Technology Insight Series

Transcription

1 Data Protection in a Unified Storage Environment John Webster June, 2012 Technology Insight Series Evaluator Group

2 Copyright 2012 Evaluator Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 1 of 6

3 Are traditional data protection processes unsustainable? The data storage industry is experiencing an accelerated demand for storage capacity that will make the more or less normal compounded annual growth rates of 50 80% seem mild by comparison. This heightened demand comes from many sources: Business expansion and the demand from top level management to create more business opportunities. Previously, C level management was more heavily focused on business preservation and risk management. Eighty percent of the IT budget was devoted to maintaining existing applications. The pendulum is now swinging in the direction of new application development and the use of data analytics to gain competitive advantage. The need to leverage additional data types. These more voluminous types include unstructured data, rich media, and machine to machine data (RFID, GPS, etc.) that feed new applications and analytics systems. The influx of data spawned outside of the data center. A huge wave of data generated by the web and mobile computing devices is now being captured inside the data center. The need to retain more information for longer periods of time. This need is driven by the traditional sources of data retention, including audit and compliance, as well as new application users needing to analyze change over time within their areas of focus (markets, populations, scientific research, etc.) Given the accelerating demand for storage capacity we are seeing across industry segments, we believe that existing data protection practices are unsustainable. In fact, many organizations realize this mainly because of the impact of increased capacity demand and budget limitations. Backup processes are inadequate, creating increased exposure to data loss and making recovery more complex and time consuming. This increase will have a significant, multifaceted impact on existing data protection processes that simply replacing tape with disk as a backup media will not fully address (see Figure 1 below). If these processes are not effectively addressed in a timely manner: The growing amount of data included the backup process places increased pressure on storage managers who may already be struggling to ensure that enterprise data is adequately protected The capital budget devoted to data protection that already accounts for half of many enterprise storage budgets will continue to grow The amount of time required to protect the information may extend beyond what is practical from a business operations standpoint The amount of data to protect may require more backup systems than can be physically accommodated New IT projects could be impacted, as administrators realize that they are competing for already strained data protection resources Page 2 of 6

4 Capacity based licensing thresholds can be exceeded both on and off site and turn into unpleasant budget busters Daily Incrementals Weekly Fulls Monthly Fulls Quarterly Fulls Initial Full Backup Yearly Full Two Copies one is offsite Figure 1. Typical Data Center Backup Cycles Toward Data Protection Sustainability Going beyond the disk for tape swap, we note that storage vendors have commonly responded by enhancing traditional backup and recovery products, which improves their speed and capacity limitations. Another approach is to introduce new data protection appliances that combine software and hardware to simplify operations. Whether or not these are long term solutions or merely incremental improvements depends on the specific environment. Other evolving approaches include in system data protection, or data protection as an integral part of a storage system. This can involve adding data copy functions and/or data movers for automated data protection managed by policy controls. Policy can also be set by storage administrators to allow other IT staff members application administrators, for example to manage a subset of the data protection environment via a familiar GUI. Customized restoration can also be supported via this GUI. Application awareness is yet another approach. This refers to the ability to implement applicationlevel data protection in ways that can be managed by other IT staff members including application administrators. It also means that a single restoration process can occur at the level of the entire application. Such system level approaches reduce backup data volume through the use of compression and deduplication, copy control snaps and replicas and automated tiering that includes integration with an active archive. The goal for storage administrators taking this approach is to find a storage system that simplifies and reduces management burden, such as having fewer management processes per unit of primary data through automation. Here, we take a closer look at the capabilities built into the Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) platform that address the next generation of data protection strategies needed to support data growth. Page 3 of 6

5 Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) Block, File, and Object From a management perspective, Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) unifies an enhanced version of its AMS arrays with its newly acquired BlueArc high performance NAS technology under a common management umbrella the Hitachi Command Suite. HUS is an integration of all three, but is sold as a single unified storage platform. As such, HUS simultaneously supports and manages block (commonly implemented as SAN) and file based storage (commonly implemented as NAS). As a unique differentiator, HUS also supports object based storage via the File Module side of HUS. Unlike block storage, an object based file system creates and maintains additional intelligent attributes of a file s metadata. Along with each file, Hitachi s file system implementation creates attributes describing the file (such as content, replication status, ACL, etc.) that it stores as file metadata along with file data to create the data object. Under certain applications, this capability can accelerate file searches, tiering, migration, and replication on a large scale. The objective of HUS is the unified management of block, file, and object based storage to create a services oriented storage management model. Data protection is included in this management model. Data protection and replication software is storage array based. For HUS, this includes a combination of existing Hitachi data protection products and storage array based software introduced in conjunction with the HUS announcement. Some apply to both block and file/object based storage (Hitachi Application Protector, for example) within the HUS, while others apply to the block or file only. Hitachi Application Protector (HAPRO) Hitachi Application Protector (HAPRO) is a new application consistent copy management software that allows storage administrators to transfer control of Hitachi Copy on Write Snapshot and Hitachi ShadowImage full volume cloning software to application administrators. These in system replication applications are supported on the block storage side of HUS, and are included its basic operating system. On initial release, HAPRO is designed to present a familiar, application consistent interface to Microsoft application administrators. It is designed to integrate with native application management APIs to support application consistent protection of applications as follows: Microsoft integrated with VSS and presented to application administrators via the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) for Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint (available now) Oracle HDS GUI integrated with RMAN backup and restore capabilities (future release) SAP backup API for Computer Center Management System (CCMS) backup and recovery tools (future release) HAPRO removes the dependency on storage administrators to perform backup and restore operations. At the application level, HAPRO allows the application administrator to restore an application and all of its pertinent data, metadata, and files to the state they existed just before an incident if and when required. However, the ability to restore at the file level is also supported. As mentioned, HUS supports Hitachi Copy on Write Snapshot as well as Hitachi ShadowImage for full volume cloning. However, Hitachi has now included enhancements that allow HUS administrators to use consistency groups with HUS. Snapshot pool size is no longer limited. Storage administrators can dynamically create, edit, and delete snapshot properties and add snapshot storage capacity via Hitachi Page 4 of 6

