Data Protection Directions

How Effective Data Protection Management in Virtual Environments Can Drive VM Adoption

bocadablogs — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:19:30 +0000

Part 2 of a two part blog:

Recently, we have been very actively recruiting VAR partners for our new Vision module, a data protection service management solution for virtual environments. Naturally, we need to convince VARs that their customers will see the value in our solution, but in order to really gain their interests we have to convince them that implementing Vision can help them sell more backup management product and just as importantly, more VMWare instances.

Luckily, that is easily demonstrated and proves itself out pretty quickly- and here are the key points that get our partners excited about bring data protection management to their virtualization customers:

1) See previous blog…

2) Vision can help reduce capacity use for VM protection

OK so it’s pretty much a no brainer as to why this will matter to the customer- capacity costs money, and as more and more VMs go in, more capacity is used to protect them. Regardless of the amount of dedupe that is implemented with backup technology, when I have ten VMs running applications on a machine that could only run one application in the past, protecting the VMs will use up significant capacity. Vision provides in-depth visibility into capacity used for data protection activity.

It is particularly crucial to keep track of the amount of capacity snaps are taking up on a datastore. If a VM is only protected with snapshots, those snaps will reside on the datastore and can only be manually deleted. If the datastore runs out of capacity, the VMs will no longer work so it’s critical to be able to delete old snaps. Vision provides visibility into the snaps, how much capacity each one is taking up in the datastore, and shows how old they are (older ones can be candidates for deletion so capacity can be reclaimed).

3) Vision reveals the performance impact of running VM backups

Surveys show a key blocker for further VM adoption, particularly in the data center, is concern about application performance when sharing resources. Vision is the only management solution on the market that can tie the VM and host performance to backup activity- showing what the impact was to the CPU, memory and network performance during a backup. As organizations strive to put more and more VMs on a single host, it will be critical to ensure no one VM activity will impact the performance of any other resident VM.

By being able to see the impact backups are having on overall VM (and thus application) performance, administrators will be able to better schedule and load balance backup jobs in the VM environment.

Overall- the visibility Vision provides gives customers’ greater confidence that VMs are protected and recoverable, and helps ensure they can manage data protection costs and performance impacts. And in the end, that will help organization feel more confident about adopting additional VMs across the organization. That is a strong value proposition for any VAR to bring to their customer.

For more info on Bocada Vision go to http://www.bocada.com/products/vision/

How Effective Data Protection Management in Virtual Environments Can Drive VM Adoption

bocadablogs — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:47:59 +0000

Part 1 of a 2 part blog….

1) Vision can automatically tell customers if their VMs are protected and recoverable.

So why does this matter? One of the biggest concerns customers have about adopting VMs on a broader basis is that it “breaks backup”, and one reason for that is that it is very easy to mess up the standard backup processes when users can just spin up VMs on their own. In the past, it would be pretty difficult for user to bring in a physical server, put it on the network and start running say SQL and have no one in IT be aware of it…but that can happen with VMs. Unfortunately, when VMs get spun up, the people responsible for backup aren’t always made aware, and the application user may or may not set up even minimal protection (such as snapshots)…so it is quite possible that whatever is on those VMs will never be protected and certainly not recoverable.

Bocada Vision is integrated with vCenter, so it can see all VMs in the datastores, and provides an inventory report that shows if the VM is protected either by snaps or backup applications such as Quest vRanger, Veeam, NBU 7.1 or VMware Data Recovery. Vision will also show if the VM is double protected (snaps and backups) which can waste a lot of capacity. Bottom line- Vision gives the people who want to make sure VMs are recoverable immediate visibility, which helps reduce administrative costs and more importantly alleviates one critical concern about adopting more VMs

2) Vision can help reduce capacity use for VM protection…

3) Vision reveals the performance impact of running VM backups…

To be continued, come back in a few days to find out more about how Vision can help drive VM adoption. To find out more about Vision go to

http://www.bocada.com/products/vision

Nancy Hurley

CEO Bocada

twitter:@ Nancy_Hurley

Solving Virtual Data Protection Management Challenges

bocadablogs — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 03:26:36 +0000

