Business white paper
Enable unified
data protection
Table of contents
3 The latest backup and recovery strategies
3 Are legacy approaches meeting current challenges?
4 The deployment approach that fits your data protection strategy
4 Protect your data on premise
6 Protect your data in the cloud
7 Enable unified data protection with HP Data Protector
8 Conclusion
3
Enable unified data
protection
The latest backup and recovery strategies
The challenge of defining a successful data protection strategy that addresses all enterprise information can be a challenging task. Information is doubling in volume every 12 to 18 months, with growing stores of unstructured information such as documents, email, audio, and video files as well as structured and semi-structured databases. This increase in information is driving your IT organization to determine where to back up data so that it is effectively and efficiently protected, and recoverable in a timely manner. The task involves not only protecting a set of highly diverse information, but requires you to manage information for lower risk exposure. Figure 1 illustrates four key issues organizations are facing when looking to improve data protection strategies, including:
• Extremely fast-growing data, in form, source, and volume
• Proliferation of data across multiple locations (servers, workstations, mobile devices) • Ever-shrinking recovery windows
• Increased regulatory risk and compliance obligations
Each of these key areas presents unique challenges, and requires you to reevaluate how to approach data protection, particularly regarding the optimal location for data backup: on- premise and/or within the cloud. This paper explores a unified data protection approach of both advanced on-premise and remote offsite cloud-based data protection technology in a single offering.
Figure 1: On-going issues with data protection.
Are legacy approaches meeting current challenges?
Traditional approaches to data protection have been to either back up all information forever, or protect only some information some of the time. Keeping information indefinitely—though a more conservative approach—creates an enormous administrative burden that can be both costly and complex. The latter approach, which does not address 100 percent of information, is one way to reduce infrastructure costs and operational strain on the IT department, but it exposes the business to undue risk.
Explosion of big data
• Data doubling every 12-18 months • New, unstructured data
types to manage • Storage growth is
outpacing IT budget
Data everywhere
• Mobile, virtual, cloud joins physical • Mobile endpoints are
exposed
• 67% of users have three or more computing platforms
Shrinking recovery
• Always-on applications and users
• Users have high uptime expectations • Business continuity
moves to forefront
Increased regulations
• Escalating regulatory and higher volumes • Find the “needle in
haystack” • Utilize corporate
information assets
The flaws of these approaches are compounded as IT environments evolve. This evolution may include the growth of backup-related infrastructure, as new data protection solutions are introduced, and the addition of more complex infrastructure and media, such as tape. Data centers have also been evolving from strictly physical to heavily virtualized environments, operating beyond the standard 9 to 5 workday to meet a 24/7/365 business demand. In addition to infrastructure and deployment changes, information is growing at an unprecedented rate. Statistics show as much as an 80% annual growth rate for traditional content types,1 including unstructured data. Data growth not only strains IT resources but
taxes bandwidth between remote sites and data centers. Adding to the burden, the inability of legacy approaches to scale and continue to meet the SLAs of the business creates additional roadblocks.
Relying on legacy-based approaches to data protection and managing new and diverse environments and data types can hinder IT staff with complex operational requirements. When IT must focus on never-ending backup schedules, new media types, and the fulfillment of offsite storage requirements, there is less time available to support strategic business initiatives.
The deployment approach that fits your data protection
strategy
For decades, IT organizations have tried to manage their own backup operations. But eventually, they turned to external storage facilities, vaulting partners, and other service providers to manage tape-based backup media. With the introduction of disk-based backup, now a standard for many organizations, new options have emerged as to where backup data can be stored. With shrinking IT budgets, limited staff, and the desire to reduce operational or administrative strain, organizations are also turning to cloud-based backup as a key component of their IT strategy. Cloud-based backup can minimize the cost of dedicated backup infrastructure (such as tape) and improve data protection SLAs.
For organizations with complex needs, local on-premise data protection may be required to satisfy various requirements, while cloud-based data protection may be more suitable for other applications. The combination of robust on-premise data protection capabilities and the scalability of the cloud deliver flexibility and choice for a constantly evolving IT landscape. Deciphering which approach is best for your organization and where you should protect your data should be based on both business and technology requirements.
