is redundant. Chart 1 illustrates the compounded impact inefficient data management can have on storage requirements. In this example, 1 object (file or ) is stored and then shared with people. The object may be archived which utilizes no additional storage (object is typically moved). The copies of this object are then backed up to disk now totaling 20 copies on disk. The copies may also be replicated which creates an additional copies making the cumulative total 30 copies of the object on disk. While storing data on disk improves data availability and protection (for meeting service level agreements, compliance regulations, backup and recovery processes, business continuance and disaster recovery plans), storage systems consume a significant portion of data center space and power. Electricity costs, alone, have increased 20% or more over the last few years and storage is estimated to command 35%-40% or more of data center power. 5

6 Data management software point products, just like hardware point products, exacerbate enterprise inefficiency. Software point products necessitate additional server requirements, additional disk and/or tape storage hardware, more power and additional IT manpower requirements. Best-practice enterprise data management using the right enterprise data management software improves storage utilization, drives efficiency into the data center, and produces measurable results. Applying energy efficiency principals to enterprise data management ultimately reduces equipment and associated labor requirements, saves companies money in the near term, and minimizes additional spending and risk in the longer term. Best-practice enterprise data management using the right enterprise data management software improves storage utilization, drives efficiency into the data center, and produces measurable results. Data Management Efficiency CommVault Simpana software offers a better way to manage data and reduce power, cooling, and space requirements within the data center. This is achieved because CommVault Simpana software unifies Backup & Recovery, Replication, Archive, Resource Management and Search within a single unified platform. CommVault Simpana Software Singular Architecture But how does CommVault Simpana software positively impact Green IT initiatives? CommVault Simpana software enables IT administrators to report and gain visibility into the data scattered across their enterprise. After running reports and analyzing the results, IT can create policies to optimize their tiered storage infrastructure by defining levels of service across tiers of storage that optimize storage utilization and cut costs. Through the delivery of an integrated solution for backup, replication, resource management, archive and search, CommVault uniquely eliminates infrastructure costs. Redundant copies of data for backup and archive are completely eliminated which are typically stored across multiple disparate applications, servers, and storage systems. 6

7 Original Copy Shared Copies Archived Copies Backed Up Copy Replicated Copy Chart 2: Efficient Data Management Chart 2 illustrates the impact CommVault data management has in reducing storage requirements. The previous chart illustrated how 1 object (file or ) can easily become 30 copies based on inefficient data management. In this example, 1 object is stored and then shared with people. Once the object is archived CommVault deduplication ensures only 1 copy of the object is stored on disk vs.. This same 1 object is retained (and not duplicated) for backup purposes. If the 1 object is replicated a second copy is created. The total cumulative number of objects retained on disk is 2 in total when using CommVault software vs. 30 in the previous chart. Taking these examples and extrapolating them out across many terabytes of storage clearly illustrates the value CommVault software provides. CommVault Simpana software enables customers to choose backup & recovery, replication, archive, resource management or search module that meet their current needs with the flexibility to activate additional modules as new needs emerge. Because all CommVault software applications utilize a Common Technology Platform, each aspect of the solution leverages unified data and information management services, including content indexing, deduplication, compression, encryption, and reporting. The net result is that CommVault Simpana software provides visibility into data stored across the enterprise, helps customers store data on the appropriate tier of storage, and eliminates data duplication. At each step, customers can reduce (or postpone) storage purchases and reduce energy requirements. 7

8 Going Green with CommVault Enterprise customers already benefit from CommVault s Green IT solution. CommVault recently surveyed its customers and independently validated the results. 6 The survey findings repeatedly draw a connection between CommVault s Unified Data Management solution and improved efficiency, performance, and investment. Chart 3 represents aggregates of actual customer experience results. 50% 42% 44% 40% 30% 33% 30% 20% % 0% HW & SW Spending Capacity Mgmt Weekly Backup Data Searching Savings Time Savings Time Savings Time Savings Chart 3: CommVault Customer Average Savings CommVault customers benefit from an average 33% reduction in hardware and software spending. The average CommVault user also realizes significant reductions in IT labor costs, including a 30%+ average reduction in capacity management time, a 42% average reduction in weekly data backup time, and a 44% average reduction in time spent tracking and locating data. The associated decrease in weekly IT administration time was hours. An IT director reports reduced data volume, maximized storage capacity, and reduced associated labor requirements, including for data protection, with Simpana software optimized data management. From the perspective of a business unit director, CommVault solutions have reduced expenses for the enterprise data center footprint and consumption (space as well as power and cooling energy costs) and have increased productivity due to greater data availability all of which shows very well financially for the division. Both the CIO and CFO champion the infrastructure spending and cost avoidance savings. 6 EMA, CommVault Customer Survey Data Validation and User ROI (June 2008) 8

9 CommVault Walks the Walk CommVault is dedicated to developing enterprise solutions that deliver solid return on investment. The Simpana software portfolio of data management solutions contribute to data center efficiency, improved operational performance, and reduced overall IT costs. CommVault whole-heartedly embraces Green IT initiatives because efficiency is innate to our mission. CommVault uses our own technology to execute a complete corporate commitment to energy efficiency. A principal component of CommVault Green IT commitment is participation in The Green Grid ( a global non-profit consortium focused on enterprise data center and business IT infrastructure energy efficiency. To better enable increased achievement of IT energy-efficiency goals, The Green Grid is developing platform-neutral efficiency standards and metrics for the IT industry. Every enterprise that adopts CommVault Unified Data Five Enterprise Data Management Policies That Help Successfully Drive Green IT Results 1. Audit enterprise data populations and assess enterprise data storage capacity utilization. 2. Establish a strategy to maximize data resources and capacity management, and to minimize associated consumption and costs. 3. Consider tools that reduce data redundancy and streamline storage capacity utilization. 4. Target solutions offering measurable cost-efficiencies. 5. Evaluate IT infrastructure and labor spending reductions, as well as associated data center energy demand reductions. Management solutions will be contributing to that goal. It s no mistake the CommVault tagline is Solving Forward. Going Green with CommVault means addressing tomorrow s needs today now that is solving forward. n n info@commvault.com CommVault Worldwide Headquarters n 2 Crescent Place n Oceanport, NJ n n Fax: CommVault Regional Offices: United States n Europe n Middle East & Africa n Asia-Pacific n Mexico & Latin America n Canada n India n Oceania CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, CommVault and logo, the CV logo, CommVault Systems, Solving Forward, SIM, Singular Information Management, Simpana, CommVault Galaxy, Unified Data Management, QiNetix, Quick Recovery, QR, CommNet, GridStor, Vault Tracker, InnerVault, QuickSnap, QSnap, Recovery Director, CommServe, CommCell and ROMS are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice. 9