We are very excited to be introducing a new product today aimed at solving key issues around data protection in virtual environments. Vision, a standalone module in the Bocada Prism family provides insight into backup activity in virtual environments, helping to ensure that VMs are recoverable. This is not just another virtualization management solution; Bocada Vision is the only product on the market that monitors the virtual environment with a lens on data protection. No other product on the market today provides the level of detail about snap activity, backup jobs, recovery points, capacity use and VM performance during backup windows. As VMs proliferate in the organization, this level of information about VM protection is critical to ensure that data is protected and recoverable as it is in the physical environment.

On initial release, Vision is integrated with vCenter and provides analysis for VMWare vDataRecovery, Quest vRangerPro, Veeam Backup and Recovery and Symantec NetBackup 7.1. We will be adding support for more of the market leading solutions that have specific functionality built in for protecting VMs (Vision will also support additional VM Platforms in the future). One of the most exciting things about coming to market with Vision is the cooperation and partnership we have experienced with VMWare, Quest and Veeam. These vendors see our solution as complementary to what they offer for data protection and have been very supportive in helping us get Vision out the door.
The following is an excerpt from our Vision solution overview. For more information go to: http://www.bocada.com/products/vision/

Today, we recognized that the state of data protection management for virtual environments is where open systems was ten years ago. Virtualization backup vendors are focused on addressing the complexities of backing up virtual instances, which requires integration with different hypervisors and virtual management solutions (i.e. vCenter or Systems Center), providing de-duplication to reduce capacity use and somehow ensuring that backups won’t kill performance of the host machines. All this combined with how rapidly users are adopting new virtualization technologies puts a strain on those vendors being able to supply in-depth reporting, let alone other DPSM functionality such as capacity and performance analysis.

Bocada commissioned Enterprise Strategy Group to do a research study in order to determine exactly how challenging backing up virtual instances was to end users, and the results were not terribly surprising. Protecting virtual instances has become a top ten challenge to over 85% of the survey respondents, confirming users are challenged by managing both snapshots and backups.

For more on this study go to http://www.bocada.com/solutions/virtual/

Also wanted to say- I’m really proud of the team, they have done a great job with this product!

Nancy Hurley
Bocada CEO

Up, Up, and Away to the Cloud

bocadablogs — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:38:17 +0000

It has been a very busy few weeks here at Bocada and if you are reading this blog you are witnessing the big changes first hand. A great deal of blood, sweat, and tears (okay maybe not blood and maybe only a few tears) as well as a great deal of effort went into the new design of our website. I cannot begin to tell you how many hours of meetings I had to sit through, but as you can see the end results were worth it. In addition to not only improving our web presence, we have also made our first leap into the cloud.

I don’t think that you can go to any technology or IT related website and not see something related to cloud computing or cloud development, but I really think that the way we utilize the cloud will really benefit anyone who would like to try Bocada Prism. What we have done is allow any customer who would like to test Bocada Prism but may not have the time to setup a lab environment, take Prism for a “Test Drive”. From the comforts of their own office, cubicle, or home a user can access Prism from the web and evaluate it with live data.

Now of course some features will not work such as emailing reports, and adding new backup servers to collect from, but all the major features and functionality will be at your disposal. What this means is now a Symantec user can really see the breadth and depth of our Storage Life Cycle reporting for Netbackup. A TSM user can see the level of detail Prism provides regarding policy changes and how those policy changes affected the outcome of the backups. Being able to witness the true power of Prism first hand I believe will really make the decision to add Prism to their environment a no brainer.

I am really excited to see the outcome of a great deal of hard work by everyone at Bocada and stay tuned as we continue to bring new and exciting features to the market.

By Ralph Wynn, Product Marketing Manager, Bocada, Data Protection Services Management and Backup Reporting Software

SLAs for Data Protection Services

bocadablogs — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 20:22:08 +0000

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are important for service providers of all kinds, including data protection services. Whether the SLA is part of a legal contract between companies, an internal agreement between departments or part of an overall service management model such as DPSM, the SLA provides both the service provider and consumer a clear agreement on what levels of service are expected.