Protect your data on premise
Several factors influence how you go about choosing a data protection solution, with the most important factor being your business objectives for recovery. Many organizations choose to manage their own data protection environment on-premise simply because their business requirements for recovery are immediate and stringent. For instance, you may need to know that you can recover data in a timely and predictable manner to meet a desired recovery objective.
1 Gartner, Dataquest, ID # G00208772,
5
Ensure business continuity
In today’s highly competitive, always-on business world, disruptions can be costly and risk-laden. In many situations, the speed of application recovery defines the survivability of a business. As a result, IT is responsible for meeting more stringent recovery SLAs. On-premise solutions can provide high-speed application recovery in seconds or minutes at the maximum— down to the exact point in time.
On-premise data protection solutions offer advanced functionality for both backup and recovery. This allows IT to retain control over backup operations and leverage advanced technology options, such as disk-based backup, storage array integration (with snapshots), and advanced storage efficiency through deduplication. For example, an on-premise data protection solution that is deeply integrated with storage arrays enables an administrator to recover at any point in time—down to the second in some cases. This allows you to keep mission-critical data, such as transactional databases, email, and highly sensitive information protected and available at all times.
On-premise data protection solutions often provide tight integration with mission critical applications, such as databases and enterprise messaging platforms to enable application-aware backup and recovery. In this way, you can also protect critical applications, such as transactional databases, from the initial protection process (and when the application changes, addition of new tables, instances, etc.) through the recovery process (down to the second and with a fine level of granularity), to meet stringent business SLAs and ensure business continuity.
Protect large, global and remote offices
In complex, heterogeneous, and distributed environments there may be requirements that require the use of an on-premise enterprise data protection solution. For instance, a large global organization may have thousands of remote offices that need to be protected centrally and reliably. On-premise data protection solutions can provide flexible options to effectively meet varying protection needs of different remote and branch office environments. In many cases, existing infrastructure can be leveraged for rapid cost-effective protection for very small remote offices that were not protected due to lack of IT expertise. The data from the remote offices can be consolidated into the central data center for disaster recovery and other business purposes, such as eDiscovery and compliance events.
Centralized management of the entire backup and recovery infrastructure provides IT the complete protection, control, and visibility over the total distributed environment, including file servers, core operating system platforms, physical and virtual environments, and mission-critical applications.
Automate data protection using a policy-based approach
Protect your data in the cloud
Many CIOs today are considering the use of cloud services as a top priority and key to their IT strategy,2 to help with the costs of managing and extending the capabilities of their IT
environment. Cloud-based data protection solutions offer access to remote, highly scalable, managed service-based operations.
Leveraging the cloud for backup and recovery helps reduce costs related to a dedicated backup infrastructure, offers budget flexibility with a pay-as-you-protect cost model, improves the operational impact of your IT staff, assists with compliance initiatives, and enables a form of disaster recovery. In some cases, for smaller IT environments, cloud-based backup helps avoid additional backup-related capital expenses altogether. The type of data organizations typically back up to the cloud can be a combination of business-critical application data (databases, email) and most commonly, file-based data.
Reduce backup and recovery costs
Economies of scale within the provider environment often make cloud-based data protection a more cost-effective solution, when compared to traditional on-premise backup solutions. This is principally true because it removes many of the capital expenditures related to dedicated infrastructure and allows a pay-as-you-protect financing/budgeting cost model.
With a cloud-based data protection service in place, organizations can avoid the
unpredictable—and often hidden—costs of managing the growth of backup-related storage resources. For this reason, choosing a cloud service provider who offers a predictable rate can simplify IT budgeting.
Protect remote offices
The use of a cloud-based managed service can alleviate the need for dedicated IT staff or dedicated backup-related infrastructure in organizations struggling with the management of remote office data protection. Organizations can limit the use of their internal WAN (wide area network) bandwidth, and enable any remote office or remote server to interact securely and directly in the cloud, without straining corporate network resources.
Meet compliance obligations
Many IT organizations struggle with existing and emerging compliance requirements. However, leveraging an IT service provider that ensures the highest levels of physical/logical security possible provides peace of mind that data can be protected in a remote facility. The right provider can help you meet traditional disaster recovery offsite requirements and adhere to potential compliance-related regulations. In addition, by protecting data offsite, you can improve long-term retention capabilities.
