Business white paper Unified data protection with HP Data Protector Leverage on-premise, cloud, and hybrid backup and recovery strategies
Table of contents 3 Introduction 4 Are legacy approaches meeting current challenges? 4 The deployment approach that fits your data protection strategy 5 Protect your data on premise 5 Protect your data in the cloud 6 Enable unified data protection with HP Data Protector 7 Conclusion 2
Introduction Today, organizations face the challenge of defining a successful data protection strategy that addresses 100 percent of information. Doubling in volume every 12 to 18 months, growing stores of unstructured information such as documents, email, audio and video files, and structured and semi-structured databases, are driving IT organizations to determine where to back up data so it is effectively and efficiently protected, and how to recover it in a timely manner. The task involves not only protecting a set of highly diverse information, but the requirement to manage the information for lower risk exposure. Figure 1 illustrates four key issues organizations are facing as they seek to improve their data protection strategy, including: Explosion of data growth form, source and volume Proliferation of data across multiple locations (servers, workstations, mobile devices) Ever-shrinking recovery windows The increase in regulatory risk and compliance obligations Each of these key areas present unique challenges, and are causing IT organizations to reevaluate how to approach data protection, particularly regarding the optimal location for data backup: onpremise and/or within the cloud. 3
Explosion of big data Data everywhere Shrinking recovery Increased regulations Data doubling every 12-18 months New, unstructured data types to manage Storage growth is outpacing IT budget Mobile, virtual, cloud joins physical Mobile endpoints are exposed 67% of users have three or more computing platforms Always-on applications and users Users have high uptime expectations Business continuity moves to forefront Escalating regulatory and higher volumes Find the needle in haystack Utilize corporate information assets Net-Net: Growing IT burden and risk exposure Figure 1. On-going issues with data protection This paper explores a unified data protection approach of both advanced on-premise and remote offsite cloud-based data protection technology in a single offering. A hybrid strategy with HP Data Protector enables organizations to take advantage of an easy-to-use and powerful on-premise data protection solution that simultaneously leverages the security and scalability of cloud-based data protection, resulting in a reduced TCO (total cost of ownership) for critical data protection needs. Legacy-based approaches to data protection and the challenge of managing new and diverse environments and data types can encumber IT staff with complex operational requirements. When IT must focus on never-ending backup schedules, new media types, and the fulfillment of offsite storage requirements, there is less time available to support strategic business initiatives. *(Source: Gartner, Dataquest, ID # G00208772, November 2010) Are legacy approaches meeting current challenges? Traditional approaches to data protection have been to either back up all information forever, or protect only some information, some of the time. Keeping information indefinitely, although a more conservative approach, creates an enormous administrative burden that is weighed down with cost and complexity. The latter approach, which does not address 100 percent of information, is one way to reduce infrastructure costs and operational strain on the IT department but exposes the business to undue risk. The flaws of these approaches are only compounded as IT environments evolve. This evolution may include the growth of backup-related infrastructure as new data protection solutions are introduced, and the addition of more complex infrastructure and media, such as tape. Data centers have also been evolving from strictly physical to heavily virtualized environments, operating beyond the standard 9-5 workday to meet a 24/7/365 business demand. Organizations are struggling to contend with the massive growth of information seen in their data centers. The growth of as much as 80 percent annually for traditional content types*, including unstructured data, strains IT resources and bandwidth between remote sites and data centers. Adding to the burden, the inability of legacy approaches to scale and continue to meet the SLAs of the business creates additional roadblocks. 4 The deployment approach that fits your data protection strategy For decades, IT organizations have tried to manage their own backup operations. But eventually, they turned to external storage facilities, vaulting partners, and other service providers to help them manage tape-based backup media. With the introduction of disk-based backup, now a standard for many organizations, new options have emerged as to where backup data can be stored. With shrinking IT budgets, limited staff, and the desire to reduce operational or administrative strain, organizations are also turning to cloud-based backup as a key component of their IT strategy. Cloud-based backup can minimize the cost of dedicated backup infrastructure (such as tape) and improve data protection SLAs. For organizations with complex needs, local on-premise data protection may be required to satisfy various requirements, while cloud-based data protection may be more suitable for other applications. The combination of robust on-premise data protection capabilities and the scalability of the cloud deliver flexibility and choice for a constantly evolving IT landscape. Deciphering which approach is best for your organization and where you should protect your data should be based on both business and technology requirements.