The process starts with negotiation of the SLA, followed by monitoring and enforcement.

When negotiating the desired level of service you should make sure it reflects the way that backups are actually performed. For example, a typical backup strategy involves both incremental and full backups on different but related schedules. You should make sure that you distinguish between those when negotiating backup frequency.

Similarly, since doing backups during business hours can interfere with normal operations, you may want to agree to specific times during which the backups are run. You might want incremental backups to run on weekdays outside of business hours and full backups to run on weekends. The SLA should capture that detail so that if backups are run at the wrong time, it’s clear that the agreement has not been satisfied.

If a backup fails, can you still pass the SLA by running another backup job within the backup window? Or conversely, if a backup succeeds and then another one is run during the same window and fails, is the earlier backup sufficient or has the SLA now failed? Clarifying these details in advance can avoid disputes later.

After the SLA has been agreed to, it will need to be monitored. While it’s useful to know when the SLA failed, monitoring on a proactive basis can identify situations where an SLA might be in jeopardy of not being satisfied before it’s too late. And both the service provider and consumer should be able to see SLA status. While it’s obvious that you’ll want to monitor the percentage of satisfied SLAs, the unsatisfied SLAs actually fall into two categories: those that have failed and those that have not yet been satisfied. That might seem like mincing words but it is an important distinction.

When a backup is run and fails, the SLA for that backup has clearly failed (although it might be possible to pass by re-running the backup job). But what if a backup hasn’t run yet? The SLA hasn’t actually failed until the end of the requirement period, although the farther along you are in the requirement period (e.g., closer to the end of the month), the more likely it seems that the backup will not run, which will fail the SLA. So monitoring the SLAs that have not yet been attempted can help anticipate – and avoid – SLA failures.

Finally, SLAs are enforced by imposing a consequence of some kind when the SLA is not satisfied. These can range from financial penalties to service termination if the SLA is consistently missed. A best practice here is to make sure that the SLA is defined in a way that can be measured objectively and define specific thresholds for each consequence. But remember that the goal of an SLA is not to enforce penalties, but to make sure that both parties understand the expected quality level of the provided service.

by Bruce Leban, VP/Engineering, Bocada

Benefits of SLA Management with MSP’s

bocadablogs — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:06:16 +0000

Recently, Bocada announced an initiative to drive adoption of our solutions into the Managed Service Provider market. In reality, this has been an initiative all along; Bocada has a long history of working with some of the world’s largest MSPs to help them more effectively deliver backup services to their end-user customers. Actually, we developed the Data Protection Service Management model with our customers, and many MSPs were instrumental in defining the best practices outlined in the DPSM processes.

What is new about this initiative is the greater focus we have as an organization on the MSP market. This will include a campaign to educate MSPs about the DPSM model (after all their whole focus should be on service management), adding new features that help MSPs more effectively manage customer implementations (such as integration with trouble-ticketing systems) and better aligning with their business models (which means more flexible subscription pricing offerings).

MSPs in particular will benefit by implementing the DPSM model as the intent is to help streamline administration of the backup service offering, reduce costs and improve overall operational efficiencies. The processes in the DPSM model mirror those found in ITSM best practices, outlining a methodology to be proactive in managing to the needs of the customer, with a focus on driving communication with stakeholders to increase customer satisfaction. In very general terms, this means focus on managing to a service level agreement (SLA), which is essentially the business contract with the customer.

Managing to SLAs is a critical piece of the DPSM process and an essential practice for any MSP. By setting SLAs based on the needs of the business, and subsequently monitoring the results of SLA compliance, MSPs can better prioritize problem management activites and more effectively align with customer expectations. Proactive alerting and SLA impact analysis can help MSPs ensure that SLAs are compliant and continuous reporting to the customer about SLA results should have a very positive effect on customer retention (and cash flow, if the MSP can always prove they are delivering on the service as promised, there should be no question about paying the bill…).

