IBM Sales and Distribution Group June Next-generation data protection for midsize companies.

Transcription

1 IBM Sales and Distribution Group June 2009 Next-generation data protection for midsize companies.

2 Page 2 Contents 2 What is next-generation data protection? 3 Understanding the whole problem 6 Next-generation data protection and recovery from IBM 7 Comprehensive data backup from a single platform 10 Mission-critical application protection and recovery 11 Offsite disaster recovery 12 Remote office data protection and backup consolidation 13 Measurable improvements in support operations 14 A comprehensive data protection and recovery portfolio 15 A powerful, cost-effective and proactive platform 15 A repository to grow with your information 16 Conclusion Just because your company isn t a major corporation with hundreds of offices and thousands of employees doesn t mean you re not under the same pressures. You too need to maintain access to critical information so you can run your business and remain competitive. But buying the same complex and expensive solutions as the major players in your industry would be cost-prohibitive and unnecessary. This white paper will provide an overview of next-generation data protection and recovery options that are designed and priced specifically for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). What is next-generation data protection? Next-generation data protection solutions encompass a large number of disk-based backup and recovery technologies disk-to-disk, virtual tape library, snapshots, continuous data protection, remote office backup consolidation, bare machine recovery, disaster recovery, wide area file services and others. Next-generation data protection solutions can replace or augment traditional tape backup processes to address increasingly aggressive recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) as well as to improve operational efficiency, business continuity and resiliency. For example, if you run a tape backup once a night, you risk losing up to 24 hours of data because your recovery point is, at best, the time of the last backup assuming the backup completed successfully. Moreover, many applications need to be stopped to run a tape backup. Shutting down some applications can negatively affect operations and require staff to be at work or on call in case something goes wrong.

3 Page 3 Companies relying on manual backup as their primary backup and recovery medium will have faster, more reliable recoveries. For companies with remote offices, the burden of backup and recovery is removed from the non-it-savvy staff and moved to the central data center where the expertise resides. Next-generation data protection takes advantage of the ever-increasing capacities and decreasing costs of hard disk storage. Next-generation data protection takes advantage of the ever-increasing capacities and decreasing costs of hard disk storage. It can also improve your RPO and RTO by performing fast, nondisruptive backups and data restoration using the direct, random access dynamics of spinning disks. Understanding the whole problem Fewer and fewer businesses today would be able to function if their data were suddenly no longer accessible. Whether someone accidentally deletes a critical file or installs corrupt software, or whether a hacker makes his way into your database or a fire destroys your equipment, unprotected critical business data is like a ticking time bomb. With so many ways data loss can occur, it s not a matter of if but when. Consequently, when planning a comprehensive data protection strategy, you must consider the many possible threats and risks you manage. A lot can go wrong with data, and you need to be able to respond to each threat and know how it might affect your business.

4 Page 4 Human error or malicious deletion of critical data You need a solution that can quickly and easily restore individual files and folders. Restoring an entire system when you only need a single file is a waste of resources and could disrupt operations. Data that is lost or corrupted over a period of time Not all data loss incidents are noticed immediately, as is often the case with virus and hacker attacks or rolling database corruptions. You need the ability to recover data from any previous point in time at various levels of granularity. Many things can cause data loss in your business, including human error or malicious deletion of critical data, a crashed disk, a server failure, a local or regional disaster, backup risks in remote offices and branch offices, resource-intensive backup processes, and security breaches. A crashed disk Recovering a disk volume is different from recovering a single file, but it needs to be done just as quickly, and ideally with automation to help reduce operational disruptions. A server failure The ability to restore operations when replacing a broken server may be complicated by the need to install different drivers on the new system if the hardware is not an exact match. You need the capability to temporarily move the application workload to a standby server even if it has different hardware or to a virtual server while the system is being replaced or repaired. A local or regional disaster When you lose an entire office to a disaster, it s critical to have a current copy of your important information at a location outside the disaster zone. It s also important to know how fast you can fail over to a secondary infrastructure and whether you can revert back when the primary office reopens. And you need to know how much standby server and storage capacity you would need to handle a failover.

5 Page 5 Backup risks in remote offices and branch offices Remote and branch offices often don t have the luxury of onsite personnel who can assist in backups and restores. Running backups incorrectly, or not at all, can often be a primary cause of failed data recoveries in remote offices. Resource-intensive backup processes The protection of critical data requires frequent or even continuous backup. But this level of security can come with added cost especially if you apply a similar backup policy to noncritical data, which could add unnecessary storage, bandwidth and labor costs. That may be acceptable for large enterprises, but it s not for midsize organizations. Security breaches When moving data between sites, you must protect it from potential security breaches. A breach of data security whether actual damage is done or not can be devastating to a company s reputation, as dozens of large enterprises and government agencies have found in recent years. Businesses need to closely consider their unique backup needs to fully protect their mission-critical information assets. Many companies have purchased multiprong solutions from different vendors to fully address these challenges. But that approach is extremely expensive in terms of acquisition, integration and management costs. Other companies have invested in off-the-shelf data protection solutions or have borrowed risk management plans from another company. Neither approach accounts for an organization s unique backup needs or considers which data is critical to the health of the business. Finally, there are the companies that have decided that the cost is too high for data protection and to take their chances an approach that can result in bankruptcy.

