Canada
needs to
back up on
its back-up
ness side of the enterprise to work out a
healthy compromise on the money issue.
Said Bock: “What resources do you have
available? Here’s where there’s kind of a
trade-off on what to keep. The potential
money loss versus the cost of keeping the
particular data.”
It’s also important to make sure you
have a reliable (and relatively speedy)
way to access all the different kinds of
data and, Bock said, include regular trial
runs in the policy: “Get your system up
and running and take a look at it.”
Users want it all, but IT doesn’t have
to give it to them By Briony Smith
You never know when
trouble may hit — a freak
thunderstorm could take
out your data centre, or a
hacker might infiltrate your
infrastructure. The enterprise has caught
on to the importance of backing up data,
redundancy, and fool-proof disaster
recovery plans, but when do you stop
backing up? With storage capacity growing at around 50 per cent per year, it’s
important to safeguard your data, but at
what point does the cautious Cassandra
become the overly Nervous Nelly?
Do you really need that?
“I don’t know if there is such a
thing as too much back-up, but it’s
what’s included in the back-up that’s
the problem,” said Warren Shiau, a
senior associate with the Toronto-based
research firm, The Strategic Counsel.
The trouble is, he said, that people
tend to include static data in their
back-ups, which leads to a bulk of non-changing information clogging up your
system that could be safely shuffled off
to an archiving solution instead. “They
haven’t segregated the data,” said Shiau.
Temptation is to blame when it comes
to backing up too much. “As the cost of
storage goes down,” said David Senf,
IDC Canada’s director of security and
software research, “companies figure,
‘Why not back up everything?’” This is
reflected in the skyrocketing figures in
the storage software market. According
to Senf, the market will grow by eight per
cent in 2007 (three per cent above the
overall software growth rate of five per
cent), raking in sales of $400-million.
But the key to the right amount of
back-up is just storing active, in-produc-tion data, according to Shiau. That way,
if a recovery is needed, the process won’t
be slowed by reams of unnecessary data.
“You need to change some of your
fundamental assumptions about what
to back up. It’s important to challenge
these assumptions,” said Rob Lunney,
Western Canada district sales manager
for Hopkinton, Mass.-based storage
vendor EMC.
Said Jon Bock, senior product marketing manager with Palo Alto, Calif.-based
virtualization vendor VMWare: “People
need to tier their requirements in terms
of frequency. Constantly back up only
things that are Tier-1 — things that will
cause the business to suffer harm if lost.”
By moving non-critical information
from Tier-1 to mid-range tiers, said
Lunney, “you can save 30 to 35 per cent
in storage costs.”
Said Shiau: “You need to make sure
you have active data requirements. Only
things with lots of write overs and lots of
recovery cycles.” And how do you ensure
that static data doesn’t make it into your
back-ups? Policies!
Uh-oh
According to Senf, very large enterprises and those governed by mandatory
compliance often have a healthy back-up
structure in place, but the majority of
Canadian businesses, from the SMBs
up to the enterprise level, are mostly
backing up too much information, and
the wrong kind (or sometimes, not
enough). He said, “I don’t see Canadian
businesses in general creating (back-up)
: long story short
Classification 101
When it comes to making hard data
choices, the Information Technology
Infrastructure Library (ITIL) can come
in handy, said Lunney. “It offers best
practices for data classification,” he said.
This is, in fact, an area where companies could set themselves apart from the
competition. According to Senf, ITIL,
heralded as the next big thing a few
years ago, has yet to make a significant
dent in Canadian storage practices.
Companies need to assign value to
different information by studying where
the information is, where it goes, what
it does, and what the service levels are,
said Lunney — and that it can be backed
up appropriately, both in terms of
frequency, amount and location.
The problem isn’t just too much backing
up, it’s what’s being backed up
Tier requirements in terms of frequency.
Only back up Tier 1 data
Track what kind of backed-up data has
been recalled to set future policies
Avoid backing up static information that
doesn’t change much over time
TaPe vs. DISk
When it comes to choosing what you
back-up on, the battle lines are drawn
between the old stand-by, tape, and the
new kid on the block, disk.
TaPe DISk
Lots of Doesn’t wear
processes are out
already in place More ideal for
Inexpensive recovery
option The more
Easy to add current option
more capacity
Best solution
for archiving
Crafting those pesky policies
There seems to be a lack of stringent
data policies among the majority of
Canadian companies, said Senf. “Most
companies don’t have policies on what
types of data to back up. Their governing
policy is, ‘Well, back up everything.’”
Bock said that, to hammer out successful back-up policies, an IT manager
needs to avoid falling for the “Oh, but I
need that” excuse from workers when it
comes to getting rid of their three-year-old e-mails or holding on to that Word
memo from last week. A good guideline
to follow, said Bock, is to consider what
kinds of backed-up data have actually
been retrieved in the past.
IT managers then need a firm
sit-down with upper management and
they should ask, “How much data can
we afford to lose? How up-to-date do
we need to be?” Also, factor in any
compliance requirements you may have
(finance, health care, retail, manufacturing, government and others).
policies; classifying data by value;
establishing and enforcing policies that
help distribute data to the right places
at the right times; making backed-up
data easily accessible; or archiving or
disposing of it when they should.”
On the horizon
There are frequently emerging technologies nowadays that aid IT managers
in their backing up of enterprise data.
They include incremental back-ups,
and de-duplication technologies, both
of which aim for a smoother, more
efficient process.
Virtualization is also giving back-up
momentum as, Bock said, the technology
allows you to back up the operating environment as data that can be installed
on any hardware.
But, according to Senf, Canada’s
data could be in trouble. In tandem
with companies’ not classifying and
selectively backing up data, the temptation of ever-increasing storage capacity
at cheaper cost will outpace any new
storage smarts. Said Senf: “I can only see
it getting worse from here.” 075350