As more and more organizations rely on managed service providers for their backup services, the market is getting competitive and effectively managing to SLAs and communicating results with customers will be critical for acquiring and retaining customers. Bocada’s initiative is to help MSPs effectively deliver backup services, meet SLAs and improve customer satisfaction while reducing overall costs of delivery.

More Validation for Treating Data Protection as a Core IT Service

bocadablogs — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:29:06 +0000

I’m at the mid-point of a two-week whirlwind trip around Europe visiting customers and partners’, talking about the Data Protection Service Management (DPSM) model and Bocada Prism. The reception to the concept of DPSM has been really encouraging. Last night I had a chance to attend StorageBeers, which is a monthly gathering of storage bloggers in the London area. These folks are all industry veterans, some are independent, many work in very large enterprise IT organizations. It was an interesting night, as HDS had just hosted UK and US bloggers at their own event just outside of London, and the group all came to the event. Infosmack (www.infosmack.com) was there doing a very informal podcast, and it was great to hear everyone weighing in on different storage and security topics of the day.

I was a bit surprised when my friend Mark Farley from Infosmack called me up to talk on the podcast about what is happening at Bocada, but of course I took the advantage to talk about DPSM and how organizations have to start thinking about data protection differently. Apparently, the HDS team had been talking quite a bit about information management in the data center during their event, and the DPSM message fits right into that concept. DPSM focuses on aligning data protection processes to the needs of the business, which means ensuring policies and SLAs are focused on protecting information assets according to their importance to business operations.

I talked about the idea that it was time organizations stopped ignoring the importance of backup/data protection and give data protection operations as much attention as they do any other critical IT service. When I mentioned that unfortunately ITSM also ignores data protection, one attendee raised his hand and said rather tongue in cheek “are you saying there is a gap in ITIL?”, to which I answered “absolutely, and that’s why we developed the DPSM model”. In case you have never been in the presence of a group of bloggers…they tend to be a slightly cynical group, so it was very encouraging to see a number of people nodding in agreement.

I had a number of conversations afterwards, it was great to get more questions about the model, our products and how customers have been implementing the DPSM process. Everyone I spoke with agreed that organizations would benefit from the DPSM approach, and that implementation of DPSM processes would drive efficiencies, improve overall results and reduce costs. The customers I have been visiting on this trip agree as well; today a high level manager at an MSP I visited said (without having heard any of the DPSM story mind you), “We don’t need a backup reporting solution, we need a service management solution”. That was music to my ears, because that’s exactly what we deliver….

For more information on the Data Protection Service Management model go to www.bocada.com/dpsm.php

By Nancy Hurley, CEO, Bocada, Data Protection Services Management and Backup Reporting Software

The Value of Data Protection Service Management Model

Bocada — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:15:38 +0000

In late 2009, Bocada introduced the idea of treating data protection operations as a true IT service rather than relegating the backup operations to the “backroom” of overall IT. At the time most backup admins recognized that while a significant amount of the IT budget (often up to 1/3rd) was spent on backup and recovery, little management attention was paid to improving overall operations. That is until there was a failure.

Since then, Bocada and our channel partners have worked with numerous customers to adopt the processes outlined in Bocada’s Data Protection Service Management (DPSM) model in order to help improve overall recovery rates, optimize resource use, improve customer satisfaction and reduce overall costs. The processes in the DPSM model mirror those found in ITSM best practices: the concept is to be proactive and align the data protection operations to the needs of the business, with a focus on customer satisfaction. In very general terms, this means focusing on managing to a service level agreement (SLA), which is essentially the business contract with the internal and/or external customer rather than just being reactive when a problem occurs.

Adoption of the DPSM model has been overwhelming. While many organizations had some level of SLA in place (and all have implied SLAs whether they actually call the expectations their customers have SLAs or not…), few really had implemented a process to assure the policies in place were optimally supporting the business while streamlining resource use. Fewer still constantly evaluated the overall operation to make sure SLAs were supportable. After adopting DPSM principles (and managing the processes with our purpose-built DPSM solution, Bocada Prism), IT organizations improved backup and recovery success rates, reduced administrative costs, improved their ability to meet SLAs and realized greater customer satisfaction through better communication about the state of operations. And all of that ends up helping to reduce costs, which definitely gets management attention.