6 Page 6 In today s highly regulated and litigious business environment, the loss of important data can cause significant damage and may even lead to the demise of your business. To protect your intellectual capital and information assets, you need to fully understand your company s business risks and implement a solution that will help ensure that you can recover quickly in the event of a loss. IBM Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express recovers Microsoft Windows operating system based data and applications nearly instantly, from virtually any previous point in time, from wherever your data is stored. Next-generation data protection and recovery from IBM To address the data protection needs of midmarket businesses, IBM Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express helps reduce the business impact of virtually any data loss. It recovers Microsoft Windows operating system based data and applications nearly instantly, from virtually any previous point in time, from practically wherever your data is stored. This turnkey solution can be added into each of your remote offices, and a similar system can be used in the central office to consolidate backups from the remote offices. Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express can help your organization: Meet narrower RTOs and RPOs Dramatically reduce revenue loss resulting from Windows applications and data downtime Meet and potentially exceed your service level agreements (SLAs) Access valuable files 24x7 including and mission-critical applica- tion data. IBM Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express combines IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software, IBM System Storage DS3000 and IBM System Storage DS4000 series disk systems, and IBM System x servers to automatically, nondisruptively and rapidly back up data during normal business hours so that current information is available to you when you actually need it. It provides near-immediate recovery of data following just about any type of loss in minutes or seconds versus the hours it might take using traditional recovery mechanisms, such as tape.

7 Page 7 Moreover, the solution improves administrator productivity by simplifying the management of backup windows. It offers intuitive remote management of diskbased data protection and even provides central control capabilities. This comprehensive solution has been tested to verify compatibility of components as well as to help ensure that they are simple to acquire, finance and install. Users also receive warranty support for all the solution components to help ensure solution value and a rapid ROI. This warranty further reduces the risk of data loss. IBM sells the solution offered in different configurations designed to best meet your needs at a competitive price and high value for midmarket businesses. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software offers a fully integrated, cost-effective, comprehensive nextgeneration data protection and recovery platform for organizations of all sizes. Comprehensive data backup from a single platform At the heart of IBM Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express is IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software. It offers an integrated, cost-effective and comprehensive data protection and recovery platform for organizations of virtually all sizes although it is especially suited to midmarket companies. To address the needs of individual applications, offices and the business as a whole, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software performs block-level, incremental data capture using a policy engine that allows you to tailor your data protection system. Block-level data capture File-level data protection solutions need to scan the entire file system to figure out what has changed since the last backup. This is extremely time-consuming and a major drain on processor power, especially in systems with millions of files. File-level solutions also copy entire files when they ve been changed, even if only one record in a multigigabyte database has been added or changed. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack block-level technology captures only changed data blocks as they are written to disk, so there s no need to scan the file system or copy entire large files. An entire backup cycle takes a few minutes rather than hours or days.

8 Page 8 Incremental forever data capture After performing an initial full backup, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software captures only changed data and builds a synthetic full copy of the protected data. This saves storage space, reduces the load on application servers and virtually eliminates the need to run periodic full backups. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software provides block-level, incremental data capture, nearly eliminating the need for backup windows. Policy-based protection Applying a one-size-fits-all solution to complex data protection and recovery requirements can waste valuable resources. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software s sophisticated policy engine lets you match the frequency of backup up to and including true continuous data protection to the needs of each individual application. For example, you can set policies to protect a mission-critical database application every ten minutes, your server every hour and the file server once a day. Granular recovery Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software provides a file system view of the data in the backup repository. Open or restore virtually any file or folder, from just about any point in time, with a point-and-click or drag-and-drop action. Individual users can be given the ability to recover their own files as well. The application also offers an optional component IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Microsoft Exchange software that can be used to recover individual messages, contacts, calendar items, notes and tasks, even from corrupted Exchange databases.

