November 2010IBM Software

Thought Leadership White Paper

Advanced data recoveryfor midsized companies

2 Advanced data recovery for midsized companies

Contents

2 Introduction

2 What is next-generation data protection?

3 Understanding the whole problem

4 Advanced data recovery technologies

6 A comprehensive, advanced data recovery portfolio

7 Mission-critical application protection and recovery

8 Granular email object recovery

9 Off-site disaster recovery

9 Business continuity and resiliency

10 Remote office data protection and backup consolidation

10 Best-in-class data reduction

11 Measurable improvements in support operations

11 Conclusion

11 For more information

11 About Tivoli software from IBM

IntroductionJust because your company isn’t a major corporation withhundreds of offices and thousands of employees doesn’t meanyou’re not under the same pressures to maintain access to critical information in order to run your business and remaincompetitive. But buying the same complex and expensive solutions as the larger companies in your industry can be cost-prohibitive—and unnecessary.

The purpose of this white paper is to provide an overview ofadvanced data recovery options that are designed and pricedspecifically for small and midsized businesses (SMBs). But to enable advanced recovery, you first need a better backup solution.

What is next-generation data protection?Next-generation data protection, or NGDP, is a term thatdescribes a large number of disk-based backup and recoverytechnologies, including disk-to-disk (D2D), virtual tape library(VTL), FlashCopy® and snapshots, continuous data protec-tion (CDP), remote office backup consolidation (ROBC), baremachine recovery (BMR), disaster recovery (DR), wide areafile services (WAFS) and others. NGDP solutions target thereplacement or augmentation of traditional tape backupprocesses to help meet increasingly aggressive recovery pointand recovery time objectives, as well as to help improve operational efficiency, business continuity and resiliency.

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For example, when running a tape backup once a night, youmay be risking the loss of up to 24 hours worth of new data—your recovery point is, at best, the time of the last backup,assuming that backup completed successfully. Many applica-tions need to be stopped in order to run a tape backup, whichcan negatively affect operations and require staff to be at workor on call in case something goes wrong.

Recovering data from tape backups can also be problematic.First, you need an experienced backup administrator to con-duct the recovery, because recovering anything from tape canbe a complicated process. Next, the right tapes will need to beloaded and read in the correct order. If you are running a typi-cal weekly full backup with incremental backups during theweek, you may need to read six or seven tapes in order torecover all the latest data. Your recovery time may be meas-ured in hours or even days, assuming the backup tapes werecreated successfully. And you may end up restoring the samefiles multiple times.

Next-generation data protection leverages the ever-increasingcapacities and decreasing costs of hard disk storage, and can be used to address challenges such as improving your recoverypoint objective (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) by performing fast, non-disruptive backups, and by perform-ing data restoration without a lot of manual intervention andtakes advantage of the direct, random access dynamics of spinning disks.

Understanding the whole problemAny comprehensive data protection strategy is going toinvolve many considerations and contingencies. There aremany things that can go wrong with your data, and you needto be able to respond to each:

● Accidental or malicious deletion of critical data: Youshould have a solution that can quickly and easily restoreindividual files and folders. Restoring an entire system whenyou only need a single file is a waste of resources and couldbe disruptive to operations.

● Data that is lost or corrupted over a period of time: Notall data loss incidents are noticed immediately, as is often thecase with virus and hacker attacks, or rolling database cor-ruptions. You should have the ability to recover data fromany previous point in time, and have recovery points asgranular as possible to limit data loss.

● A crashed disk: Recovering a disk volume is different thanrecovering a single file, but it should be done just as quickly,and with automation to help keep operational disruptions toa minimum.

● A server failure: The ability to restore operations whenreplacing a broken server may be complicated by the need toinstall different drivers on the new system if the hardware isnot an exact match. You should have the capability to tem-porarily move the application workload to a standby server(with different hardware) or to a virtual server while the sys-tem is being repaired or replaced.

4 Advanced data recovery for midsized companies

● A local or regional disaster: When you lose an entireoffice to fire, flood, or other disaster, it is critical that youhave a current copy of your important information inanother location that is outside the disaster zone. It’s impor-tant to know how fast can you fail over, and whether you canfail back when the office reopens. You also should know howmuch standby server and storage capacity you would need inorder to handle a disaster.

● Backup risks in remote offices and branch offices:Remote and branch offices often don’t have the luxury ofhaving an on-site technical resource to assist in backups andrestores. Running backups incorrectly, or not at all, is theprimary cause of failed data recoveries in remote offices.

