HP STOREONCE BOLDLY GOES WHERE NO DEDUPLICATION HAS GONE BEFORE

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1 TECHNOLOGY BRIEF HP STOREONCE BOLDLY GOES WHERE NO DEDUPLICATION HAS GONE BEFORE JUNE 2013 Deduplication is a foundational technology for efficient backup and recovery. Vendors may argue over product features where to dedupe, how much capacity savings, how fast are its backup speeds - - but everyone knows how central dedupe is to backup success. However, serious pressures are forcing changes to the backup infrastructure and dedupe technologies. Explosive data growth is changing the whole market landscape as IT struggles with bloated backup windows, higher storage expenses, and increased management overhead. These pain points are driving real progress: replacing backup silos with expanded data protection platforms. These comprehensive systems backup from multiple sources to distributed storage targets, with single console management for increased control. Dedupe is a critical factor in this scenario, but not in its conventional form as a point solution. Traditional dedupe, or Dedupe 1.0 as it is sometimes referred to, is suited to backup silos. Moving deduped data outside the system requires rehydrating, which impacts performance and capacity between the data center, ROBO, DR sites and the cloud. Dedupe must expand its feature set in order to serve next generation backup platforms. A few vendors have introduced new dedupe technologies but most of them are still tied to specific physical backup storage systems and appliances. Of course there is nothing wrong with leveraging hardware and software to increase sales, but storage system- specific dedupe means that data must rehydrate whenever it moves beyond the system. This leaves the business with all the performance and capacity disadvantages the infrastructure had before. Federating dedupe across systems goes a long way to solve that problem. HP StoreOnce extends consistent dedupe across the infrastructure. Only HP implements the same deduplication technology in four places: target appliance, backup/media server, application source and virtual machine. This enables data to move freely between physical and virtual platforms and source and target machines without the need to rehydrate. This paper will describe the challenges of data protection in the face of huge data growth, why dedupe is critical to meeting the challenges, how HP is achieving its vision of federated dedupe with StoreOnce - and what HP s StoreOnce VSA announcement and achievement means to backup service providers, enterprise ROBO, and SMB customers. Key Challenges in Data Protection and Deduplication Fast- growing data and widespread virtualization have ratcheted up data protection challenges at all business sizes. 1 of 9

2 Backup window overruns. Theoretically IT sets backup windows by service level requirements, but the reality of backup performance wins every time. Expensive backup systems for Tier 1 applications may keep pace, but backup performance across the board suffers from big data growth and deduplication processes. Dedupe is of course critical for managing storage capacity and replication bandwidth, but there is no denying its impact on backup speeds. Sluggish restores. Restoring is the entire point of data protection. But restore processes can take a good deal of time depending on file sizes, backup format, application types, and available capacity and bandwidth. Rehydrating deduped data adds significant time to the process. Tight resources. IT budget and headcount is flat or declining, leaving less money and less personnel to address increasing data protection challenges. IT is charged with reducing capital and operating expenditures. This is hard to do even in a single data center, let alone when data is copied between the data center and ROBO/DR sites. Slow dedupe performance. Slow dedupe speed strongly impacts backup performance. Slow performance may result from several factors including limited processing rates, deduping previously deduped data, or slow storage controllers at the target. Slow dedupe affects service level agreements when IT cannot backup or restore priority data quickly enough. Siloed backup. Moving data between the data center, ROBO, the cloud and DR requires that data be rehydrated and deduped again. The rehydration/re- deduplication process slows down data speeds and requires additional storage capacity. IT cannot centrally manage separate backup systems, and scaling and provisioning are piecemeal and complex. Let s look more closely at traditional deduplication, where it stalls out and why evolution in deduplication is crucial for solving the above serious challenges. Evolution in Deduplication Is Critical to Solving These Challenges First generations of deduplication solutions aimed to address the fundamental needs. Initial point backups to local tape drives was okay for key critical systems when there were only a few, but as more of a business becomes dependent on IT services that in- turn began to span distributed systems, a much wider computing base needed protection. Today of course, critical IT infrastructure requiring protection has spread out of the data center and out across the far flung, and often global, enterprise. Inevitably, expanding IT services and the corresponding volume of data requiring backup began to exceed the ingest rates of backup infrastructure (not to mention the ballooning increases in related processes, staffing, and incurred costs), causing backup windows to grow until they interfered with production or even overlapped. Since recurring backups were mostly slightly changed copies of the ones that came before, deduplication burst on the scene as a means to greatly reduce the amount of new data requiring storage. Initial requirements for deduplication focused on reduction ratios for space utilization savings which in turn also greatly shrunk backup timeframes. Soon however, the idea that being able to restore was as important as backing up led to a focus on improving RTO and RPO metrics. Fortunately, deduplication essentially enabled the practical use of disk by reducing the amount of storage required to cost- effective amounts. With disk- based backup targets, backups became faster to store, more available and easy to restore. And disk based restores were much more likely to actually work, and in many scenarios more likely to even be attempted with the result that deduplication was implemented in many different solutions at multiple points in the data center. 2 of 9

