Simplifying Data Protection with Next-Generation Converged Infrastructure

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1 Sponsored by: Veritas Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and secondary storage connected to the cloud are changing the way IT organizations approach data protection. These systems offer greater usability and flexibility while simplifying deployment. Simplifying Data Protection with Next-Generation Converged Infrastructure Written by: Phil Goodwin, Introduction Research Director Modern data protection has evolved significantly beyond the once-per-day backup to tape common during the client/server era. Line-of-business managers take for granted that data will always be available and will never be lost. IT organizations use a complex integration of technologies such as snapshots, mirrors, replication, and cloud to meet ever more stringent service-level requirements and expectations. Yet, IDC research has found that more than 25% of organizations have suffered AT A GLANCE KEY STATS By 2020, 60% of applications will have a cloud-related component. KEY TAKEAWAYS Successful data-driven organizations will adopt new data protection tools and strategies in an effort to deliver zero downtime with zero data loss. an unrecoverable data loss event within the past three years. Adding cloud-based applications to established on-premise applications makes protecting data even more challenging. IDC estimates that 60% of IT organizations will have a digital transformation (DX) strategy defined and under way by For many of these organizations, the objective is to become data driven. Data-driven organizations are able to monetize data by using information in insightful ways that yield competitive advantage. Clearly, organizations cannot evolve to becoming data driven without having an infrastructure that can deliver data in a way that is reliable, timely, and accurate. Successful data-driven organizations will deliver better data availability than their competitive peers. Currently, the best practice recovery point objective (RPO) is 15 minutes, meaning that organizations can lose up to 15 minutes of processed data. The best practice recovery time objective (RTO) is four hours, meaning that data may not be available for up to a half workday. Data-driven organizations will find these levels to be unsatisfactory and will drive as close to zero downtime with zero data loss as technologically possible. Achieving this goal will require new strategies for data protection what will include on-premise recovery as well as seamless recovery to and from the cloud. June 2018

2 Our research has also found that more than 70% of CIOs have a "cloud first" application deployment strategy. Yet, on-premise applications remain in place and are often mission critical. We expect more than 60% of applications to have a cloud component (e.g., SaaS, hybrid cloud, or multicloud) by As a result, data is spread across on-premise and public cloud repositories that are likely to be geographically dispersed. Traditional methods of backup and recovery alone will not be able to deliver the data availability required in such a distributed environment. In addition to data distributed across cloud environments, IT organizations not only must gather and protect data but must also deliver data to an increasing number of devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT). In many cases, IoT-created data must be protected in real time and protected in the cloud. Moreover, NoSQL data deployments and containers dynamically move data across broad infrastructure deployments and in ways that mean traditional schedulebased data protection may not be fully adequate. Clearly, data availability is a key factor for IT organizations in their pursuit of successful DX. The combination of greater uptime and availability requirements, data widely distributed across repositories and geographies, and new data types and devices will require fresh thinking and a different approach to data protection. Definitions» Recovery point objective (RPO): The point in time at which data is protected and known to be consistent and recoverable; also known as the maximum amount of data loss expected (For example, snapshots taken every 15 minutes would yield a 15-minute RPO, which means that the maximum potential data loss is data acquired in the 15 minutes between snapshots.)» Recovery time objective (RTO): The total amount of time expected for data to be restored to a consistent state and ready for application use» Purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA): A storage appliance built with software specifically to serve as a target repository for backup streams» Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI): Compute, network, and storage nodes tightly integrated with virtualization resources to create an integrated deployment platform» Secondary storage: Storage systems intended for secondary use cases (i.e., not production applications) such as data protection, test/dev, and archive» Hybrid cloud: An environment that utilizes both on-premise (private cloud) resources and public cloud resources in support of a single use case» Multicloud: An environment that utilizes two or more public cloud resources in support of a single use case Benefits HCI and secondary storage are the newest generations of data protection products. Although HCI supports a variety of applications, data protection is often a primary use case for HCI. Secondary storage, which may or may not have as much compute power as HCI, is designed to offer data protection as well as the ability to leverage backup data stores for other purposes, such as analytics, test/dev, and staging. These systems differ from traditional PBBAs in that PBBA devices are used exclusively for data backup. Some PBBAs, which we refer to as integrated devices, include backup software and server capabilities, but again, they are designed for use in data backup only. Page 2

3 HCI and secondary storage systems can move data directly into cloud repositories without the use of secondary gateways. Most IT organizations choose to deploy these systems on-premise to facilitate the fastest backup and have a local backup copy for rapid restore. At the same time, IT will configure the system to send another copy to a cloud repository for offsite safety or other purposes. This hybrid cloud data protection has become the standard architecture within the industry. Implementing a consolidated, hybrid cloud data protection strategy can yield many organizational benefits, including:» Better data availability o Automatically tiering storage between on-premise and the cloud facilitates fast backup and restore as well as DR-ready backup data sets. o A comprehensive approach reduces the number of data protection solutions needed to address the organization's diverse data repositories and types by minimizing the number of "moving parts" needed to complete a data recovery.» Consistent data management o Company-specific data management, recovery, and retention policies can be applied regardless of whether the application is on-premise or cloud based.» Simpler operations o Consolidated systems have a faster setup time and require less training and less human intervention to operate. o Consistent data protection across the enterprise can be enabled.» More time for strategic activities o Less time managing backups means more time for proactively engaging with the business units. o Time and resources are increased for other application deployment or enhancement activities.» Better employee satisfaction Trends o New technology with better service-level agreements (SLAs) results in fewer user complaints and less time reacting to problems. o IT personnel learn new skills with leading-edge products that enhance career development. Hyperconverged and secondary storage systems (current-generation secondary storage devices are hyperconverged) have become major disruptors to the data protection industry. These data protection appliances fully integrate all components of the data protection stack including servers, storage, backup/recovery software, and cloud gateway interfaces. These appliances differ from PBBAs in that they are designed to do more than simply function as a backup target or recovery source. Instead, they are fully functioning platforms capable of supporting multiple workloads. Page 3