● Resource-intensive backup processes: The protection ofcritical data—data you really cannot afford to lose or to bewithout for an extended period of time—requires frequentor even continuous backup. But this level of protectioncomes with added costs. Applying a similar policy to non-critical data, such as typical office files, can add undue stor-age, bandwidth and labor costs. That may be acceptable forlarge enterprises but may not be for midsized organizations.Therefore, you should find a way to balance costs and serv-ice levels at a per-application level.

● Security breaches: When moving data between sites, itneeds to be protected from potential security breaches. Abreach of data security, whether actual damage is done ornot, can be devastating to your company’s reputation, asdozens of large enterprises and government agencies havefound in recent years, usually through the loss or theft ofportable media such as tapes and CDs.

Many companies have opted to purchase several point solu-tions from different vendors to fully address these challenges,which can be an extremely expensive approach in terms ofacquisition, integration and ongoing management costs. Othercompanies have decided the cost is too high and decided to take their chances, which is an approach that has oftenresulted in disaster. In today’s business environment, the lossof important data can cause significant damage and may evenlead to the demise of your business.

Advanced data recovery technologiesNew technologies are being deployed in integrated solutionsthat provide a much smarter approach to data protection andrecovery for midsized organizations.

● Block-level data capture: When performing incrementalbackups, file-level data protection solutions need to scan the entire file system to figure out what has changed sincethe last backup. This can be extremely time-consuming and a major drain on processor power, especially for systemswith millions of files. File-level solutions also copy entirefiles when they’ve been changed, even if only one record ina multigigabyte database has been added or changed. Block-level technology captures only changed data blocks as they are written to disk—there’s no need to scan the filesystem or copy entire large files. An entire backup cycle cantake just a few minutes rather than hours or even days—eliminating the need for those painful, unattainable backup windows.

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● Incremental data capture: Performing periodic full back-ups is not only time consuming, but creates an enormousamount of duplicate data. This week’s backup will mostlycontain the same data as last week’s, and next week’s. Asmarter approach is to use an incremental-only method thatcopies just new and changed data during every backup cycle.This can help save storage space, reduce the load on applica-tion servers and networks, and eliminate the need to run fullbackups on weekends—improving the lives of your backupadministrators.

● Policy-based protection: Applying a “one size fits all” solu-tion to complex data protection and recovery requirementscan be a waste of valuable resources. A sophisticated policyengine lets you match the frequency of backup, up to andincluding continuous data protection, to the needs of eachindividual application. For example, you can set policies toprotect a mission-critical database application every 10 min-utes, your email server every hour, and the file server onceper day.

● Granular recovery: Very often, a single file or folder needsto be recovered. As noted above, performing this task from afull + incremental tape set is complex and can often takelonger than recreating the data from scratch. A solution that provides a file system view of the data in the backuprepository from any point-in-time can enable a simple drag-and-drop recovery capability, vastly improving recoveryservice levels. Individual users can be given the ability torecover their own files, as well. Granular recovery can alsobe applied to application data, such as individual emailobjects from a protected Microsoft® Exchange database.

● Near-instant restore: When an entire volume or systemneeds to be restored, most recovery applications require thatall of the data be copied to the new volume before any of itcan be accessed by users and applications. This can result inhours or even days of downtime. New technology exists that can make the full data set available within a few sec-onds, usable by both applications and users, while the data isrestored in the background. Any requested interactions withthe data are prioritized by the recovery software, deliveringfast service to users until the data is restored in full.Downtime is all but eliminated.

● Selective replication: In order to plan for recovery after adisaster, you need to move a copy of your data over a net-work link, so that it can be restored in another location.This can cost a large amount of bandwidth using commonsynchronous and asynchronous replication solutions. Even if a file is changed hundreds of times a day, every changewritten to disk is sent over the network with standard replication. However, using a policy engine with intelligentscheduling enables the sending of only the blocks of datathat have changed since the last replication job—saving network bandwidth and enabling a point-in-time roll-backrecovery capability at the DR site.

6 Advanced data recovery for midsized companies

● Dissimilar hardware bare machine recovery (BMR): Theability to quickly get a new server up and running, even ifthe hardware platform is significantly different from theserver being replaced (including virtual machines), can bekey in deploying a cost-effective and easy-to-manage busi-ness continuity solution. Rather than needing a standbyserver assigned to every critical server in the company, younow only need to have enough to cover the worst possiblecontingency. For example, if you have ten regional and localoffices and assume that only one might go off-line at a time,you need to have only enough servers standing by to coverthe biggest office. This technology can also be used formigrating workloads from legacy servers to new platforms,and can reduce migration times by as much as 50 percentover traditional migration processes.

