The Backup Blog

QTM Up, DDUP Down

I don't normally pay a whole lot of attention to the stock markets. That is just way too stressful these days. I don't really need to know just how many more years (decades) I am going to have to work before I can retire. And since virtually everybody reading this is probably in the same boat, I am guessing that the same holds true for the rest of you too.

Nevertheless, I am going to quickly point out the different market fortunes of two key players in the deduplication market today.

1) Quantum. Up 35% as of the time this was written.

2) Data Domain. Down 30% as of the time this was written.

And no Mr. Slootman, it is not because we are giving away boxes for free. We don't have to. Welcome to the world of competition.

And lest anybody take that as malice, I can assure you it is not. I sincerely hope the good folks over at Data Domain relish the competition as much as we do. It will improve the breed, and it will make for better technologies and better solutions for everybody. At the end of the day, everybody in the backup and recovery business wins because of this.

Not So Fast

I saw this little note on Byte and Switch the other day: Arkeia Shows Virtual Backup Appliance. According to the press release: Arkeia "delivers the first true virtual appliance for backup that gives customers free choice of hardware."

I can't think of any easy way of letting them down, so I will just come out and say it: Arkeia is most definitely not the first to have a virtual backup appliance. For some time now Avamar has been shipping Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE).

Now the point of this post is not to say that Arkeia are all a bunch of goofs or their software is no good or anything like that. Rather, I had two things in mind:

1. Let's set the record straight. Press releases should at least be accurate, and I know there is all kinds of soft language they use so they can say pretty much anything and be open enough to interpretation that company representatives can keep a straight face when repeating them.  But this one is just way off. Every characteristic they list for their "virtual appliance for backup" is already available in AVE. Hrmph. 'Nuff said.
2. AVE is good enough that it is worth repeating what it is and what makes it so good. AVE is a virtual machine that can run on any ESX server and utilizes any storage on any ESX volume that is attached to that ESX server. It can accept a backup from any Avamar client. It is a full fledged Avamar server, and can replicate to any other Avamar server over IP. It also happens to be insanely great as a way to deploy a backup server to a regional office or retail location--by utilizing disk instead of tape, and VMware technology, it is dead easy to deploy, install, and maintain, and provides for local recovery capability while still letting you replicate to a remote (central) server for DR and compliance purposes. Finally, it is dead easy to deploy, and is therefore also the perfect way to get your feet wet with Avamar and deploy it in a lab or POC to validate that I am not full of smoke and that Avamar really is as good as I keep saying it is!

So, in this case, I would have to conclude that the good folks at Arkeia are just a little too late to the party to be making any claims of "first"!

Avamar on a Roll

Avamar has done exceptionally well over the last year. The product has definitely come along, and happens to be hitting its stride at the same time that customers are realizing how problematic certain types of backup are: VMware in particular. All this has contributed to massive growth, and a sudden realization that source based deduplication is a powerful alternative to target based deduplication. It turns out that we at EMC aren't the only ones who feel this way. From a recent analyst report on Data Domain, we have the following:

"analysts see a problem looming on Data Domain's horizon: competition. Since data protection software is a highly saturated market, Slootman says the players are in a "ground war" over space in the data center. And EMC's (EMC) purchase of deduplication startup Avamar Technologies two years ago brought one of the data center's behemoths into the picture... Data Domain is still the dominant player in the field, and the company has kept innovating to ensure a superior offering."

So lets take a look at this. The analyst is acknowledging that Avamar is competing effectively against DD. And we are. Avamar works, and works very well. What is more, Avamar offers a couple of compelling values that DD can't: significantly reduced I/O and CPU utilization on the backup host. DD does nothing for either--you still use the same amount of CPU, the same amount of network bandwidth, and you are still tied to the mediocre capabilities of a traditional backup application in the VMware world.