9 Page 9 Near-instant restore When an entire volume or system needs to be restored, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software makes the full data set available to both applications and users within a few seconds because it restores data in the background. It transparently services any requested interactions with the data until it has been fully restored, rendering downtime as nearly a thing of the past. Selective replication If you use common synchronous and asynchronous replication solutions, it can cost a large amount of bandwidth to move a copy of your data over a wide area network (WAN) link so it can be restored in the case of a local or regional disaster. Even if a file is changed hundreds of times a day, every change written to disk is sent over the WAN using standard replication solutions. Using the policy engine described above, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software sends only the blocks that have changed since the last replication job, dramatically reducing the drain on your bandwidth. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recovery software supports a cost-effective disaster recovery strategy with a minimum of standby hardware. Dissimilar hardware bare machine recovery (BMR) The ability to quickly bring a new server online, even if the hardware platform is significantly different from the server being replaced (including virtual machines), is key to deploying a cost-effective and easy-to-manage business continuity solution. Rather than assigning a standby server to every critical server in the company, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recovery software requires just enough to cover the worst possible contingency. For example, if you have ten regional and local offices and assume that one office might go offline at a time, you need just enough servers standing by to cover the office with the most servers. You can also use the BMR technology to migrate workloads from legacy servers to new platforms: When coupled with Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software s near-instant volume restore capability, you can accomplish a major migration in a matter of a few hours.

10 Page 10 Remote office(s) Headquarters/data center Exchange SQL Oracle/SAP File/print Central control station IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Disaster recovery site Bare machine recovery Application servers Figure 1 Backup and recovery with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software With the block-level, incremental backup technology in Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software, backup windows are no longer required, and operations are not interrupted to complete backup. Mission-critical application protection and recovery You can use Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software in virtually any offices that rely on mission-critical applications. Schedule backup activities as often as you need to address the recovery point objectives of each application. In just a few minutes, the software is designed to recover any data asset from a single file or folder to an entire volume from any previous point in time. With the block-level, incremental backup technology in Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software, backup windows are no longer required; operations are not interrupted to complete backup. The lightweight agent is application aware, places minimal load on your production servers and effectively protects virtual machines where processor cycles are a critical resource.

11 Page 11 If you choose to keep your existing tape backup and archiving system, such as IBM Tivoli Storage Manager software, you can easily configure it to back up the Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack repository. It can run anytime during the day without affecting production or backup operations. This is because the tape backup operation would mount a previous point-in-time data set by accessing only the Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack backup server. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software helps enables offsite disaster recovery, with policy-based and bandwidth-efficient data capture. Offsite disaster recovery Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software extends disk-based, block-level, incremental data capture to a repository in another location, sending changed blocks of data over a WAN or Internet connection. You can individually set scheduling and retention policies for each location to address the specific needs of the business while avoiding unnecessary costs in bandwidth and storage. With the Tivoli software, you can still recover virtually any data from just about any point in time to get your operations back up and running quickly, even if an entire office or region is affected. IBM designed Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software to be as bandwidth efficient as possible to help minimize the effect on other applications that rely on WAN and Internet links. A primary feature in addressing this goal is the policy engine that schedules replication sessions. In most cases, a once-a-day transfer of changed data is sufficient for disaster recovery protection, especially if local backups/snapshots are occurring frequently during the day. A once-a-day policy will transfer only the blocks that have changed since the previous day, and only the latest version of that block will be transferred regardless of the number of times it changed during the day. The transfer can occur in the middle of the night when other WAN traffic is at a minimum. Consider this in contrast to common replication products that copy everything that is changed, clogging up bandwidth on a continual basis.

12 Page 12 Other performance features in Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software include data differencing (sending only the changes from the previous job run), compression, bundling of small files to reduce TCP/IP overhead, bandwidth throttling and multithreading. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software, as part of Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express, can help eliminate a large set of operational costs including purchasing and managing tapes, transporting and storing them offsite, and the manual processing associated with tape-based solutions. It can also help mitigate the security risks of physically transporting tapes, including the inadvertent loss of portable media. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software can replace the use of tape in remote offices, automate data protection tasks and centralize management processes. Remote office data protection and backup consolidation Too often, remote and branch offices do not have qualified technical staff to support the needs of users and applications, and effective data protection processes are often insufficient. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software offers a cost-effective solution that can automate the process of protecting data and replace tape usage in remote offices. It also enables central office IT staff to manage it via the Web-based management console. Many solutions have been introduced in recent years to automate and consolidate backup processes in remote offices. While others offer point solutions for remote offices, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software provides an integrated solution for next-generation data protection and recovery for the entire organization.

13 Page 13 One key Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack client conducted benchmark tests and found major backup and recovery time improvements using the IBM solution over the company s previous full backup-totape solution. Measurable improvements in support operations Companies across a wide variety of industries have used Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software to improve backup and recovery performance. One key customer conducted benchmark tests, comparing backup and recovery times between the IBM solution and its previous full backup-to-tape solution. The IBM solution it implemented included the optional components for Microsoft Exchange recovery and bare machine recovery. The organization measured dramatic improvements in backup and recovery times across a diverse set of support tasks, as shown in figure 2. Description Tape Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack Backup file/print server Comments 16 hours 3 minutes Increased frequency from 1/week to 6/day Backup server 46 hours 2 minutes Increased frequency Recover individual file Recover individual message Restore a file server volume Restore an volume Figure 2 Backup and recovery benchmark test results 25 minutes 3.5 minutes from 1/week to 8/day Impossible 15 minutes Same for calendars, hours 6 10 minutes hours 6 10 minutes contacts, tasks, etc.