3 SHORTFALLS WITH SILO DEDUPLICATION As applications, infrastructure, and data requiring protection continued to grow, deduplication spread out into isolated silos based on point solutions designed for point problems. Each implementation of deduplication aimed at disparate application types, databases, server platforms, data protection levels, and location would be produce different incompatible formats with differing recovery processes. Not only did IT suffer from increasingly complex backup scenarios, but often there were large gaps in coverage left between the differing solutions. Other issues with disparate silo deduplication solutions included: Incompatible Technologies No way to flexibly leverage deduplication between differing solutions, causing a lot of unavoidable and otherwise essentially redundant solutions. Local Deduplication/Rehydration Only Data migration, centralization or other data movement and management often required deduped data to by fully rehydrated first. Some data protection workflows saw the same data deduped and rehydrated multiple times. Increased Complexity and Risk - Multiple backup solutions increased complexity, costs, and staffing, and inevitably increased the risk of assuring it s all functioning correctly Fragile and Inflexible - Siloed deduplication limits scalability and suffers performance hotspots. Long lead times were required to change or grow any critical app or data flow that required protection, stifling business growth and responsiveness. Limited Protection Reach Siloed deduplication didn t reach every corner of the enter- prise that needed protection. Some remote or branch users, applications, or data were still stuck with onerous or limiting full length backup processes, or simply went unprotected. Clearly there is room for improvement. Some vendors have simply assembled portfolios of backup solutions to stitch together, but HP decided a holistic solution was necessary. HP s Visionary Response: StoreOnce and Federated Backup When HP introduced StoreOnce, it boldly proclaimed a vision of federated backup. The premise is simple IT should be able to deduplicate data at any point in the system that makes the most sense, and then keep that data in its reduced form from that point on. Why keep rehydrating and deduplicating over and over again? Why dedupe remote data with a different incompatible solution than data in the datacenter? Why not make the same dedupe available to any application that needs it? A truly federated solution could handily address all the gaps identified above. STOREONCE DATA PROTECTION SYSTEM In our view, HP StoreOnce system appears designed around a few key principles that we think combine to make it the most holistic, end- to- end deduplication solution in the market today: Dedupe Once Leverage a single consistent dedupe engine across all components Dedupe Where It Makes Sense Enable deduplication anywhere in the storage stack Make it Simple, Always Available Reduce complexity, increase availability Design For Performance Scale out, distribute processing, and optimize data flow This approach leads directly to key innovative aspects of StoreOnce. At a high level StoreOnce is delivering on its vision of federated deduplication with a family of components exemplifying what 3 of 9

