Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

REDISCOVERING BACKUP SOFTWARE'S ORIGINAL PROMISE

Executive Summary

The increasingly mission-critical role of e-mail as part of corporate communication has driven the need to reevaluate traditional backup software architectures. The geographic distribution of users across wide-ranging time zones now requires that e-mail services be available 24-7x365, making backup windows of any significant duration unacceptable. Additionally, regulatory compliance requirements are driving the need for zero-loss, easy-access data protection. Today's enterprise environments need up-to-the-minute "zero loss" data protection without sacrificing high-availability.

It is likely that if backup software was conceived today it would deliver these ideals. But when backup was initially designed, technology and cost limitations hindered the achievement of these goals. Remove all limitations and most will agree that the ideal backup software solution should provide fast, transparent data protection that eliminates additional network load requirements and enables immediate restoration of data at any grain size, from individual data objects at the file or application level to complete baremetal disaster recovery. The ideal backup solution should also snap easily and seamlessly into existing backup infrastructures without additional hardware or storage costs.

Storactive Inc has developed an innovative new approach to e-mail Server backup with its LiveServ for Microsoft Exchange software solution. This real-time, continuous backup product provides secure, up-to-the-moment protection of all e-mail data, delivering robust, zero-loss, point-of-failure recovery capability. Complementing traditional schedule-based backup solutions, LiveServ compresses data and eliminates duplicate data, even across multiple servers. This greatly reduces the total volume of server data to back up, shrinking or eliminating backup times and extending the life of current hardware and software storage resources. Snapping easily into existing enterprise backup infrastructures, LiveServ provides reliable, real-time protection that will recover any version of any Exchange data object (e-mail messages, appointments, tasks, contacts, etc.) at any time. This means that the corporate enterprise no longer needs to worry about data vulnerability or loss due to virus or hacking damage.

This paper discusses:

• The historical obstacles of creating the ideal backup software solution
• Where traditional, schedule-based backup systems fall short
• The four key technologies of true real-time data protection
• How LiveServ seamlessly introduces real-time backup technology into the enterprise while leveraging existing storage investments and resources

The Historical Challenges Of Creating The Ideal Backup Software

Creating the ideal backup software solution has been a challenge for developers for decades. While it is easy to agree that data protection should be fast and transparent with restore capabilities that totally eliminate the risk of data loss, the reasons why this backup ideal is only now being reached are not as obvious. There are three major reasons why the backup ideal did not become a reality sooner:

• Weak demand –- The demand for 24-7 data availability is a relatively recent phenomenon. As such, backups could be done overnight, thus historical demand for high availability has not been enough to drive new technology development.
• Not technically feasible –- Traditional backup software technology is rooted in a schedule-based architecture. To achieve true transparent data protection, schedule-based backup software technology needed to be re-architected to handle difficult situations such as open files and make better use of hardware performance. This need, coupled with historical storage system performance limitations, has technically hindered the ability to back up in real time.
• Unreasonable ROI –- Even if true transparent data protection was technically possible, it requires the use of a disk-to-disk-based system. Only in recent years has the cost of disk storage dropped to the point that such solutions are economically feasible.

These obstacles are now obsolete, and it is time to take a fresh new look at how we can deliver the original promise of backup software. The demand for 24-7 data availability is growing, and it is now possible to develop and implement continuous backup products that can reliably handle open files and complex application data. In addition, disk hardware prices are falling while data compression technologies are reducing the need for excessive storage capacity, giving real-time backup solutions an impressive return on investment.

This shifting paradigm to disk-based backup allows for the protection of data as changes occur and eliminates the vulnerability of lost e-mail data between backup windows. Enterprises can now virtually eliminate the backup window required to protect message-level data with a new process for up-to-the-moment backups. This enables administrators to quickly and easily restore any version of any data object, for any user, at any time. And while continuous backup increases data security throughout the enterprise, it can also be easily integrated into existing backup infrastructures so that organizations can continue to leverage their existing schedule-based backup investments.

Where Schedule-Based Backup Systems Fall Short

Today's schedule-based backup practices place critical data at risk every day. The most common strategy for enterprise data protection is to perform full and incremental backups on a periodic basis, typically daily. This periodic backup creates several problems. First, data is vulnerable between backups. Any data lost between scheduled backups is unprotected and effectively lost, which is inadequate for e-mail services containing highly dynamic and mission-critical data.

Second, because of the growing amount of e-mail data in a typical organization, the practice of confining backup times to "off hours" has become increasingly difficult. This difficulty is exacerbated by attempting to perform mailbox-level backup for any more than just a few of the most critical users. Additionally, servers that support 24-7 operations effectively have no "off hours." This means that backups must be performed while the system is in use, causing costly downtime.

Finally, each server throughout the enterprise must be backed up individually –- a costly and inefficient use of both hardware and backup systems. This issue is especially crucial because schedule-based systems usually back up to and recover from tape, which is often much slower than moving data to and from a disk-based system. And while tape has historically been substantially less expensive than equivalent disk storage, disk prices have fallen (and capacities grown) to the point where disk-based systems have become a financially feasible alternative while delivering significantly superior performance.

Where Mirroring Falls Short

When considering disk-to-disk backup, people often first think of data mirroring. While mirroring adds a real-time component to a data-protection system, it has two specific vulnerabilities that prevent it from delivering anything approaching "zero data loss."

First, mirroring simply replicates all activity, good and bad, without regard for potential corruption, user errors or malicious activity. In the case of Exchange, this all-inclusive approach is particularly problematic because of its ability to run in a corrupt state for prolonged periods of time before detection.

Second, mirroring provides little or no granularity along a timeline, so rolling a system back to an arbitrary point in time is generally not possible. And finally, mirroring provides no access to individual application data objects.