Offering Data Protection Assessments. A Managed Service Provider s Guide

Transcription

1 A Managed Service Provider s Guide

2 Companies worldwide rely on complex backup environments to protect their data. Because of the size and complexity of the environments the level of backup reliability is often unknown. Experience has shown that companies have an overly optimistic estimate of their data protection levels. Most storage administrators assume their backup success rates are in the range of 90-95%. After an initial Data Protection Assessment they soon realize their actual success rate is around 65%. Far below an acceptable range. gives managed service providers the opportunity to offer Data Protection Assessment services to increase the reliability of a customer s backup environment. Since is a Web 2.0-based solution managed service providers can use it to unobtrusively analyze and optimize a customer s backup environment. This engagement is often referred to as Data Protection Assessment or health check. This white paper provides details on the purpose of a Data Protection Assessment, how to deploy an assessment, and finally how to use the Data Protection Assessment as an effective sales tool with a customer. THE PURPOSE OF A DATA PROTECTION ASSESSMENT The purpose of a Data Protection Assessment is to evaluate the level of data protection in a customer s backup environment. Conducting an assessment with APTARE StorageConsole Backup Manager the customer will immediately see the areas for improvement in their backup environment. The role of the managed service provider is to recommend a course of action to remedy these exposures by either offering ongoing consulting services or additional products and solutions such as storage media, deduplication technologies, etc. One big advantage of a Data Protection Assessment is that it positions the managed services provider as a trusted advisor. A Data Protection Assessment is an especially valuable tool for customers considering purchasing a new technology for their backup environment (for example deduplication) in a proof-of-concept (POC) scenario. The assessment provides a baseline status of the backup environment before the new technology is deployed. Then it can show the after results and changes from deploying the technology. Managed service providers should leverage the Data Protection Assessment by introducing a customer to their portfolio of storage management services that use APTARE StorageConsole Backup Manager. The recommended timeframe for a Data Protection Assessment is thirty days. Depending on the size of the customer this may be extended to sixty days. (Larger organizations with bigger bureaucracy typically make slower decisions.) The initial assessment period should not exceed sixty days. The purpose is to provide a proof point for an ongoing service engagement with a customer APTARE, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document is the exclusive property of APTARE, Inc Page 2 of 9

3 At the end of the assessment period, the managed service provider has multiple revenue opportunities with a customer. Selling ongoing storage reporting services using APTARE StorageConsole Backup Manager Selling a perpetual software license of Selling backup products like storage media drives, etc. The need for additional disk and tape storage media is often identified in the capacity management phase of the Data Protection Assessment Selling a customer additional backup technologies (i.e. disk-based backup) when the assessment was used to measure a poof-of-concept (POC). INSTALLATION AND DATA COLLECTION This document assumes that the portal has been successfully installed on the managed service provider s server. In order to provide a customer with information about their backup environment a data collector must first be configured for their environment. Prior to configuring the data collector a customer should fill out the setup form that will provide the necessary information to setup the data collection. is an agentless architecture so it requires a minimal amount of setup and installs in hours. During this process a Server Group that uniquely identifies a customer s environment must be created. Once the server group is created and the data collector is successfully running, customer reports are available within 24 hours depending on the size of the environment. (Complete installation instructions are available on the APTARE Customer Support site on DATA PROTECTION REPORT CREATION Once the data is being collected, the managed service provider must decide which APTARE StorageConsole Backup Manager reports to run in a customer s environment. Below are recommendations for the essential reports that provide data protection information for a customer s environment. It is not a complete listing of every report since each backup environment is different. As a managed service provider becomes more familiar with the many different reports available, they will be able to tailor specific reports and dashboards to an individual customer s needs. There are four data protection areas that a customer s backup environment should be measured against. Each area represents a different aspect of the data protection lifecycle. The four data protection areas are: Exposure Analysis Performance Optimization Media Capacity Management Streamline Compliance 2008 APTARE, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document is the exclusive property of APTARE, Inc Page 3 of 9