4 HP defines as polymorphic simplicity (borrowing a concept from object- oriented programming in which different objects each provide the same interface). While the StoreOnce family includes a range of deduplication appliances including an impressive highly available scale- out enterprise solution in the B6200, two key components that really illustrate federated deduplication are the StoreOnce Catalyst engine and the new StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA). Let s take a deeper look at these innovations. HP s Federated Deduplication HP StoreOnce represents the next evolution of deduplication, what we might think of as Deduplication 2.0, by providing a common foundation for a completely agile backup ecosystem. Instead of one specific best practice way to build a backup silo, there is an enabling set of components that spans IT, that can be flexibly deployed according to the customer s current needs, and is easily scaled or modified as the customer s needs grow and change. We could detail how HP StoreOnce products have kept pace with customer needs for handling growing data at ever faster rates as there have been significant upgrades in reduction ratios and dedupe speeds, but what we find most exciting is that StoreOnce now enables IT to apply consistent deduplication at more different architectural points than any other vendor. HP is unique in being the only vendor to offer high performance dedupe in 4 distinct backup locations: 1. Disk Based Backup Appliances Traditional backup target infrastructure spanning entry- level to enterprise data center needs 2. Media Server Dedupe can be distributed to media servers and centrally managed by backup applications 3. Application Source Dedupe can be processed right on data sources 4. Virtual Appliances New virtual backup target for maximum agility No matter where data is deduped within the StoreOnce ecosystem, it stays deduped as it s moved and migrated around StoreOnce devices, including replication between sites. With the full range of options above, StoreOnce supports flexible backup designs ensuring coverage at the desired level of protection and performance, while providing for scalable capacity and high availability as required. MORE FLEXIBLE DISASTER RECOVERY WITH DEHYDRATED DATA MOVEMENT With StoreOnce s federated deduplication, data that is dehydrated stays that way, even as it is moved or migrated between locations. This has a large impact on efficiency, as small amounts of deduped data take far less time and bandwidth to transmit, store, and replicate. The same efficiency applies when data needs to be returned from a DR site and/or restored. Far more complete Disaster Recovery plans can now be implemented than were previously ever feasible. Leveraging any of the cost- effective StoreOnce target options to deduplicate at ROBOs, remote data sets can be effectively centrally collected and protected even over slow network connections providing even greater business assurance and cost efficiency. SIMPLIFIED MANAGEMENT WITH SINGLE PANE OF GLASS FOR BACKUP AND DISASTER RECOVERY A federated approach also enables StoreOnce to converge backup and DR management controls over enterprise- wide deduplication and data movement tasks. The HP StoreOnce Enterprise 4 of 9

5 Manager provides a single console that centralizes monitoring of an entire StoreOnce environment including both physical and virtual backup appliances. Given that a federated solution is by definition spanning across formerly siloed domains, Enterprise Manager provides the necessary centralized monitoring over the powerfully distributed capabilities with a highly granular view into backup performance, capacity utilizations, deduplication ratios, and other related metrics. DEPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY WITH HP S POLYMORPHIC SIMPLICITY HP s design for polymorphic simplicity means that StoreOnce provides the same deduplication service regardless of the widely varying form factors of the various options available. The keyword here is consistency, and that enables interoperability and simplified management. By having multiple form factor choices, backup/dr architects have great flexibility in designing approaches and retain agility in meeting new and sudden challenges. Having the same deduplication engine in a VSA as in a highly optimized appliance really unlocks dedupe from a rigid, often expensive process that might have been reserved only for specifically engineered data. Instead, deduplication can now be leveraged easily and broadly, and the resulting early and widespread reduction in data volume can lead to large cost efficiencies, increased service levels, and even opportunities to make better use of critical resources. Deduplication can be deployed as needed, where needed, and when needed to optimize all data flows. HP STOREONCE CATALYST Central to the whole federation scheme, HP StoreOnce Catalyst is the common component that provides the same backup target interface and deduplication engine on all the StoreOnce dedupe alternatives. It also provides for the interoperable movement of data in its dehydrated form from one StoreOnce target to another. StoreOnce Catalyst creates the polymorphic simplicity across the product family. StoreOnce Catalyst also provides the tight integration with backup applications to enable them to directly and centrally manage dedupe services and data replication across the enterprise. For example, HP s Data Protector or third party solutions (e.g. Symantec NetBackup/BackupExec) can control backups, deduplication, and efficient dehydrated data movement all as one process. Because StoreOnce Catalyst is software that can be deployed on application sources directly, it provides a kind of software defined service for backup, dedupe, and data movement. We wouldn t be surprised to find that StoreOnce comes to define software defined backup/dr. STOREONCE VSA SOFTWARE- DEFINED STORAGE Put StoreOnce into a virtual storage appliance (VSA) and you now in fact have a key part of HP s software defined storage strategy. The StoreOnce VSA is a software- based, hardware- agnostic backup and deduplication solution running as a virtual machine. As an equal member of the StoreOnce federated family, data can be moved within and between VSA s and other StoreOnce platforms without rehydration. As a virtual appliance dispensing with dedicated infrastructure it represents an incredibly flexible alternative backup target. A good use case would be to leverage VSA s in fully virtualized or remote sites. SMB s with but a minimum of virtual admin skills can now deploy a cost effective backup/dedupe solution. But perhaps the biggest opportunity for the StoreOnce VSA is for service providers or enterprise IT data centers that want to deliver cloud like backup services. A VSA can be easily forward deployed into the subscriber s environment, and optimized dehydrated data 5 of 9

