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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from ZDNet Australia. --------------------------------------------------------------
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Battling for better backup By Angus Kidman, 0 November 28, 2002 URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Battling-for-better-backup/0,130061744,120270281,00.htm
 Nothing makes sys admins run screaming faster than backup, but it remains one of the most important base functions for any IT infrastructure. How can you configure your backup software so that it reduces rather than increases your workload, and perhaps even provides some return on investment in the process? 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
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.” Better and easier backupIn the hardware arena, backup procedures are currently undergoing something of a sea change, with disk taking over some of the backup functions more traditionally associated with tape. For the most part, this change hasn’t had a significant impact on the way in which backup software performs. Most backup systems are largely media-agnostic; as long as sufficient connected capacity is available for storage needs, they’re generally indifferent to whether you’re using tape, disk, or optical systems to store the data. The main impact you’re likely to notice is in time-to-restore; linear systems such as tape are inevitably slower than disk. Whichever provider you choose, there are some common approaches that can make backup easier. Tools that are easy and intuitive to use will improve productivity, especially because backup software is used so often. Notification systems should be put in place to in-form you of unusual or aborted backups. Built-in automation and simplified user interfaces let less-qualified staff assume greater responsibilities, freeing more senior staff for other more cost effective duties. The routine of overnight backup has become less common as businesses move into a 24x7 environment, requiring more sophisticated approaches to scheduling. It’s important to consider backup as part of the overall suite of services provided by IT. Many other functions, such as data warehousing and analysis, will depend on an accurate and regular backup procedure. While providing easy-to-restore copies in the event of an emergency remains a key part of the backup equation, increasingly back-up will also be needed for these other environments to function.
Backup and ROI
When budgeting for backup, you need to consider not just how much it costs, but how much not having it would cost. In effect, even if there’s no return on investment, it’s not a function you can choose to avoid. That said, if you can integrate backup with other functions that provide new business information (such as data ware-housing), then it may have an impact on your ROI calculations. However, this is likely to be at the level of overall system cost: when choosing your warehouse provider, for instance, the ability to easily integrate with existing backup routines may be a consideration. You can also strategise to minimise the costs of backup, even if the cost itself is not avoidable. With the continuing move towards progressive or incremental backup, where only data altered since the last backup is copied, less data needs to be transferred over the network and stored than with traditional backup and recovery applications. This in turn may reduce overall business costs by providing improved network performance. In the end, like taxes, Bill Gates, and in-laws, backup will always be with us. “Backup and recovery continue to be one of the top priorities for corporate IT departments,” says Stephen Elliot, research director at Hurwitz Group. “Disasters can occur at any time, and more often than not, they are not catastrophic. But the cost of downtime easily outweighs the cost of establishing a quality backup and recovery.
The database dilemma
Fortunately, the requirement that databases be closed off and then copied in their entirety (a so-called cold backup) has largely disappeared from modern backup software. Many systems have the ability to create a backup while the database is still live (a hot backup), often by working in copy-only mode. As well as allowing non-stop access, this also allows backups to be created more frequently, minimising the amount of re-entry required in the event of a catastrophe. Despite these improvements, restoring databases is still more complex than many other kinds of file restore. Modern database environments maintain extensive redo logs, which enable databases to be restored on a transaction-by-transaction basis, which can assist this process. Unsurprisingly, backup software vendors argue that such manual solutions are ineffective. “These methods do not have the reliability required by enterprise environments, and do little to improve the ongoing availability of critical systems,” notes a white paper from Veritas. Who's big in backup?Backup software is rarely measured as an independent category. These ten vendors were dominant players in the overall storage software market in 2001, according to Gartner Dataquest. While hardware manufacturers naturally promote their own software, many resellers will bundle their preferred software with storage hardware, even when an alternative is available. EMC
Veritas Software
IBM
Computer Associates
Compaq
Legato Systems
BMC Software
StorageTek
Network Appliance
Hitachi Data Systems
Backup software: what you need to know
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