2 CIO Magazine, March 2010, Article: CIOs Must Fit
Leveraging the cloud can also alleviate the need for additional tape-based infrastructure within a data center, as many organizations still require the ability to send data offsite to satisfy regulatory compliance. With cloud-based data protection as an option, organizations can leverage efficient replication technology and cloud services to provide the same type of offsite retention with lower costs and administrative burden.
Manage risk with cloud-based services
As protection service levels become more stringent, CIOs are now tasked to protect more with less and be able to recover faster. This is causing many organizations to seek solutions that limit the liability of unpredictable Service Level Agreements (SLAs). In contrast, others are looking to managed backup service providers who are accountable for service-level deliverables—including recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), and up time. Additionally, many organizations are seeking improvements in monitoring and management. With a cloud-based data protection solution, you can potentially gain access to proactive monitoring and around-the-clock operational support to manage potential vulnerabilities and detect all possible threats.
Storing data remotely with a trusted cloud-storage service provider automatically provides an offsite copy of your data. This immediately allows organizations to meet disaster recovery requirements, at a fraction of the cost.
Enable unified data protection with HP Data Protector
HP Data Protector extends backup to the cloud to bring on-premise and secure hosted backup into a single flexible offering. It enables you to take advantage of the reliability, performance, and security supported by premise-based backup with the scalability, cost efficiency, and access of cloud-based data protection.HP Data Protector provides centralized management for all your data protection needs: on-premise, in the cloud, and as a hybrid deployment that leverages the strength of each option. With more than 44,000 customers around the world, and nearly half of the Global 500, HP Data Protector on-premise backup continues to provide the most advanced and extensive support for operating systems (OS), hypervisors (server virtualization), critical applications, and storage-related infrastructure.
The new cloud backup capability of HP Data Protector leverages the 14 global cloud data centers operated by HP Autonomy. The data centers currently manage over 50 petabytes of customer information worldwide in a highly scalable solution operated 24x7 by dedicated operations staff. Our most secure, private cloud includes global data and eDiscovery processing centers that are Safe Harbor-certified and audited to Statement of Accounting Standard number 70 (SAS 70 Type II). All protected data is mirrored across multiple data center locations and
information resides in a secure multi-tenant scalable data protection cloud service. With Cloud Backup, organizations get the freedom and flexibility of one-click protection managed directly within the HP Data Protector Console, which removes the challenges of a traditional tape-based approach for offsite backup. In addition, administrators can manage restores from anywhere, leveraging a simple to use web management interface that enables self-service restores to be initiated for both physical and virtual system data.
Figure 2: Leveraging cloud-based backup for offsite data protection.
TCP/IP
Multi-server deployment
Uses:
• Continuous data protection for Windows servers • Elimination of local backup infrastructure • Remote office backup for customers who have limited staff/infrastructure in remote sites
Autonomy cloud mirrored data centers
Backup
Restore
Agent
Agent
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20130510_PI_WP_HP_Unified_Data_Protection_with_HP_Data_Protector
With HP Data Protector, you gain access to a remote pool of scalable data protection resources, powerful self-service recovery, and the assurance of a fully managed, secure data protection service. These capabilities ultimately enable a reduced TCO (total cost of ownership) while providing instant and flexible remote cloud-based recovery.
Conclusion
Helping organizations more effectively address the challenges of protecting their information, HP Data Protector offers the industry’s first truly unified data protection solution. Whether it is on-premise, in the cloud, or deployed as a hybrid strategy, HP Data Protector enables organizations to leverage advanced data protection capabilities within, and securely beyond, the boundaries of their enterprise data center. HP Data Protector delivers more flexibility to make the decision as to how and where to protect data, and the ability to refine recovery point and time objectives, based on the criticality of the information being protected.
About HP Autonomy
HP Autonomy is a global leader in software that processes human information, or unstructured data, including social media, email, video, audio, text and web pages, etc. Autonomy’s powerful management and analytic tools for structured information together with its ability to extract meaning in real time from all forms of information, regardless of format, is a powerful tool for companies seeking to get the most out of their data. Autonomy’s product portfolio helps power companies through enterprise search analytics, business process management and OEM operations. Autonomy also offers information governance solutions in areas such as eDiscovery, content management and compliance, as well as marketing solutions that help companies grow revenue, such as web content management, online marketing optimization and rich media management.