Protect your data on premise Several factors influence an IT organization s decision for a data protection solution, with the most important factor being its business objectives for recovery. Many organizations choose to manage their own data protection environment on-premise simply because their business requirements for recovery are immediate and stringent. For instance, they may need to know that they can recover data in a timely and predictable manner to meet a desired recovery objective. Ensure business continuity In today s highly competitive, always-on and instant-on world, business disruptions can be costly and risk-laden. In many situations, the speed of application recovery defines the survivability of a business. As a result, IT is facing more stringent recovery SLAs. On-premise solutions can provide high-speed application recovery in seconds or minutes at worst, and down to the exact point in time. On-premise data protection solutions offer advanced functionality for both backup and recovery. IT can retain control over their backup operations and leverage advanced technology options, such as disk-based backup, storage array integration (with snapshots), and advanced storage efficiency through deduplication. For example, an on-premise data protection solution that is deeply integrated with storage arrays enables an administrator to recover at any point in time down to the second in some cases. This keeps mission-critical data, such as transactional databases, email, and highly sensitive information protected and available at all times. On-premise data protection solutions often provide tight integration with mission critical applications, such as databases and enterprise messaging platforms to enable application-aware backup and recovery. The organization can also protect critical applications, such as transactional databases, from the initial protection process (and when the application changes, addition of new tables, instances, etc.) through the recovery process (down to the second and with a fine level of granularity), to meet stringent business SLAs and ensure business continuity. Protect large, global and remote offices Organizations with complex, heterogeneous, and distributed environments may have requirements that drive them to use an on-premise enterprise data protection solution. For instance, a large global organization may have thousands of remote offices that need to be protected centrally and reliably. On-premise data protection solutions can provide flexible options to effectively meet varying protection needs of different remote and branch office environments. In many cases, existing infrastructure can be leveraged for rapid cost-effective protection for very small remote offices that were not protected due to lack of IT expertise. The data from the remote offices can be consolidated into the central data center for disaster recovery and other business purposes, such as ediscovery and compliance events. Centralized management of the entire backup and recovery infrastructure provides IT the complete protection, control, and visibility over the total distributed environment, including file servers, core operating system platforms, physical and virtual environments, and mission-critical applications. Automate data protection using a policy-based approach On-premise data protection solutions simplify an organization s ability to apply data protection policies in dynamically changing IT environments. These solutions can detect changes in the environment and apply policies, which are configured to protect existing systems, to new applications and systems. This proactive approach eliminates the IT pain of discovering protection gaps after a disaster. Protect your data in the cloud Many CIOs today are considering the use of cloud services as a top priority and key to their IT strategy*, to help with the costs associated with managing and extending the capabilities of their IT environment. Cloud-based data protection solutions offer access to remote, highly scalable, managed service-based operations. Leveraging the cloud for backup and recovery helps reduce costs related to a dedicated backup infrastructure, offers budget flexibility with a pay-as-you-protect cost model, improves the operational impact of your IT staff, assists with compliance initiatives, and enables a form of disaster recovery. In some cases, for smaller IT environments, cloud-based backup helps avoid additional backuprelated capital expenses altogether. The type of data organizations typically back up to the cloud can be a combination of business-critical application data (databases, email) and most commonly, file-based data. *(Source: CIO Magazine, March 2010, Article: CIOs Must Fit the Cloud Into IT Strategy). Reduce backup and recovery costs Economies of scale within the provider environment often make cloud-based data protection a more cost-effective solution, when compared to traditional on-premise backup solutions. This is principally true because it removes many of the capital expenditures related to dedicated infrastructure and allows a pay-as-you-protect financing/budgeting cost model. With a cloud-based data protection service in place, organizations can avoid the unpredictable and often hidden costs of managing the growth of backup-related storage resources. For this reason, choosing a cloud service provider who offers a predictable rate can simplify IT budgeting. Protect remote offices The use of a cloud-based managed service can alleviate the need for dedicated IT staff or dedicated backup-related infrastructure in organizations struggling with the management of remote office data protection. Organizations can limit the use of their internal WAN (wide area network) bandwidth, and enable any remote office or remote server to interact securely and directly in the cloud, without straining corporate network resources. 5
