Master the Diving Catch: Storage Recovery Challenges & Prospects

1. Master the Diving Catch: Storage Recovery Challenges & Prospects Jon William Toigo Independent Consultant and Author Toigo Productions

2. Introduction and Welcome • “Masters of the Diving Catch” • Topics for Discussion • Fundamentals of Fielding the Ball • How Free Agency is Wrecking the Game • The Importance of Spring Training • Q&A

3. Then… • Early DR planning and storage recovery • Comparatively simple, “secretary-friendly” • Bolt-on to existing applications and host platforms • 1-for-1 replacement of mainframe and DASD • 24 to 72 hour recovery timeframe

4. …and Now • DR in the Internet Era • 7x24x365 • Lots of players — heterogeneous storage platforms supporting heterogeneous client-server hosting configurations • Faster, harder, and…

5. Uglier than Ever.

6. Fundamentals for Fielding the Ball • Data is a irreplaceable asset • Goal: Avoid preventable data disasters… • Corruption of asset (security, virus protection, backups) • Interrupted availability (fault tolerance, meshed links, effective monitoring and management) • While minimizing impact of events that just can’t be prevented.

7. All Disaster Recovery Strategies Consist of… - EITHER - • Redundancy • Duplicating assets on a “1-for-1” or consolidated basis • Deploying redundant assets at a sufficiently distant location to avoid regional disaster events - OR - • Replacement • Fielding new assets within recovery timeframe requirements

8. With Data, Redundancy is the Only Option… • Restoring data from damaged media (time consuming…) • Re-building data from original source materials (difficult or impossible…) • Recovering storage requires copies of current or near current data, suitable data hosting platform, and pre-planned strategy

9. Characteristics of Many Storage Environments Raise Challenges • Data growth is poorly managed in most shops (lack of tools, lack of time, lack of open management standards, lack of strategic planning) • Knee-jerk acquisitions of popular storage products leads to platform heterogeneity Free Agency is Killing the Game…(Ask any Storage Vendor)

10. Why Effective Storage Recovery Requires a Diving Catch… • 1-for-1 replacement is increasingly costly • Consolidation strategies are more complex • Cross-platform data re-hosting takes time • Lack of software tools for data re-hosting requires use of tape as medium • Large (and growing) data volume calling efficacy of tape into question in some settings

11. Cross-Platform Data Re-Hosting Production Environment Recovery Environment 1-for-1 Storage Platform Restoral $$$

12. Ideal Approach Production Environment Recovery Environment Re-host Data On Consolidated Minimum Equipment Configuration (e.g., Large Array or SAN)

13. Reality Software Tools for Mirroring (e.g., EMC SRDF) Only Work with Same-Type Arrays

14. What about 3rd Party Volume Managers? • Limited platform support • Vicissitudes of Host-Based Mirroring • Warranty hassles

15. The Continuing Need for Tape Production Environment Recovery Environment Tape provides the Only Reliable means for Data Re-Hosting To Arrays or Zoned Fabrics OR FC SW

16. Ironies… • “Tape is dead, and SANs have killed it.” (?!?) • Tape accounted for nearly 75% of SAN deployments through 2000, and sharing tape continues to be a leading SAN deployment motivator • “Tape is too slow for high volume, mission-critical data. You need mirroring.” (?!?) • Ignores tape automation, increasing capacity and speed of tape drives, and multi-stream capabilities • Ignores nature of most databases: 80% static, 20% active • Ignores cost of mirroring

17. Who’s the fairest one of all? MAN/WAN LAN/SAN SYMMETRICAL MIRROR (LOCAL, SHORT DISTANCE, LOW LATENCY) ASYMMETRICAL MIRROR (REMOTE, 2ND PROCESS, DATA NOT SYNCHRONIZED)

18. PRO Fast recovery of data access Less vulnerability to outage Demonstrated track record Adjustable to recovery requirements New technologies (e.g., Wave Division Multiplexing) reducing cost of WAN/MAN interconnect CON Another process to monitor Vendor lock-in because of platform-specific mirroring software Three-tier configuration required to avoid latency in production applications High-cost solution suited only to most extreme data recovery requirements Pros and Cons of Mirroring

19. PRO Media price lower than disk Well-designed strategy optimized for time-to-data Improving media management capabilities Low latency solutions can be designed Multi-streams make multi-TB restores feasible CON Tape subject to wear and exposed to damage in transit (tape vaulting a potential solution) Potential conflicts with virtualization engines Disk prices are falling, capacities growing On-line data is “better” than near-line or off-line data Pros and Cons of Tape

20. Facts are Facts… • Most IT architects embracing HSM • Enabled by evolving infrastructure view of storage • Leveraging cheaper disk platforms (IDE/ATA drives), tape or optical for “near-line” configurations • “Content Networking” • Problems with fault tolerance through load balancing in storage fabrics remain — no silver bullets • Server-free backup remains a holy grail • Where does the metadata go? • Lack of granularity in “bare metal” backups

21. The Rise of Near-Line LAN/SAN IDE/ATA PLATFORMS OR TAPE (OR OPTICAL) FOR NEAR-LINE/STATIC STORAGE SCSI/FC DISK ARRAY FOR ON-LINE/ACTIVE STORAGE Select hosting platform Based on data characteristics And cost criteria

22. The Trouble with Load Balancing User Load Balancers Storage Servers Fabric Switch Data Storage Zone B E-mail Zone C Database Zone A – User Files

23. Big Issue: Potential Choke Point in Tape-based Data Restore Backups (Reads) From “Virtual Volumes” To Tape OK Restores (Writes) From Tape To “Virtual Volumes” Choked By “Virtualization” software Storage Servers “Virtual Volumes” “Virtualization” Engine Data Storage

24. Tape and “Virtualization” • Old software RAID write penalty…again • 100+ hours to restore 1 TB of files to virtualized environment • Concordance of backup & restore software and “virtualization engine” (LUN aggregation software) must be tested and verified

25. Get to Spring Training Camp • DR landscape complicated by burgeoning data and new technologies “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”* • Proactive strategies required “You can’t think and hit at the same time.”* • Need for frequent and thorough testing underscored “You can observe a lot by watching.”* * Storage Recovery a la Yogi Berra

26. The Game goes on • True storage networks coming soon to a theater near you… • DataCore and FalconStor pioneering platform-agnostic data re-hosting… • Work on standards-based management continues.. • De-facto (EMC) • Open (CIMOM)

27. Tips for Staying in the Game • Make recoverability a key criterion/consideration when selecting components, designing applications, architecting infrastructure, etc. • Filter through the market hype by becoming knowledgeable about technology and its limitations • SearchStorage.com • Drplanning.org • Join and attend a DR user group: learn from peers And remember Yogi Berra’s greatest line: “Baseball (like storage recovery) is 90% mental. The other half is physical.”

28. Next Year’s Topic: Hockey Greats DiscussWinning Virtualization Techniques (?!#@)

29. For further information… And look for Disaster Recovery Planning 3/e and The Holy Grail of Networked Storage Management Coming from Prentice Hall PTR in Summer 2002