The chart below shows results of an independent survey (by TechValidate www.techvalidate.com) of our end user customers — further proof that adopting the DPSM model has very positive results:

(See more survey results at http://www.bocada.com/customer_testimonials.php )

A few days ago, we introduced our latest revision of Bocada Prism, which further solidifies our leadership in the DPSM space. The latest revision offers new alerting and media analysis features, and adds a great deal more flexibility around SLA compliance reporting which is essential for effective SLA management. (Look for more technical detail on the new features in Prism in a future blog post from our VP of Engineering, Bruce Leban…coming soon!)

Overall, we are excited about the adoption of the DPSM model and the change in perception about the importance of data protection operations in the overall IT environment and the benefits that our customers have realized adopting these processes. For more information on the model and best practices please visit http://www.bocada.com/dpsm.php.

By Nancy Hurley, CEO, Bocada, Data Protection Services Management and Backup Reporting Software

The Case for Data Protection as a Service

dataprotectiondirections — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00:31 +0000

The following article was published today in CTR

Home CTR Exclusives The Case for Data Protection as a Service

Tuesday, 23 November 2010 13:38

By Nancy Hurley

IT Service Management (ITSM) aims to develop best practices and processes that marry IT service delivery with business needs for operational efficiencies and financial benefits, as well as for the increased satisfaction of internal or external users/customers. ITSM products abound for many applications, yet, for data protection (encompassing backup, replication, retention, and recovery), they are notably rare. Considering the fact that no business-critical applications can work if data is not available, it is surprising that so few such products are available.

If one accepts ITSM for data protection, we are required to think of data protection as a service in the first place– as a part of the value that IT delivers to the organization. Many enterprises are not “there” yet. Aside from inadequate or inefficient data protection that results in downtime, inaccessible data can cause lost revenues and perhaps even lost customers, especially for MSPs, cloud providers and complex infrastructures.

In these environments data protection is a critical IT service with business, financial and operational impact. These organizations, and the others that choose to adopt data protection as an IT service, would be wise to implement Service Level Agreements (SLAs) governing performance, availability and recovery/response as determined by business needs. SLAs and SLA management are integral to ITSM systems, and data protection as a service is no exception. Adopting an ITSM-like methodology, a Data Protection Service Management (DPSM) model, addresses these issues by establishing best practices guidelines and processes for data protection operations. These may involve standardizing on backup policies for certain functions, applications or servers; for example, daily full backups of Exchange servers with retention rates of 180 days. (It should go without saying that backup infrastructure must be able to support the business objectives.)

It’s incumbent on IT organizations to set terms and expectations appropriately, and to be able to report on their ability to meet those expectations. Creating SLAs, and managing IT operations according to those SLAs, vastly reduces risk and takes the guesswork out of delivering IT services to customers or stakeholders. SLAs for data protection in particular are rare, and if they exist, they are often outdated. In place of actionable, effective SLAs, many organizations rely on static reporting of backup successes and failures. This after-the-fact troubleshooting does little or nothing to help meet business goals or deliver value to the customer or internal department that receives the service.

An SLA that is merely implied instead of predetermined is often the most risky in terms of the provider-recipient relationship. The impact of incidents and failures becomes far greater than it could be. The recipient may have certain expectations (including unmeetable ones) or believe the service should be delivered at a certain level. Often the expectation is simply “all my data is and will be recoverable whenever I may want it,” while the provider believes and behaves differently. Corporate management, operations, and external auditors may have their own expectations. Customer satisfaction can rarely be achieved in this case, and a provider cannot prioritize or manage service problems because there are no realistic parameters for success.

Data protection SLAs, in fact, improve the process. Expecting all backups to work all the time is unreasonable considering the variables, from the application itself to the network status to the available capacity to the available window. With the above expectation, the IT manager would spend too much time making sure all backups work all the time, and all data is available. But managing to the SLA empowers the IT provider to identify which backup failures jeopardize which SLAs.