14 Page 14 A comprehensive data protection and recovery portfolio Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software can help meet the data protection and recovery needs of companies of virtually all sizes. The Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack portfolio includes the following editions: IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack This core application provides a continuous data protection and recovery management platform for Microsoft Windows servers in the data center and in remote or branch offices and moves backup data between sites. The Tivoli Storage Manager Fastback family of products is designed to integrate smoothly with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager software to provide organizations with a comprehensive data protection, archive, retention and recovery solution. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Microsoft Exchange This optional component provides users and administrators with the ability to recover Microsoft Exchange data objects quickly and easily, including individual messages, attachments, calendars, contacts, notes, journals and tasks. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recovery This optional component facilitates comprehensive systems recovery following a disaster or catastrophic server failure. It provides the flexibility of recovering to dissimilar hardware or to a virtual machine within an hour. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack Center This solution combines the functionality of Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Microsoft Exchange and Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recovery software in a bundled offering that is easy to acquire and deploy.

15 Page 15 Selected for its powerful performance, the engine of Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express is an IBM System x server. A powerful, cost-effective and proactive platform The engine of Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express is an IBM System x server, which is an ideal platform for today s business-critical applications. Selected for its powerful performance, this hardware platform will help maximize your IT investment. IBM X-Architecture technology can run multiple workloads on a single server while maintaining a high level of performance, reliability and availability. Moreover, you can manage growth and risk to further improve business availability with servers from the System x family. Proactive management tools deliver industry-leading capabilities to identify hardware problems before they happen and fix them quickly helping to keep Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software up and running. In addition, dynamic management tools and world-class service and support from IBM help deliver higher performance and drive your ability to respond quickly to changing business needs. Additionally, savvy businesses know that managing energy in the data center is a growing concern from increasing numbers of servers to the incremental heat they generate to the rising cost of energy. IBM X-Architecture technology infuses System x servers with innovation and industry standards that help you become more energy efficient and reduce costs via new designs and tools that enhance power management. With System x servers, you can lower energy usage and your total cost of ownership of the already affordable Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express. IBM System Storage disk servers have been comprehensively tested as the platform for Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express and verified to be compatible with Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software. A repository to grow with your information Your personalized configuration of Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express can feature either an IBM System Storage DS3000 Express or an IBM System Storage DS4000 series disk system. These System Storage disk servers have been comprehensively tested as the platform for Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express, and IBM has enhanced Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software to work with the System Storage platform.

16 The DS3000 platform offers excellent value for SMBs. Its drive intermix capability reduces capital expenditures by supporting primary and backup storage within the same system. Moreover, the disk server is easy to deploy and integrate with Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software. The easy-to-use application is designed to allow novices and experts alike to easily configure and maintain the storage array; add or remove hard disks; and change Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) levels, block sizes and many other storage parameters. And so it can grow with your data and business, the DS3000 device offers superior scalability capabilities: capacity on demand, up to 48 drives and the ability to expand with the common architecture. The DS4000 disk system series is another offering designed for the midmarket organization. It delivers high performance and high availability for businesscritical storage and provides exceptional scalability for centralized, remote office backup consolidation and disaster recovery. Conclusion Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express can provide organizations with a comprehensive, enterprise-class, next-generation data protection and recovery solution set at a midmarket price. This solution available in a variety of configurations can help your company reduce operational risk and costs, increase productivity and resiliency, and provide improved levels of service. For more information To learn more about how you can facilitate continuous data backup for your Windows operating system supported applications with IBM Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit: ibm.com/expressadvantage/businesscontinuity If you are ready to take the next step and try IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software in your existing environment, you can download a 60-day free trial from: Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 IBM Corporation Sales and Distribution Group Route 100 Somers, NY U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America June 2009 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and Tivoli are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol ( or ), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at Copyright and trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. The information contained in this documentation is provided for informational purposes only. While efforts were made to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this documentation, it is provided as is without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In addition, this information is based on IBM s current product plans and strategy, which are subject to change by IBM without notice. IBM shall not be responsible for any damages arising out of the use of, or otherwise related to, this documentation or any other documentation. Nothing contained in this documentation is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, creating any warranties or representations from IBM (or its suppliers or licensors), or altering the terms and conditions of the applicable license agreement governing the use of IBM software. Contact your local IBM representative or IBM Business Partner to receive the latest information on promotional pricing for Comprehensive Data Protection Solution Express bundles. IMW14209-USEN-00