Architecting for Recovery

Here is a shocker for you, backup IS a science. Good backup administrators / architects are worth their weight in gold. CIO’s just wish backup would go away. Backup costs money, it’s not strategic, it chews up man power and when it is 'running' (successfully or not) no one really pays attention to it, but when it fails or more likely when you need to restore data and can't, someone can lose their job -… Read more »

Deduplication - Older than You Think

So I am a big fan of National Public Radio – NPR. Today I learned that yesterday 10/29/09 was the 40th anniversary of the ‘internet’. Now, I am sure there are a number of theories on when the internet was started and who started it, but safe to say that at this time in history 40 years ago, two guys from California sent the first 5 letter message, ‘Hello’, over a wire between two computers… Read more »

Comprehensive Capacity Optimization - Deduplication 2.0

Technology is great isn't it? When someone thinks they have a new idea on the same old technology foundation they call it "X 2.0". I have been watching the banter between analysts and vendors (specifically NTAP’s Dr. Dedupe and Permabit’s CEO Tom Cook) on the topic of Deduplication 2.0 and it is my belief that the proverbial boat is being missed (since we are using water analogies). I have been watching these guys hash it… Read more »

The Side Effects of Backup on Server Virtualization

Server virtualization has changed the IT landscape dramatically. It has become a magic potion curing a number of ills in the physical server world such as low individual CPU utilization and excess use of space, power and cooling in the data center. However, like all potions that cure what ails you, there can be side effects. You need to be careful of what the Witch Doctor orders.

When I speak with customers who have aggressively… Read more »

A Data Protection Reference Architecture - The Final Chapter

The Architecture

This ‘architecture’ diagram, as you can see, is not a typical architecture diagram, but hopefully it can be used to align your business and business objectives with the technologies that are available and can best be applied to solve your issues helping to balance, cost, complexity and compliance.

This diagram can also be used to do a couple of other things. It can help you begin to classify your data and align your… Read more »