4 Exposure Analysis The best way to increase data protection reliability and backup success rates is to pinpoint the failures in a customer s backup environment. The goal of exposure analysis is to identify vulnerable areas, specifically finding data that is not being protected with a backup. This area of data protection addresses the following questions. Which backups were partial or failed backups? Were there any false positives or failed backups that reported as successful? Are there orphan clients that are not covered under a backup policy and not being backed up? The following reports should be generated for the Exposure Analysis phase. Each report can be clicked through for greater granularity to diagnose and remedy any problem. Report Description Goal Job Status Summary This bar graph shows the status of each backup job in a customer s environment: successful (blue), partial (yellow) or failed (red) Identify why the failed and partial backups are happening by clicking through the bar graph and into each job to learn its Consecutive Errors By Client Mission Control False Positives Report* Discovery Module Report* *VERITAS NetBackup environments only. This report helps identify problematic clients in the backup environment. It lists all of the clients in the environment and the number of consecutive errors associated with each. This report shows the status of each backup by client. Instantly see by color code which clients are problematic. This report shows the False Positive NetBackup jobs that actually failed, but were reported as successful. Discovers clients/data not covered under a NetBackup policy. specific error code. Identify the worst offenders and remedy the problem by reviewing the specific errors and making them successful. All clients should show successful backup indicator lights. Remedy underlying problem so false positive job is successful. Ensure all data is being backed up APTARE, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document is the exclusive property of APTARE, Inc Page 4 of 9

5 Media Capacity Management The goal of the Media Capacity Management phase of the Data Protection Assessment is to ensure that a customer will have adequate media resources for backups in their current and future environments. Most customers don t have a sophisticated method for tracking storage media (disk and tape) capacity or inventory. Since their amount of data is constantly growing, it s difficult for them to project their future needs. As a result, most companies purchase too many tapes so they won t be caught without enough capacity. is able to accurately report a customer s media capacity and inventory and, more importantly, how much they ll need for the future. This ensures that the customer will have adequate backup media for their backups and won t have to waste dollars purchasing an abundant supply of unused inventory. The Capacity Management phase addresses the following questions. What s the current capacity and availability of my disk-based backups? How many tapes will I need to buy in the future based on my current data growth and historical usage? If I change my data retention policies how will that affect my current backup media inventory? Report Description Goal Media forecasting dashboard* This dashboard shows four different aspects of the backup media. Media consumption by date, media expiration status, media availability forecast, and media status Tape Drive Usage & Forecast Media Availability Forecast TSM Storage Pools Dashboard** *VERITAS NetBackup environments only. **IBM Tivoli Storage Manager environments only. Report shows the current and future capacity of tape drives, and projects the amount of data growth. Shows the growth of a customer s backup data and the availability of tape media in the future. Dashboard includes showing the capacity of TSM storage pools and success/failures of TSM tape processes. Future forecasting of media availability is a key metric. Fine tune to make sure a customer has ample media to match their data growth. Accurately manage future inventory of tape drives based on current data growth. Gives the ability to project how many tapes will be required in the future based on current data growth. Identify and remedy failures in the TSM tape processes. Effectively manage capacity of TSM storage pools APTARE, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document is the exclusive property of APTARE, Inc Page 5 of 9

6 Performance Optimization Performance of a backup environment is critical to its operation. Analyzing the performance of a data protection environment goes beyond reporting backup job status. Tape drive and library performance affect how well backups run. provides reports that will improve the performance of a customer s backup environment. This area of data protection addresses the following questions. Where are the bottlenecks in my backup recovery environment? Is it at the management server, media server, client, tape library, or tape drive? What is the actual performance of my tapes and are they being utilized to their maximum spec? Are my backups evenly balanced within my backup window? Which jobs can be rescheduled to shorten my backup window? Report Description Goal Disk Usage & Performance Shows the volume and data throughput performance of each disk drive over time. Identify disks that are being heavily used and also those that are suffering performance Tape Library & Drive Utilization Drive Utilization & Performance Job Duration Shows the maximum and average drives in use over a time period. Used to identify the peaks and valleys in the backup window. Shows the utilization and the write performance of each drive. Identifies those drives which are being slammed or over used. Shows the total duration of backup activity in a customer s environment. throughput issues. Reschedule backup jobs to eliminate job volume spikes in the backup window. Load balance backup jobs across all available drives to eliminate drive slamming. Quickly identify and remedy backup jobs that are long running due to performance issues APTARE, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document is the exclusive property of APTARE, Inc Page 6 of 9