to proactive monitoring and around-the-clock operational support to manage potential vulnerabilities and detect all possible threats. Storing data remotely with a trusted cloud-storage service provider automatically provides an offsite copy of your data. This immediately helps organizations meet disaster recovery requirements, at a fraction of the cost. Business need: Remote, economical data protection for organizations with constrained IT staff and budget Traditional shortcomings: Offsite tape storage is slow and costly Remote data protection deployment and management requires dedicated IT staff Business impact: Data unavailable while offsite tapes are retrieved Inscreased overhead requires $$ to be diverted from more important projects Figure 2. Typical approach to offsite data protection Meet compliance obligations Many IT organizations struggle with existing and emerging compliance requirements. However, leveraging an IT service provider that ensures the highest levels of physical/logical security possible provides peace of mind that data can be protected in a remote facility. The right provider can help a business meet traditional disaster recovery offsite requirements and adhere to potential compliance-related regulations. In addition, by protecting data offsite, organizations can improve long-term retention capabilities. Leveraging the cloud can alleviate the need for additional tapebased infrastructure within a data center. Many organizations still require the ability to send data offsite, to satisfy regulatory compliance. With cloud-based data protection as an option, organizations can leverage efficient replication technology and cloud services to provide that same type of offsite retention with lower costs and administrative burden. Manage risk with cloud-based services As protection service levels become more stringent, CIOs are now tasked to protect more with less and be able to recover faster. This is causing many organizations to seek solutions that limit the liability of unpredictable Service Level Agreements (SLAs). In contrast, others are looking to managed backup service providers who are accountable for service-level deliverables including recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), and up time. Additionally, many organizations are seeking improvements in monitoring and management. With a cloud-based data protection solution, an organization can potentially gain access Enable unified data protection with HP Data Protector The latest release of HP Data Protector extends backup to the cloud, bringing on-premise and secure hosted backup into a single flexible offering. It enables organizations to take advantage of the reliability, performance, and security supported by premise-based backup with the scalability, cost efficiency, and access of cloud-based data protection. HP Data Protector provides centralized management for 100 percent of your data protection needs: on-premise, in the cloud, as a hybrid deployment that leverages the strength of each option. With more than 44,000 customers around the world, and nearly half of the Global 500, HP Data Protector on-premise backup continues to provide the most advanced and extensive support for operating systems (OS), hypervisors (server virtualization), critical applications, and storage-related infrastructure. The new cloud backup capability of HP Data Protector leverages the 14 global cloud data centers operated by Autonomy, an HP Company. The data centers currently manage over 50 petabytes of customer information worldwide in a highly scalable solution operated 24x7 by dedicated operations staff. The most secure private cloud in existence, its global data and ediscovery processing centers are Safe Harbor-certified, and audited to Statement of Accounting Standard number 70 (SAS 70 Type II). All protected data is mirrored across multiple data center locations and information resides in a secure multi-tenant scalable data protection cloud service. With Cloud Backup, organizations get the freedom and flexibility through one-click protection managed directly within the HP Data Protector Console, removing the challenges of a traditional tapebased approach for offsite backup. In addition, administrators can manage restores from anywhere, leveraging a simple to use web management interface that allows self-service restores to be initiated for both physical and virtual system data. With HP Data Protector, organizations gain access to a remote pool of scalable data protection resources, powerful self-service recovery, and the assurance of a fully managed, secure data protection service. These capabilities ultimately enable a reduced TCO (total cost of ownership) while providing instant and flexible remote cloud-based recovery. 6
Multi-server deployment Agent Agent Agent Backup TCP/IP Restore Autonomy cloud mirrored data centers Standardized protection policy Data Protector Cell manager limited Figure 3. Leveraging cloud-based backup for offsite data protection Conclusion Helping organizations more effectively address the challenges of protecting their information, HP Data Protector offers the industry s first truly unified data protection solution. Whether it is on-premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid strategy, HP Data Protector enables organizations to leverage advanced data protection capabilities within, and securely beyond, the boundaries of their enterprise data center. HP Data Protector delivers more flexibility to make the decision as to how and where to protect data, and the ability to refine recovery point and time objectives, based on the criticality of the information being protected. About Autonomy Autonomy, an HP Company, is a global leader in software that processes human information, or unstructured data, including social media, email, video, audio, text and web pages, etc. Autonomy s powerful management and analytic tools for structured information together with its ability to extract meaning in real time from all forms of information, regardless of format, is a powerful tool for companies seeking to get the most out of their data. Autonomy s product portfolio helps power companies through enterprise search analytics, business process management and OEM operations. Autonomy also offers information governance solutions in areas such as ediscovery, content management and compliance, as well as marketing solutions that help companies grow revenue, such as web content management, online marketing optimization and rich media management. Please visit autonomy.com to find out more. About HP HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at hp.com. 7
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