6 Dynamic Provisioning (HDP) pools. Improvements in Hitachi ShadowImage provide faster split/write execution for overall performance improvements. Hitachi Dynamic Replicator Hitachi Dynamic Replicator (HDR) is application aware replication appliance that supports heterogeneous server and storage environments including replication between heterogeneous storage devices. It built on a continuous data protection (CDP) engine and offers remote office data protection, application level recovery, and file level recovery features. It can also be used in conjunction with HUS to provide data protection and recovery services across multiple platform, servers, applications, and arrays. Application level recovery is possible for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris based applications. Individual file level granularity is also supported for recovery and, like HAPRO, can also be managed by application and other IT administrators. HDR s CDP engine allows an administrator to essentially dial back to a point in time just before a disaster or failure event by capturing changes to a file in real time and as these changes occur. CDP applies to local and remote application environments, multiple servers, and multiple virtual machines 1 within those environments. Change data is captured and sent via existing network links where they are captured by a separate HDR server. HDR resident data can also be replicated simultaneously to local and remote repositories for disaster recovery and business continuance purposes. JetClone For file based replication, Hitachi has adapted BlueArc space efficient snapshot and file clone technology to the unified management environment. JetClone maintains one physical copy and provides writable snapshots for the multiple applications that use copies. JetClone creates writable snapshots, which means that once a snapshot is made, any and all subsequent changes (deltas) are tracked and maintained in blocks pointed to by the original metadata table entry. All changes to the file copies are maintained in the form of writable snapshots belonging to each process. Updates are made and tracked without affecting the original, saving capacity, streamlining storage administrative time, and reducing complexity. JetMirror JetMirror leverages the BlueArc object based files systems technology to accelerate synchronous and asynchronous replication to metro distance and remote sites. Because the BlueArc HNAS side of HUS stores data as unique objects rather than files, objects are replicated to target systems. As a result, the replication process does not need to read though traditional file system structures and metadata to identify its source data. Rather, JetMirror scans an indexed list of objects to identify source data for replication to the target system. In addition, metadata updates are performed by the object based file system without opening the object. The combination of these and other BlueArc attributes allows storage administrators to significantly reduce the time and bandwidth required to replicate the data offsite. 1 Virtual machine support covers VMware ESX, Xen Server, and Microsoft Hyper V. Page 5 of 6

7 Adding Existing Hitachi Data Protection Capabilities to HUS Additional block based replication software packages that are also supported on the HUS platform include: Hitachi Replication Manager (HRpM) a module within Hitachi Command Suite that allows the HUS administrator to aggregate the set up, configuration, and on going management of multiple block based copy functions supported for use with HUS. This applies to local and remote HUS systems. Administrators can schedule and automate replication processes using HRpM. Hitachi Data Protection Suite (HDPS) based on CommVault Simpana. Hitachi TrueCopy Synchronous and TrueCopy Extended Distance for remote copying of full volume data clones, TrueCopy Synchronous supports synchronous data replication and immediate recoverability when using a target HDS storage platform located up to 300km away. TrueCopy Extended Distance utilizes asynchronous replication for volume cloning over any distance for disaster recovery and business continuance purposes. Conclusion HUS represents an advancement in storage system based data protection in that both the block and file sides of a unified storage system are included under the unified storage umbrella. For block storage, administrators can use Hitachi Copy on Write Snapshot and ShadowImage. For file and object storage, JetClone is offered. Both support in system backup and recovery processes. HAPRO combines these capabilities for both block and file data protection under a unified storage umbrella that is managed from a familiar interface. In addition, both HAPRO and Dynamic Replicator give storage administrators the ability to implement application level data protection in ways that can be managed by other IT staff members including application administrators. This takes a set of time consuming and repetitive tasks, and delegates them to other IT stakeholders. As noted earlier, accelerating demand for storage capacity across industry segments is gradually rendering existing data protection practices ineffective and unsustainable. In system data protection relieves the pressure on existing data center based backup and recovery processes so they can be continually scaled upward to cover explosive data growth. Application level data protection that is also implemented within the storage system allows storage administrators to simplify their working environments. Hitachi delivers both these capabilities within the HUS framework. About Evaluator Group Evaluator Group Inc. is dedicated to helping IT professionals and vendors create and implement strategies that make the most of the value of their storage and digital information. Evaluator Group services deliver in depth, unbiased analysis on storage architectures, infrastructures and management for IT professionals. Since 1997 Evaluator Group has provided services for thousands of end users and vendor professionals through product and market evaluations, competitive analysis and education. Follow us on Page 6 of 6