● Integrated data deduplication: As data volumes grow,everyone is struggling with buying and managing explodingstorage capacity requirements. While an incremental-onlybackup solution eliminates a major cause of duplicated data(full backups), there is still an opportunity to further reducestorage footprint by deduplicating data as part of the backupprocess.

Central ControlStation

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Disaster RecoverySite

HQ/Data CenterRemote Office(s)

Exchange SQL Oracle/SAP File/Print

IBM Tivoli StorageManager FastBack

Bare machine recovery

Application servers

Figure 1: Backup and recovery with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack.

A comprehensive, advanced datarecovery portfolioIBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack® offers an integrated,cost effective, next-generation data protection and recoveryplatform for organizations of all sizes, and is especially suited

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to mid-sized companies. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBackperforms block-level incremental data capture using a policyengine that allows you to tailor your data protection system to meet the needs of individual applications, offices and thebusiness as a whole.

Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack provides each of theadvanced, flexible recovery capabilities detailed above, includ-ing drag-and-drop recovery of files, folders and email objects,the near-instant restore of entire volumes, and operating system volume recovery.

The Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack portfolio includes thefollowing components:

● IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack: This core application provides a continuous data protection and recov-ery management platform for Microsoft Windows® andLinux® servers, both in the data center and in remote orbranch offices, as well as the movement of backup databetween sites (see Figure 1).

● IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for MicrosoftExchange: This optional component provides users and administrators with the ability to recover MicrosoftExchange data objects quickly and easily, from individualemail messages and attachments to entire Exchange databases.

● IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for BareMachine Recovery: This optional component enablesrecovery of the operating system volume following a disasteror catastrophic server failure, providing the flexibility ofrecovering to dissimilar hardware or to a virtual machinewithin an hour.

The Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack family of products is tightly integrated with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager to pro-vide organizations a complete, unified data protection, archive,retention and recovery solution with global data reduction.

Mission-critical application protection andrecoveryTivoli Storage Manager FastBack can be used in any of youroffices that rely on mission-critical applications. Backup jobscan be scheduled as often as needed to meet the recoverypoint objectives of each application. Recovery of any dataasset, from a single file or folder to an entire volume, from any previous point in time, can be accomplished within a fewminutes.

With the block-level incremental technology in Tivoli StorageManager FastBack, backup windows are no longer required, sooperations are not interrupted to complete backup jobs. Thelightweight agent is application-aware, puts minimal load onyour production servers, and is especially effective in protect-ing virtual machines where processor cycles are a criticalresource.

8 Advanced data recovery for midsized companies

If you choose to keep your tape backup and archiving system,such as IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, it can easily be config-ured to perform backups of the Tivoli Storage ManagerFastBack repository, running it anytime during the day without impacting production or backup operations. This isbecause the tape backup operation would be mounting a previous point-in-time data set and accessing only the TivoliStorage Manager FastBack backup server.

Granular email object recoveryTivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Microsoft Exchangeenables the recovery of individual email messages, calendarentries, contacts, notes and tasks (see Figure 2). All objectattributes are maintained, such as the date and time a recov-ered message was sent. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack forMicrosoft Exchange uses a familiar interface that allows you todrag-and-drop selected objects to a .pst file; or you can selectto send the recovered items using the Simple Mail TransferProtocol (SMTP) interface. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBackfor Microsoft Exchange will even allow you to recover non-damaged items from a corrupt Exchange database (EDB).When used in conjunction with Tivoli Storage ManagerFastBack, you can recover email objects or an entire EDBfrom previous points in time.

User determines e-mail corruption

or loss

Administrator finds lost e-mail

Administrator drags and drops to appropriate inbox

E-mail restored in less than 15 minutes

MicrosoftExchange

serverContinuousprotection

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

FastBack for Microsoft Exchange

Figure 2: Email object recovery with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Fastbackfor Microsoft Exchange.

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Off-site disaster recoveryTivoli Storage Manager FastBack extends disk-based, block-level incremental data capture to a repository in another loca-tion, sending changed blocks of data over a WAN or Internetconnection. Scheduling and retention policies can be set indi-vidually for each location to meet the specific needs of thebusiness, while avoiding unnecessary costs in bandwidth andstorage.

With Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack, you can still recoverany data from any point in time to get your operations backup and running quickly, even if an entire office or region isaffected by an event such as a hurricane, flood, earthquake oreven a widespread power outage.

Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack was designed to be as band-width efficient as possible to help minimize the impact onother applications that rely on WAN and Internet links. A primary feature in addressing this goal is the policy enginethat schedules replication sessions. In most cases, a once-a-daytransfer of changed data is sufficient for DR protection, espe-cially if local backups/snapshots are occurring frequently dur-ing the day. A once-a-day policy will transfer only the blocksthat have changed since the previous day, and only the latestversion of that block will be transferred even if it was changedhundreds of times during the day—which is common withdatabase applications. The transfer can be scheduled to occurin the middle of the night when other WAN traffic is at a

minimum. Consider this in contrast to common replicationproducts that copy everything that is changed, clogging upbandwidth on a continual basis.

Adding Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack to your data protec-tion program can help eliminate a large set of operationalcosts, including the purchase and management of tapes, trans-porting and storing them off-site, as well as all of the manualprocesses associated with tape-based solutions. It can also help mitigate the security risks of physically transportingtapes, including the inadvertent loss of portable media.

Business continuity and resiliencyTivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recoveryis an extremely cost-effective solution for quickly restoring the operations of an application server within an hour whenthe entire server or the office where it’s located goes down (see Figure 3).

In addition to helping eliminate the need to have a one-to-oneratio of identical standby servers to fully cover your assets,Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recoverycan also be used for server migrations and for moving applica-tions from a test environment to production—without worry-ing about the hardware being used in each department. Theautomated features of Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack forBare Machine Recovery help reduce the risk of introducingproblems into new systems as they are brought online.

10 Advanced data recovery for midsized companies

Remote Offices

File & Print Exchange Application Other MissionCritical Apps

X

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

FastBack for Bare Machine

Recovery

Standby Recovery Server Pool

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

FastBack

Figure 3: Server restoration with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack forBare Machine Recovery.

With this dissimilar hardware capability, this solution is idealfor moving application workloads between physical and virtualservers. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare MachineRecovery has been tested and verified with both VMware®ESX/ESXi Server and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Remote office data protection and backupconsolidationToo often, remote and branch offices do not have qualifiedtechnical staff on-site to support the needs of users and applications, and effective data protection processes are oftenlacking. Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack offers a very cost-effective solution that can replace the use of tape in remoteoffices. It can automate the process of protecting data inremote offices, and all management can be easily accom-plished by central office IT staff using the web-based manage-ment console or through the Tivoli Storage Manager AdminConsole.

Best-in-class data reductionTivoli Storage Manager FastBack eliminates the primary cause of secondary storage growth: the periodic duplication of data created by full backups. Its block-level backup is also extremely storage efficient. And Tivoli Storage ManagerFastBack also includes built-in data deduplication, both at theFastBack Server and across servers and locations when tied toa Tivoli Storage Manager system.

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Measurable improvements in supportoperationsCompanies from a wide variety of industries have leveragedTivoli Storage Manager FastBack to improve backup andrecovery performance, measuring dramatic improvementsacross a diverse set of support tasks. The Tivoli StorageManager FastBack family of products can help organizations:

● Reduce server backup times from hours or days to a fewminutes.

● Reduce server volume restoration times from hours or daysto a few minutes.

● Increase backup frequencies from once per week to multipletimes per day, without disrupting operations.

● Enable rapid recovery of granular Exchange objects that aretypically too difficult—if not impossible—to recover.

ConclusionThe Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack family of products canprovide organizations with a comprehensive, enterprise-class,next-generation data protection and recovery solution set atmid-market prices. These solutions can help companiesreduce operational risk and costs, increase productivity and resiliency, and provide improved levels of service.

For more informationTo learn more about IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack,contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, orvisit: ibm.com/tivoli/products/storage-mgr-fastback

About Tivoli software from IBMTivoli software from IBM helps organizations efficiently andeffectively manage IT resources, tasks and processes to meetever-shifting business requirements and deliver flexible andresponsive IT service management, while helping to reducecosts. The Tivoli portfolio spans software for security, compliance, storage, performance, availability, configuration,operations and IT lifecycle management, and is backed byworld-class IBM services, support and research.

Additionally, financing solutions from IBM Global Financingcan enable effective cash management, protection from technology obsolescence, improved total cost of ownershipand return on investment. Also, our Global Asset RecoveryServices help address environmental concerns with new, more energy-efficient solutions. For more information onIBM Global Financing, visit: ibm.com/financing

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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010

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Produced in the United States of AmericaNovember 2010All Rights Reserved

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