Tag Archives: disaster recovery

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EMC Data Protection Advisor For As-A-Service Cloud Environments

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What can you do to ensure data protection as you move to cloud?

Services-based storage, infrastructure, and data protection trends and technologies are recurring topics in this blog. Awhile back I wrote a post about enabling data protection as-a-service discussing the need for centralized management at cloud-scale, multiple service rates based on customer data protection needs or usage, and historical data for analysis and trending. The reality is that you can only get so far with legacy products built for physical environments. At some point, management tools, like the data center environments they support, need to be remade to the requirements of the day. Effective data protection solutions are no exception.

Data protection needs are more acute for as-a-service cloud models and require new approaches. Now, with the release of EMC Data Protection Advisor 6.0, I would like to share what it means to augment a successful data protection solution and extend it with a new distributed architecture and analysis engine to cloud deployments, without losing any usability benefits (i.e. without making it complex). Continue reading →

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Enabling Data Protection As A Service

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When does data protection become a money-maker?

Data protection has long been thought of as somewhat of a necessary evil like life insurance. Throw money at the possibility that something will go wrong and pray that it never does. However, with cloud computing models and the concept of IT-as-a-service, data protection can now contribute directly to the value of the data center as well as to the bottom line.

Most organizations use numerous technologies to protect application data across primary, replica, and backup storage, as well as archive systems.  Trying to manage a mixed data storage environment without an effective data protection management strategy makes applying a uniform chargeback to these systems almost impossible. 

As IT transitions to a fully operational private cloud, effective ways to measure and meter data protection services across the environment need to be put into place. Data center managers need mechanisms to differentiate between service levels offered to the organization, and to justify and apply chargeback to business units.

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Data Center Watch: Know Your Virtual Applications Are Protected

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There is an interesting phenomenon going on in the data center today.

As more and more mission-critical applications move into production virtual environments, backup administrators are spending a lot more time ensuring data is truly protected.  

Understandably, the overall focus in the data center is on the internal customer, standing-up applications and services to end-users in minimal time, and ensuring service-levels.

But, how do you protect your virtual applications?

What you need is data protection for backup and recovery that is automated and standardized and just as efficient as your server and storage deployments for service delivery.

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Replication Made Easy

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Replication made easy.

Sounds good, but what does it mean? How can something as important as data replication in the data center be easy?

Well, the need to do more with less has led to a demand for solutions that tend to be complex in the technology used, sophisticated in the job they get done, and easy-to-use in what it takes to install and work with them.

This has been going on for some time but seems to be gaining momentum as software management interfaces move from software-specific GUIs to unified management frameworks.

It all makes sense given what I’ve heard from customers who are looking for one-stop provisioning of infrastructure (e.g. storage, network, and compute) resources and end-user services. Continue reading →

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Disaster Recovery is Still About Recovery Time

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How does virtualization and Cloud impact disaster recovery?

Well, in many ways, it doesn’t. Across town or across clouds, disaster recovery is still about recovery time.

If you have responsibility for a business, you’re concerned with being operational to meet your customers’ needs. This responsibility includes contingencies for unplanned outages.

Depending on your business, the required recovery time will vary regardless of whether you run your data center in a physical, virtual, or cloud environment.

Recovery times will determine the right solution and since many technologies now support physical and virtual environments you are likely to find an appropriate solution for your specific needs. Continue reading →