Being clear about what is achievable, and helping data owners understand the costs associated with data protection, creates agreement regarding expectations for recovery. This is becoming particularly vital to cloud and SaaS vendors that must communicate trust and credibility to their customers and prospective customers. These and other providers will find that consistently publishing SLA results increases customer retention and satisfaction, and reduces turnover.

No two providers will define success the same way, or have the same vision of what SLA compliance means to their customers. Standardized automated reporting is helpful for assessment and troubleshooting, particularly when multiple data protection applications are in use. However automated error reporting only shows a small portion of the overall picture, and if the point is to meet service delivery objectives, then more comprehensive management is required. A true DPSM solution can analyze whether or not an organization is meeting its business goals. DPSM tools evaluate the infrastructure’s ability to adhere to promised service levels, determine which job failures impact the potential success of the SLA and why, and eliminate redundant policies to allow the IT resources (human, technical, capital and otherwise) to focus on fewer more relevant tasks. DPSM tools also perform many more functions to ensure recovery, reduce risk and improve customer satisfaction. With this analysis capability, providers can also respond better to audits because there is supporting documentation that shows that the correct data is being retained for the correct span of time.

Data protection is too critical not to be considered in terms of its impact on business goals, and it deserves the same attention to best practices and process success as all other mission-critical IT services. The DPSM model, including managing to SLAs, significantly improves IT business alignment, reduces capital costs and improves customer satisfaction.

Nancy Hurley is president and CEO of Bocada, Inc. (http://www.bocada.com), a market leader in data protection services management. She is most familiar to the industry as a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) where she provided strategic consulting to vendors in the storage software and infrastructure markets. She has held executive positions with Sun Microsystems, Tektronix Communications and Hewlett Packard

Trend Reports are Critical for Optimizing Backup Operations

dataprotectiondirections — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:36:28 +0000

Here is another in our series of articles providing details on Bocada’s Data Protection Service Management model. This one focuses on the benefits of historical trending reports for improving overall backup operations.

While effective problem management requires being able to view errors as they occur for quick troubleshooting, the ability to view trends in the backup environment is essential for effective data protection service management. Long-term trends help reveal chronic problems with individual servers, networks, tape or disk arrays. Trending can also reveal a number of issues not initially apparent from hourly or daily errors, such as drive contention, problems with scheduling causing backup window issues or if there are underlying infrastructure or hardware problems.

Developed in partnership with leading enterprise customers and service providers, the Bocada DPSM model is an ITSM-like actionable methodology targeted at enhancing the delivery of data protection services. Trending backup results over time is an essential aspect of both an overall Health Check and effective Policy Management. Trending will reveal what policies should be modified to ensure operational success. Publishing reports promotes better communication results with customers thereby increasing satisfaction rates.

Some of the trending reports found in the Bocada Prism, the first and only data protection service management solution purpose-built to intuitively drive users through the multi-phased DPSM process, include:

Job Trends – shows detailed backup behavior over time, potentially unveiling chronic job failures
Backup Trends – viewing the amount of data being backed up during a given time period is instrumental for both storage planning and optimization, and identifying trends
Backup Duration Trends – addresses the ongoing challenge of backup windows, allowing users to compare their static backup window with backup duration trends
Media Usage Trends – allows users to analyze the impact of backup trends on their media volumes over time
Occupancy Trends – shows how overall storage changes over time, thus enabling users to predict future storage needs and measure the impact of changes to backup policy
Error Trends – enables backup administrators to see error count trending and quickly identify which error types are the biggest offenders

Being able to deliver on SLAs is critical for operational excellence and customer satisfaction. An effective DPSM solution must provide the ability to see both what is occurring now as well as provide the ability to historically track multiple dimensions of backup activity in order to enable users to optimize their data protection operations. Armed with this knowledge, administrators can modify policies accordingly in order to optimize backup performance and resource use.

For more information visit www.bocada.com

Nancy Hurley

CEO