6 movement up to the cloud controlled by the centralized provider. Because there is no customer side hardware to deploy, VSA s can be spun up quickly and elastically, service providers should find StoreOnce powered backup and DR services leads to happier customers and more profitable margins. Federated Deduplication and StoreOnce VSA: Key Usage Cases There are three primary usage cases for HP StoreOnce VSA and federated dedupe: small to mid- sized service providers, enterprise ROBO and SMB. Each one of these customer segments greatly benefit from StoreOnce but their primary needs differ. CASE 1: REMOTE AND BRANCH (ROBO) DATA PROTECTION Challenge: Untrustworthy backup processes Solution: Cost- effective, simplified data protection Enterprise IT often reports a lack of confidence about data protection in their data center, and even less confidence about protected data in remote and branch offices. Limited bandwidth and the lack of local IT support leads to poor local backup storage practices. Even when the enterprise has invested resources in ROBO backup equipment, managing and upgrading the equipment is time- consuming and expensive. StoreOnce federated dedupe solves these problems by deduping and replicating backup data over low bandwidth. The remote office retains the deduped backup online for fast restore. Since there is no rehydration, the deduped data replicates quickly to the data center or DR site, including cloud- based backup. IT can monitor and track backups through the backup application and can report on dedupe ratios using StoreOnce. The solution saves money on both CAPEX and OPEX because remote offices deploy a cost- effective, purpose- built data protection system. Since the backup copy is deduped, storage capacity requirements are minimal and the remote office can afford to retain local backups on disk. The offices are not locked in to expensive hardware purchases and continual maintenance overhead. CASE 2: CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDER OFFERING BACKUP AND DR AS A SERVICE Challenge: Maintain profitability Small and mid- sized Cloud Service Providers sell Backup and/or Data Protection as a Service (BaaS/DPaaS) to their customers. The CSP installs backup systems at the customer site and sets up backup and/or replication to the CSP s cloud. The service providers also configure backup security. Customers frequently call for service on the hardware systems which requires long service calls and site visits. The CSP must pass on support cost to unhappy customers or absorb it, which slashes profitability. Customers jump ship to a new provider and the CSP must try to cover the churn. 6 of 9

7 Solution: Federated dedupe for economical backup, recovery and replication services The CSP installs StoreOnce Catalyst or VSA at the customer s site and VSA onto their own data center. StoreOnce stores and dedupes backup data locally and securely replicates it to the CSP s cloud. StoreOnce provides data security. Updates and troubleshooting are far faster and simpler. The CSP offers on- demand capacity from 1TB to 10TB ad customer only pay for what they use. Profitability increases with a cost- free trial period and no need to invest in expensive backup systems. High customer confidence greatly increases customer retention and provides testimonials for new customer prospecting. The CSP sees a fair profit for the service they provide. CASE 3: SMB DATA PROTECTION Challenge: Limited IT budgets Solution: Inexpensive infrastructure Many small companies are strapped when it comes to data protection costs and IT support, but they are painfully aware that they need to protect their data. SMBs often buy the only backup and recovery system they can afford, only to find that the system is slow to backup and slower to restore. Deduplication may or may not be included, and even when it runs it increases already long backup times. HP StoreOnce offers inexpensive entry level solutions with dedupe to SMB customers. In fact, HP originally developed its federated dedupe features in 2010 for SMB customers. The StoreOnce system runs on inexpensive hardware, in many cases an under- utilized server that the SMB already owns. Automated scheduling relieves staff of IT responsibilities they may not be trained or hired for. Deployment is fast and simple using the StoreOnce VSA virtual appliance. Deduplication decreases the size of data for big storage capacity savings, and reduces bandwidth and data transfer times if the SMB copies backup data to a remote site. A centralized management console contributes to ease- of- use even for non- IT professionals. As the SMB grows, the StoreOnce system non- disruptively scales in performance and capacity management. And since StoreOnce improves utilization of existing equipment, SMB can use the same server to run workday applications and nightly backups. Key Benefits of StoreOnce Federated Deduplication Accelerates backup and recovery across StoreOnce systems. StoreOnce offers high performance dedupe without the added processing time from rehydration. Efficient data movement between systems lowers bandwidth requirements and transfer times, while shorter backup windows improve application productivity. IT can mix dedupe locations including application servers, backup/media servers, appliances and VMs for extreme flexibility. 7 of 9