NetBackup Embedded Media Server and EDL

One of the nifty features of the EMC's EDL is it's ability to run a NetBackup Media Server on the DL Engine. Just to back up a second: an EDL has 3 logical components: the DL Engine, the Clariion, and the disk. The DL Engine is where the good stuff happens that virtualizes disk as tape. It is also where data compression happens, system management occurs here, and so on. A couple of years ago, we enabled this server to run a full copy of either a NetBackup Media Server, or a NetWorker Storage Node.

Why? Because this would permit the EDL appliance to make a second copy of a virtual tape (either local or remote) and it would update the backup application catalog to show that second copy. No more did you need to worry about creating a replica with the appliance that was invisible to the backup application, and shared the same bar code (this is bad).

So life is good, right? Well, pretty much, but there is one little trick that we need to do to fully take advantage of the capabilities of the Embedded Media Server (EMS). And that is to utilize a feature in NBU called the "alternate read server".

NetWorker Procedure Generator

I am going to save the comments on this one and let the tool do the talking. One of the most important tools we have at EMC are our "Procedure Generators". They offer a simple, repeatable, documented processes for simple, and not so simple, tasks associated with the installation, maintenance, administration, and upgrading of our products. We use them internally, and we are starting to offer them as external tools too.

So, without further ado: there is now a customer consumable version of the NetWorker Procedure Generator available. Need to upgrade NetWorker from 7.2 to 7.4? The Procedure Generator will document the process for you. Need to upgrade an embedded storage node on an EDL? Use the Procedure Generator to generate the technical process in Word format. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. The NetWorker Procedure Generator can be used by customers and partners and can be found on Powerlink: Home>Support>Product and Diagnostic Tools> NetWorker Procedure Generator. This is very good stuff.

Disk Library for Mainframe Update

The good folks over in marketing made a sneak announcement on December 29th regarding the Disk Library for mainframe (DLm). Sneak because, lets be honest, how many of us had reading press releases as a high priority on December 29th?

In any event, there is some good stuff here. To revisit the core differentiator of the EMC DLm: this is a virtual tape library for mainframes that is not a disk cache. That is a significantly different architecture from either competitive offering from Sun or IBM--both of which are "merely" a small to medium size disk cache in front of a bunch of physical tape. Expensive disk. Expensive tape.

So EMC's approach is a little different: take the tape out of the equation. And a good chunk of the cost too. The DLm is far more than "just" a disk cache: by virtue of capacity and capability it enables you to store data more or less permanently on disk. Not to say that you will have no tape at the end of the day, but you will have a lot less than with other approaches.

Welcome to the Conversation Brian

Super quick post to welcome Brian Henderson to the fold. Brian can be found at Brian's Power Windows Blog discussing all matters at the intersection of Microsoft and EMC. Brian also is a fan of Rush, a Canadian band that as he notes, people typically either love or hate. My wife falls squarely in the later category, I tend to the former. But I am Canadian, and as I told Brian, that is sufficient justification for me to give him a plug. Welcome aboard Brian!

2008's Not So Great Moments in Backup

Actually, I am not sure if this falls into 2008 or 2009, but it is still pretty instructive: a blog site mistook drive mirroring for backup. Apparently 14,000 bloggers, give or take, lost their sites. Permanently. So while it probably doesn't rate as news that mirroring is NOT backup for anyone reading this... it is instructive, and possibly useful if you need to explain to somebody else (perhaps somebody who can authorize payment for upgrades to your backup system!) why backup is both useful and necessary. This is a business that ran for 6 years, serviced a large community of users, and just like that, they are gone. No more. Wow.

And my other great moment in backup comes from the indignation of wanting two hours of my life back after having watched this useless piece of drivel: Eagle Eye. Regrettably this ended up on my screen the other night (not my choice!). Now it rates a solid 6.8 (smirk) on IMDb, so it shouldn't have been entirely terrible. It was. Perhaps one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I will concede however that one of the biggest reasons it irritated, angered, and amazed me was due to its technical idiocy. So I am prepared to concede that the average person who doesn't really care about technical accuracy or believability might find it watchable.

But why does it make for a not so great moment in backup? Well, I am putting that below to avoid spoilers in case anybody who wants to see this gem hasn't had the opportunity yet.