Hungry for Knowledge: Try Data Protection Gumbo

I had the pleasure of interviewing former industry analyst Robert Amatruda on the Data Protection Gumbo podcast. Robert Amatruda most recently joined Dell from an Analyst firm where he spent a good deal of time covering the Data Protection and Recovery market, including key trends, growth drivers and competitive dynamics propelling the industry. Robert is now part of the Dell Software Group as a Product Marketing Manager and Product Evangelist for their Data Protection solutions.

Please pull up a chair, sit back, relax and get ready to learn how you can lower your Data Protection total cost of ownership and reduce complexity!

The name of the game for Backup/Recovery right now is lowering total cost of ownership, reducing complexity, offering simplicity, efficiency and agility. And, Dell has an entire Backup & Disaster Recovery suite of products that literally cover all types of environments and use-cases including physical, virtual or cloud infrastructures.

Let’s have a discussion about some of the key trends that are impacting the Data Protection & Recovery market in an astronomical way. The analyst community calls these trends the Four Pillars of the IT Industry.

• Big Data/Analytics
• Cloud
• Mobile
• Social Media

Q: How do you see Big Data and Analytics affecting the Data Protection & Recovery market?

Robert: Today, both companies and consumers alike are experiencing unabated data growth at every level. Simply put, the volume, velocity and veracity of data growth continues to grow dramatically. We live in a world where nothing is discarded, just kept indefinitely. Companies of all sizes need more cost-effective ways to store, retrieve and mine their data for new, revenue generating purposes.

Consumers also want to retain their personal data, such as music playlists, personal finance information or online transaction history. We live in a new era now where data is the new currency, particularly for large organizations such as banks or e’tailers.

Q: Data is definitely the new currency. Now do you see cloud as being an integral part to a company’s Data Protection strategy?

Robert: I believe, that cloud is a transformative technology in the true sense of the word. Companies adopt cloud-based architectures, from a data-protection stand-point, to reduce their OPEX-costs, alleviate their reliance on legacy infrastructure, such as tape for archive and build out a coherent Disaster Recovery strategy.

Companies are grappling with enormous changes in the way they adopt cloud infrastructure – public, private or hybrid. We are seeing companies and products that do not incorporate cloud-based options remain under-pressure and will not likely exist in the very near future.

Q: I remember a quote by John C. Maxwell who’s a famous author, speaker, and pastor which, said, “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” What are some of the challenges that social media and mobile devices are causing the Data Protection market?

Robert: The nexus between mobile devices and social media have challenged companies of all sizes. First, much of the data that is created on mobile platforms is unstructured and resides outside the datacenter.

Second, much of the data being used on laptops and tablets is critical data as we see from highly mobile sales forces.

Third, there is much more exposure to a company that loses data control of their data in the event of a loss or theft of the device. So, in essence, mobile devices coupled with social media trends is challenging many companies ability to adequately safeguard their critical data and public personas.

Q: Can you tell me about some of the Data Protection tools in the Dell tool box that you feel will effectively meet customer’s Recovery Time and Recovery Point objectives and also some of their aggressive SLAs?

Robert: Great questions! Dell brings a full portfolio of data-protection and recovery products that are designed to align with their needs; be it meeting aggressive SLA’s, rapid recovery of data and critical data and applications no matter where they reside: in virtual, physical or cloud locations.

Dell has made very judicious investments over the past 4 years in data protection and recovery products that help customers simplify their backup and recovery processes and help them to extend their infrastructure beyond the confines of their physical datacenters. Dell brings to market pure-play software products as well as appliance-based solutions that are purpose-built and tuned for backup and rapid recovery. Also, Dell brings flexibility to customers looking to bridge their legacy infrastructure and processes, optimize their storage resources or help them build out a cloud strategy. Our appliances really are the centerpiece of this customer journey.

Q: How does vRanger help modernize virtualized environments?

