Battling for better backup

First, a few home truths about backup. Until very recently, backup, like most functions associated with data storage, was viewed as a highly boring topic. At best, it was an inconvenience; at worst, it was a time-consuming nightmare, performed in the wee small hours of the morning and all too often punctuated by complaints from users who were singularly uninterested in understanding why you were incapable of instantly retrieving the essential file which they’d been stupid enough to delete in the first place.

Rampaging data volumes and an increasing recognition of the value of information to modern organisations mean that these days storage has been afforded grudging respect, and a certain degree of interest. However, this rehabilitation hasn’t extended to the general area of backup, which is still likely to attract the boring tag.

As well, most of the current interest in storage stems from developments in hardware, and these tend to attract the lion’s share of attention when considering backup options.

The reality, though, is that the choice of software you use for backup is likely to make more difference in day-to-day operations. Most backup software is highly agnostic about hardware; once it’s been told what is being used, it makes relatively little difference whether disk or tape is the preferred medium, or the nature of the connection to that system.

However, if the software package you choose requires intervention and input every time you perform a backup operation, then you’ll quickly come to regret your choice.

Reflecting their roots in large systems organisations, many backup software packages retain the option of allowing you to interface via command lines. One obvious area for development in recent years has been the introduction of GUI interfaces, spurred in part by continued growth in GUI-based OSes such as Windows NT and its various successors. An equally important trend has been automating the backup process, so that scheduled backups can occur without intervention.

Indeed, this is now taken as standard; the nirvana of automation has shifted to requiring no intervention even if there are problems during the backup process. Considering that GUI-based interfaces have been in widespread use for more than a decade, and automation of the backup process has been discussed as a topic for even longer, it’s a little disturbing to note that progress in this area seems to have been rather slow.

“Systems administrators are spending too much of their time allocating and configuring storage resources, and managing the backup of the data for the various business needs that require it,” Ovum analysts Graham Titterington and Nadia Khair noted in a recent report. “They desperately need to automate as much of this process as possible, both to cope with the workload and to maintain their efficiency. This is creating a mass market for storage management software, which several vendors are trying to grab. The task is not easy because interoperability problems in storage networks are mas-sive, and the area is very short of standards.”

Software and spending
Hardware remains an important consideration in the backup software equation. Many of the dominant vendors of backup software have achieved their position by tightly linking together their software services with hardware sales. Of the ten dominant sellers of storage software in 2001 (as measured by Gartner Dataquest), just four (Veritas, CA, Legato, and BMC) used a software-only model.

However, appearances can be deceptive. Some of the hardware vendors (such as StorageTek) do not develop any software of their own, but resell packages from pure software players, so getting an overall picture of the market can be difficult. In any case, there are advantages in both approaches.

Purchasing backup software from the same vendor who provides your storage software should ensure better interoperability—always a concern in large systems—and provides you with a single point of service when, inevitably, things go wrong. However, it also increases your reliance on that single vendor, making you vulnerable to sudden price rises, unexpected software errors, or company takeovers and collapses.

(This problem is less relevant if you purchase a third-party product via your hardware vendor, since interoperability should be high but product development remains separate, but it does remain an issue.) Whichever path you choose, backup vendors will be beating a path to your door to convince you that their system is the best.

“The change in the world economic environment has put more pressure on vendors to provide a clear and compelling market vision that effectively positions the solution against competitive offerings and provides customer references confirming the advantage,” Gartner analyst Carolyn DiCenzo commented earlier this year. “The opportunity for software vendors remains strong, but customers will be more careful with expenditures and vendors must bring more value to the table.” In other words: make your software suppliers work for every backup dollar you plan to spend with them.

Current research suggests that you’ll be spending a lot. According to IDC, while spending on backup and archive software in the Asia- Pacific region grew 32 percent year on year between 2000 and 2001, its significance is dropping related to other more advanced storage systems, accounting for just 38 percent of total spend in this area, down from 43 percent. Along with services, software is the fastest growing sector of the storage market.

In Australia and New Zealand, storage software is a AU$180 million a year market, according to IDC. “The recent boom we have seen in the region is far from over,” said Grace Lai, Market Analyst, Software Re-search, IDC Asia/Pacific. “Storage software is top of mind and has gained enough attention from both business and IT perspectives that companies will continue to dedicate resources to fund the improvement of their storage investments.”