Despite many organisations running anything between four and seven different backup products these days, backup remains a major pain-point for users. Analysts and consultants say it’s an area in which customers are still willing to invest.
The big opportunity is around using archiving in conjunction with backup to help optimise backup windows. It’s a real customer challenge, and one where the channel can make a difference.
IT departments are really struggling with managing their backup windows. A BridgeHead survey last year found that nearly 40% of full backups take over nine hours, and users expect this figure to increase.
But backup ties up large amounts of time and resources and often affects IT’s ability to deliver value in other areas. And it takes two to three times as long to restore data as it does to back it up.
Many buyers are tempted by newer technologies and features which they hope will solve the problem. They start thinking about whether they should change to delta backups and only back up the blocks that have changed. Or perhaps synthetic ‘fulls’ would make their restore processes quicker. Maybe, they wonder, they should stop backing up to tape altogether and move over to disk.
While some very good backup products have emerged in recent years, they don’t directly address the root of the problem. One of the overriding reasons for the backup expansion is that people back up stuff they don’t really need to.
In many cases up to 80% of data held on primary storage is static data that hasn’t changed or even been viewed in many months.
By using archiving to remove this unchanging data, it’s possible to take it out of the backup loop altogether and cut the backup window to around 20% of what it was. Users can then comfortably run full backups of the remaining data, and restore processes are also much less of a worry.
The crucial thing, if you want to optimise backup in this way, is to make sure that when you move data into an archive, you can create and manage multiple copies of the archived data in multiple locations. That way the archive is ‘self-protecting’ and does not require frequent backing up.
The challenge for the industry is getting customers to let go of the false notion that whenever data gets put into an archive it becomes difficult
to access. Because archiving includes more granular management than backup, it’s better for things such as single item recovery or even e-discovery. Archived data is indexed and searchable by content and attribute. And detailed policies can be created to comply with regulations around access, authentication, security and deletion at end of life.
Archiving has the potential to significantly reduce backup challenges. But users will rely on the channel to provide intelligent advice on what and how to archive, as well as developing policies on long-term management and retention.