Robert: vRanger is an agentless backup and recovery solution ideal for virtual environments. vRanger software provides high-speed backup and recovery of VMware, Hyper-V, and physical Windows Server environments. It also provides high-speed replication for VMware. With vRanger, you can locate and restore individual files in seconds — even if they are buried in virtual and physical backups — from a single, intuitive interface. vRanger is not as well suited for mixed physical and virtual environments. That is where AppAssure shines.

Q: Can you tell me about the AppAssure “shine” as you just mentioned. And, how AppAssure can reduce Recovery Time objectives and increase Recovery Point objectives?

Robert: AppAssure is designed for rapid recovery of data and critical applications across physical, virtual and cloud environments, primarily for Microsoft-based applications. It is a snap-shot based technology that allows a customer to restore anything, anywhere even to dissimilar hardware. Customers can restore their data in minutes without the fear of data loss or corruption. Recovery operations automatically test and verify that backups have occurred.

Q: What is one of the most important features or capabilities of NetVault Backup?

Robert: NetVault is a scalable, comprehensive data protection software solution for large and diverse enterprise environments. NetVault can scale up to 1,000 clients per server and protect in physical, virtual or cloud environments. It is truly an enterprise-class, datacenter product that covers an extensive range of applications, OS’s and multiple media types.

Q:I understand the DL appliance as an integrated Backup and Recovery Appliance, which is basically a PowerEdge Server running AppAssure software, is this correct?

Robert: Yes and no. The DL Backup and Recovery Appliances are fully configured Appliances powered by AppAssure and bundled with industry-hardened Dell Server and Storage technology. The difference is the DL Backup and Recovery Appliances are highly tuned, turn-key solutions.

They are easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use, bringing all the power of AppAssure to customer environments taking out all the guess-work needed for deployment. It’s much easier to deploy a DL Appliance than having a customer cobble together their own solutions. Besides, most customers have difficulty determining their capacity or number of agents and options.

Agents and options are bundled with a capacity-based licensing model.  There are two models of DL Appliances: the DL1000 which is well suited for SMB’s, MSP’s or ROBO environments. The DL4300 is a robust, highly-scalable backup appliance offering in box upgrades from 5TB’s to 120TB’s on the fly. Both offer all the goodness of AppAssure with standby virtual machines with snapshot, replication, in-line deduplication and compression software.

Q: How is the DR appliance different from the DL appliance, so can you clear that up for me, please?

Robert: Excellent question: In short, the DR Appliance is a target-based appliance that can be deployed alongside virtually any 3rd party data protection and recovery software package. The DL Appliances have an instance of AppAssure and do not operate with 3rd party solutions.

Our DR Appliances are enterprise-class and can scale up to 252TB of usable post-RAID capacity using four expansion shelves in 9, 18, 27, 36 and 54TB configurations. Plus, the DR6000 utilizes Dell’s global, block-based inline deduplication and compression technology to reduce backup storage capacities by a factor of 15:1.

The DR Appliances are designed to augment and bridge legacy products and processes, optimize existing 3rd party storage resources. Heck the DR Appliances support nearly 20 - 3rd party software appliances, emulate VTL’s and have features like encryption of data at rest. All very key features for the enterprise customer.

I may add, that ALL of our appliances (DL&DR) support Archive of static data to Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, Rackspace, or any cloud-based on OpenStack.

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Here are some other recent posts I have written on LinkedIn:

• Data Protection Man v Big Data Billionaires: Passion Ignites Storage
• Software Defined… - The Cloud’s Apprentice
• If Leonardo da Vinci created a Backup Appliance…
• Move Over VM’s – The Rise of Containers

Demetrius Malbrough is an expert in solving Data Protection challenges for small, medium and enterprise companies. He holds multiple Backup and Recovery certifications with major software leaders represented in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Backup / Recovery Software. Demetrius is passionate about providing solutions to help companies meet demanding data protection objectives in the face of data’s changing paradigm in the Copy Data Management market.