7 Streamline Compliance Most storage administrators are accountable for providing a Service Level Agreements (SLA) to their internal constituents. Additionally they may have to comply with external regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). provides several out-of-thebox reports that will help ease the burden of ongoing regulatory compliance reporting. The issues addressed in this area are: How am I performing against established SLA s with my internal organizations? How can I show compliance with government mandated audits like Sarbanes-Oxley? How can I reply to requests for legal discovery of my data? How can I show an audit trail of my backups as they move from disk-disk-tape? Report Description Goal Mission Control This report shows all of the backup clients and the success status of each over time. SLA Backup Status Job Status Summary Shows the success and failure rate of backup jobs measured against customer defined SLA goals. This bar graph shows the status of each backup job in a customer s environment: successful (blue), partial (yellow) or failed (red). Achieve a consistent percent of backup success as defined by a customer. Usually 90+ %. Illustrate that backup success levels are being met. Provide an audit trail that proves the backups launched as scheduled. Need to annotate the reason for partials/failures and note what action was taken to remedy the failure. REPORT DELIVERY Once the reports have been created in offers several ways to share them with a customer. A managed service provider may choose to use any or all of the report delivery methods listed below. The method a managed service provider uses depends on the relationship with the customer, and how the managed service provider wants to position his services. Often the level of report access is determined by the functional level within a customer s organization. For instance a storage administrator likely wants full access to all reports through the browser while a more senior executive would only want a weekly of the business level reports APTARE, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document is the exclusive property of APTARE, Inc Page 7 of 9

8 Web 2.0 Portal A managed service provider has granular control on the reports each user may see and access through Web 2.0 Portal. Privileges to reports can be granted at the user, group, or global level in a customer s environment. A managed service provider may wish to grant unlimited access to all of the reports available through, or he may wish to limit the number of reports to a specific set. All reports are available to the user from the navigation bar on the left side of the screen. Share Dashboards Creating a dashboard is as simple as dragging and dropping any report(s) onto a blank dashboard canvas. Using the reports listed above, a dashboard should be created for each area of the Data Protection Assessment: exposure analysis dashboard media capacity management dashboard performance optimization dashboard compliance dashboard Dashboards can be shared with your customer s APTARE StorageConsole account immediately by clicking the Share button in the right corner of the dashboard. Your customer will be able access the dashboards from their report navigation on the left side of their screen. Dashboards can also be ed on a recurring basis to a customer. Any report or dashboard can be automatically ed directly from APTARE StorageConsole Backup Manager. s can be sent on a recurring hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly schedule. The dashboard and reports can also be clicked-through in the for drill-down capability if this feature is enabled. Customer Presentation A managed service provider may choose to limit his customer s access to the APTARE StorageConsole Backup Manger reports to build greater value into his services. The managed service provider reviews the reports with a customer as part of a consultative sales process. The chart on the next page shows the method of report sharing based on the level of access a customer is granted APTARE, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document is the exclusive property of APTARE, Inc Page 8 of 9

9 Customer Access Level Web 2.0 Portal and Customer receives full access to the website and receives weekly s. Dashboard & Report Delivery Configure each user account to grant various access levels to reports in the Web 2.0 GUI. Share dashboards and reports using the Share button. A customer will see these dashboards and reports in the report navigator on the left side of the screen. Web 2.0 Portal Only Customer receives full access to the website to access their reports. Only Customer isn t granted website access. All reporting is sent via . No Access Granted Customer reviews reports in person with the managed service provider. All dashboards and reports are automatically ed to a customer through a recurring hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly schedule by clicking button in any saved dashboard or report. Configure each user account to grant various access levels to reports in the Web 2.0 GUI. Share dashboards and reports using the Share button. A customer will see these dashboards and reports in the report navigator on the left side of the screen. All dashboards and reports are automatically ed to a customer through a recurring hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly schedule by clicking button in any saved dashboard or report. All reports are accessed only by the managed service provider. Reports are presented to a customer in person. CONCLUSION A Data Protection Assessment is a valuable engagement for managed service providers that helps customers improve the reliability of their backup environment. Managed correctly it is an opportunity for a managed service provider to strengthen the relationship with the customer, and to introduce new products and services that will result in additional recurring revenue long after the initial assessment is over APTARE, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document is the exclusive property of APTARE, Inc Page 9 of 9