The standardization of server and desktop virtualization, the uncontrollable growth of unstructured data and the increasing importance of databases are forcing IT planners to face reality and rethink their data protection strategies. While they still need to use enterprise backup for their data protection foundation, these IT professionals often augment it with protection products designed for specific use cases.
A key to managing multiple data protection applications is to create a strategy focused on what Storage Switzerland calls a “service level objective” (SLO). When following this strategy each application or environment is assessed for its data protection needs. The result is a clear understanding of what IT can deliver in terms of protection frequency, recovery times and data retention. There is also a clear understanding of what IT cannot deliver with the current data protection assets. Application- or environment-specific applications are used to fill this gap.
The SLO strategy often creates a need for a combination of data protection applications to meet those various objectives. For example, some applications may need the near instant recovery provided by directly mountable backup targets while others may benefit from the use of tape to keep costs down.
This new reality brings with it two challenges that we discussed in our recent article “Enterprise Backup or VM Specific Backup Software“. The first is managing multiple data protection applications and process. The key is making sure that the needs of the application are well understood and that the role of each application in the recovery process is well documented.
The second challenge, license management, can’t be resolved by improved processes. Instead, suppliers of data protection solutions need to rethink data protection licensing so that it enables the implementation of backup software as the use case demands instead of how the licensing agreement will allow.
Providing this type of licensing requires a software vendor that can provide multiple options under a single umbrella, even if those software options are not necessarily integrated. Dell, for example, has its NetVault Backup solution for enterprise coverage, its AppAssure solution for mission critical Windows environments, and vRanger for virtualization specific protection. To provide the license compliment to these various solutions, the company recently announced a capacity based licensing model that allows their customers to deploy any combination of these solutions as they see fit under a single license.
The Dell Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite
The capacity pricing model is based on a front-end terabyte capacity, the amount of data that goes into the suite not the amount of data that is actually stored. This is a fair way to calculate a capacity license since it doesn’t punish the customer for having multiple copies of data for recovery.
The model also grows affordably as the customer’s environment expands, providing built-in volume discounts as the customer moves up each level. For example, environments protecting more than 250TBs will see discounts of over 50%.
Data Center Impact
The result of solutions like Dell’s Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite will be that data centers can provide data protection at the same level of flexibility that their production environments now offer application owners and users. It also means that no compromises are needed to make sure that each application gets the most appropriate level of protection possible, be it business-important data, business-critical data or mission-critical data.
StorageSwiss Take
At Storage Switzerland we are big proponents of service level objective data protection. In this method each application or environment is assigned a series of recovery and retention objectives, all of which need to be factored against the cost of deploying them. Legacy data protection licensing, especially as the data center grows, makes applying these objectives difficult since each objective may benefit from a specific data protection choice.
Licensing strategies like Dell’s Backup & Disaster Recovery Suite make it much easier and more cost effective to deploy data protection software based on the needs of the application instead of the needs of the licensing scheme. We think that Dell, as a result of this licensing model, is showing a path forward for IT planners looking to apply a service level objection oriented data protection strategy.
This Article Sponsored By Dell
Click Here To Sign Up For Our Newsletter
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
StorageSwiss.com - The Home of Storage Switzerland 