8 Efficient data protection management. IT can centrally control data backup, dedupe and replication throughout the enterprise using a single console, which increases efficiency and manages the risk of poor- performing backup silos. StoreOnce supports backup application management tools from HP Data Protector 7, Symantec NetBackup 7.5, and Symantec Backup Exec 2012 software through OST. High performance and availability. Distributed dedupe improves performance by offloading dedupe operations to optimized server and target locations. Increased performance helps to enable backup performance to reach 1 TB/hr up to 100 TB/hr backup speeds. Built- in high availability and autonomic restart protects deduped data availability and multi- location replication maximizes disaster recovery options. Scalable system grows with customer needs. Fast- growing data requires growing data protection, but costumers also need to scale cost- effectively and without disrupting applications. HP StoreOnce allows customers to smoothly scale up appliances, StoreOnce VSA enables bulk deployment and capacity scalability, and HP StoreOnce B6200 is a scale- out storage system for massive data stores. Meets the needs of multiple customer segments. StoreOnce offers great value for multiple market segments. SPs can set up StoreOnce to run dedupe from the customer s servers, keeping an on- site backup copy for fast recovery and replicating backup even over low bandwidth. This lets SPs profitably offer backup as a service and simplifies complexity for SMB s. The ROBO case is equally strong because HP StoreOnce relieves them of the necessity for dedicated hardware that remote offices must manage, install and maintain. And do- it- yourself SMB benefits from virtualized appliances that run on existing infrastructure for greatly improved data protection and price- to- performance ratio. Flexible configuration. StoreOnce serves a range of businesses with vastly different budgets, sizes, IT expertise, and storage capacity. However, all of these segments do have something in common: they need to protect their data. Instead of being limited to a one- size- fits- none solution, HP built flexible deployment, policies and management options to meet a broad set of requirements for enterprise ROBO, service providers and SMB. Taneja Group Opinion When people talk about deduplication they rarely think they are talking about a game- changing technology. But HP s vision of federated deduplication is that game- changer. StoreOnce is fundamentally changing the viability and applicability of deduplication by federating it across server and target types including delivering dedupe via a virtualized appliance. This boosts dedupe up the next step on the evolutionary ladder. No one else is leading the market on the federated dedupe front. There are other architectures that work well in specific backup systems, but nothing that approaches StoreOnce in its physical and virtualized flexibility, scalability, dedupe location choice, and federated data movement. These capabilities make for a big convergence play that we have not seen from any other vendor thus far. This is not the first time that HP claimed a first- in- market for StoreOnce deduplication. At its initial launch the algorithm was capable of operating on both the backup source and NFS, CIFS and VTL target sides. Since the 2010 StoreOnce dedupe announcement, HP has been working to fulfill its promise of unrestricted data movement between source and targets. It has now achieved this promise by solving very tough integrations between separate deduped data locations. 8 of 9

9 It is this level of integration sophistication that is so telling for HP. HP already owned the StoreOnce product family with federated dedupe, and HP Data Protector. Instead of letting these technologies rest on their separate laurels, HP integrated and leveraged them in to a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. HP has integrated two data protection portfolios into an integrated utility architecture, whose power and flexibility should make it a top choice for a variety of customer environments.. NOTICE: The information and product recommendations made by Taneja Group are based upon public information and sources and may also include personal opinions both of Taneja Group and others, all of which we believe to be accurate and reliable. However, as market conditions change and not within our control, the information and recommendations are made without warranty of any kind. All product names used and mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. Taneja Group, Inc. assumes no responsibility or liability for any damages whatsoever (including incidental, consequential or otherwise), caused by your use of, or reliance upon, the information and recommendations presented herein, nor for any inadvertent errors that may appear in this document. Publication Number: 4AA4-7017ENW 9 of 9