4 However, like PBBAs, the fully integrated hardware and software of HCI make deployment much faster and simpler than the traditional backup environment that requires setup master and media servers, VPNs, software installation, and so on. In addition to simpler installation, secondary storage systems allow easier implementation of service-level and data management policies. These policies can be set globally or on an application-by-application basis and may be monitored through a central reporting mechanism. They also enable automated tiering to the cloud by policy. Thus, in many cases, these systems are ideal for hybrid cloud application and data protection deployments that routinely move data to and from a public cloud with internal protocol support for various public clouds. Considering Veritas The Veritas Flex Appliance is a hyperconverged appliance designed specifically to meet the needs of hybrid cloud data protection. Consistent with this category, it is a fully integrated appliance for diverse, large-scale environments. Veritas has created an entirely new design to simplify deployment across all workloads. The differentiation of the Veritas Flex Appliance begins with a unique implementation based on container technology. With this container technology, data protection microservices can be delivered on an application-by-application basis. This allows the IT team to respond to specific data protection service-level requirements or data management policies as required by specific business units. In this way, financial, HR, and customer data as well as other data subject to certain and different regulations can be easily managed according to those regulations. This microservice architecture provides "DevOps-like" functionality to make these microservices available to application developers and users on demand, in groups, or enterprisewide. Tiering data to the cloud is an example of one of the microservices available through Flex Appliance. Flex Appliance represents an entirely new architecture for Veritas, a company known for its market share leadership in data protection and recovery software with NetBackup and Backup Exec. Despite the newness of the Flex Appliance architecture, Veritas has provided a smooth upgrade path for NetBackup users with Flex Appliance and its key future capabilities. Current NetBackup users can transfer their licenses to Flex Appliance in a software-defined manner. These users can get all the features and functionality of NetBackup as well as the newer capabilities of Flex Appliance on a single platform. NetBackup CloudCatalyst, the mechanism that orchestrates moving data to the Veritas Access Appliance and to the cloud for long-term retention, is also deployed as a containerized service. The multicloud capabilities of this suite currently include Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, and Google Cloud, among others, and allow data to be moved easily between on-premise and cloud repositories. Flex Appliance is designed to provide the scalability for large-scale organizations with a maximum usable capacity of 2PB. Highly available configurations are available for organizations that have the most demanding uptime requirements for their data protection infrastructure. Challenges Secondary storage systems based on HCI technology are the fastest-growing segment of the data protection and recovery infrastructure market. As a result, start-up and established vendors alike are quickly developing products to address the end-user demand and a highly competitive market is forming. Veritas' success will largely depend upon the company's ability to deliver leading-edge capabilities. However, Veritas has the advantage of a large Page 4

5 NetBackup installed base that it can leverage as likely customers for Flex Appliance, an advantage that start-up vendors do not have. Veritas has identified simplicity as a key success factor, and we agree with that perspective. This simplicity must extend to both NetBackup customers that are upgrading and new customers. This onboarding experience is likely to set the long-term perception of the product and must be carefully addressed. Conclusion Flex Appliance may be the most important product announcement by Veritas since the company split from Symantec some years ago. Flex Appliance is a new architecture designed specifically for modern data protection workloads. It also offers an important bridge back to NetBackup environments that should provide this large group of users a logical and simple path forward. Veritas is among the first major vendors to move into this rapidly emerging and growing product category. It does so with the clear advantage of a large, receptive installed base and with credibility built on its successful NetBackup appliance. Organizations cannot evolve to becoming data driven without having an infrastructure that can deliver data in a way that is reliable, timely, and accurate. Flex Appliance's microservices architecture is also built to address the diverse data protection and management needs of specific business units and applications. Thus, as a single system, it can simultaneously provide consolidated data protection operations with the ability to deliver microservices on a best-in-class basis for specific workloads. We believe that Flex Appliance may be the key to Veritas retaining its market-leading position in the data protection and recovery market. IDC Corporate USA 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701, USA T F idc-insights-community.com This publication was produced by IDC Custom Solutions. The opinion, analysis, and research results presented herein are drawn from more detailed research and analysis independently conducted and published by IDC, unless specific vendor sponsorship is noted. IDC Custom Solutions makes IDC content available in a wide range of formats for distribution by various companies. A license to distribute IDC content does not imply endorsement of or opinion about the licensee. External Publication of IDC Information and Data Any IDC information that is to be used in advertising, press releases, or promotional materials requires prior written approval from the appropriate IDC Vice President or Country Manager. A draft of the proposed document should accompany any such request. IDC reserves the right to deny approval of external usage for any reason. Copyright 2018 IDC. Reproduction without written permission is completely forbidden. Page 5