89 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY White Paper

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1 89 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY White Paper Streamline Data Protection with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center May 2013

2 Printed in the United States of America Copyright 2013 Edison Group, Inc. New York. Edison Group offers no warranty either expressed or implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for errors resulting from its use. All products are trademarks of their respective owners. First Publication: May 2013 Produced by: Hanny Hindi, Senior Analyst; Barry Cohen, Editor-in-Chief; Manny Frishberg, Editor

3 Table of Contents Executive Summary... 1 Introduction... 2 Data Protection with TSM and Operations Center... 3 Beyond Backup... 3 Business Decisions, not Backup Decisions... 3 An Expanded Role for TSM Administrators... 3 The Power of Visualization... 5 CLIs, GUIs, and the New Generation of TSM Admins... 5 The Morning Coffee Report... 6 Signal and Noise... 7 IBM s New Approach to Software Development... 8 Customer-Centric, Transparent Development... 8 The Early Access Program... 8 Continuing Development... 8 Conclusion: Control and Automation... 9 Control... 9 Automation... 9

4 Executive Summary In recent years, "data" has gone from being a collection of disparate resources housed in various IT systems to being a main component of enterprise productivity and innovation. More and more often, product development and demographic targeting are driven by data aggregation and sophisticated analysis. Where only the largest organizations dealt in terabytes a decade ago, massive sets of market and customer data often described under the moniker "Big Data" are now the norm. Data management and protection has always been an essential part of any enterprise IT infrastructure. However, in today s environment, it is more important than ever before. Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) has been an industry-standard data protection solution for nearly two decades. But, where most competitors focus exclusively on Backup and Restore, TSM is a far more comprehensive data-protection solution. According to Cobalt Iron s Richard Spurlock, the effect of this reorientation from backup to data is crucial: TSM allows organizations to make business decisions, not backup decisions. Those business decisions have to be made around data protection, and traditional backup products don't help customers with that. The most recent version of TSM includes the Operations Center Dashboard, which enables at-a-glance monitoring and reporting, by synthesizing thousands of lines of data into a single screen. The "Morning Coffee" report, which once required a couple dozen command terminals to produce, is now available in an instant. This allows TSM administrators to take on more responsibilities as IT organizations become increasingly complex and staff are forced to do more with ever fewer resources. With the introduction of a fully functional Graphical User Interface later this year, TSM will become more accessible to the latest generation of IT administrators. As IBM Storage User Interface Architect, Martine Wedlake explained, "Kids coming out of college are not the [Command Line Interface] wonks that we were when we came out of school." With the Operations Center Dashboard, they won't have to be. Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 1

5 Introduction In June, IBM is releasing the latest version of their Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) data protection solution, which includes the Operations Center Dashboard. This is the most substantial improvement to TSM in many years. With a visual dashboard, administrators can identify areas that require attention at a glance, rather than sorting through dozens of command terminals. This frees them up to take on more responsibilities in increasingly complex IT organizations that are forced to do more with fewer and fewer resources. The major areas of innovation include the following: Data Protection Rather than focusing exclusively on backup, Tivoli Storage Manager is a comprehensive data protection solution. As enterprises begin to use much larger data sets in far more sophisticated ways, shifting focus away from backup and toward data is essential. By building up from data objects rather than backwards from backup media, Tivoli Storage Manager addresses a continuum of data within an enterprise, according to Cobalt Iron Founder and CEO Richard Spurlock. Visualization Like nearly all data protection solutions on the marketplace, TSM has primarily been a command-line tool, until the release of Operations Center. This visual dashboard synthesizes thousands of lines of data onto a single-screen. As TSM Server Architect Colin Dawson explained, "It was important for us to separate the signal from the noise. TSM produces tons of data, but Operations Center only surfaces the most important data, rather than forcing people to wade through activity logs, historical logs, etc. It gives admins a view of what they need to do at a glance." Transparent Development It took 18 months and 14 iterations to arrive at the current version of the Operations Center Dashboard. Rather than doing so in a closed, stealth development process, IBM s developers invited current TSM customers to their Early Access Program. This allows data administrators to contribute feedback as the product was being developed, avoiding requests for changes to a near-final product. IBM will continue working with customers to develop the TSM Operations Center through In particular, they will introduce control functionality that will transform the Dashboard into a full-featured Graphical User Interface (GUI), and automation tools that will allow them to simplify data protection even further, expanding their roles beyond just Tivoli Storage Manager administration. Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 2

6 Data Protection with TSM and Operations Center Beyond Backup Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) has been an industry-standard data protection solution for nearly two decades. But where most competitors focus exclusively on backup and restore, TSM is a far more comprehensive data protection solution. As Cobalt Iron s Richard Spurlock said, "TSM is fundamentally different than other backup and recovery systems. It's about data protection: backup, archiving, space management, policy-based retention, etc. Customers don't care about 'Wednesday backup.' They care about 'my data,' and TSM addresses a continuum of data within an enterprise." In part, this is because TSM is built from data, forward, rather than engineered backward from backup media. "TSM allows you to treat data differently because it doesn't track tapes; it tracks objects," said Wanda Prather, Information Technology Consultant at ICF International. Given the increasing complexity of data, and the increasingly sophisticated ways that enterprises use it, a data protection solution needs to allow administrators to identify and handle different types of data in a specially defined manner. Business Decisions, not Backup Decisions The effect of this reorientation from backup to data is crucial, especially given the radically different role that data plays in enterprises today, compared with just a few years ago. While the importance and complexity of enterprise data systems are growing, the resources available to manage and protect that data are shrinking. CIOs and CTOs expect their teams to do more despite lower IT budgets. This is especially challenging in very specialized areas like data protection, where, until recently, highly complex command-line tools have been the norm. An Expanded Role for TSM Administrators The experience and expertise required to manage such tools has meant that labor accounted for nearly 40 percent of data protection costs. Dedicated TSM Administrator is a much less common job title today than it might have been only five years ago. In the past, IT personnel assigned to data protection might be expected to focus on a single task, such as administering an instance of TSM. This is no longer feasible. Keith Zunker, National IBM Tivoli Software Brand Lead at Sirius Computer Solutions, said, IT budgets are shrinking, and organizations have to do more with what they have." Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 3

7 While enterprises are not necessarily reducing headcount in their IT departments, existing data administrators need to do more with their time. The latest version of TSM especially the new Operations Center enables them to do so. According to Bill Steadman at Sirius Computer Solutions, "While organizations won't necessarily need fewer administrators, day-to-day management will become easier and more efficient, freeing up administrators to manage other processes. The key factor that sets TSM Operations Center apart from previous versions and most competitive data protection tools is visualization. Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 4

8 The Power of Visualization CLIs, GUIs, and the New Generation of TSM Admins Like most data protection solutions, TSM has traditionally been a command-line only tool. With proper training, certain functions can be handled much more quickly and efficiently using a command line interface, according to Richard Spurlock. For some activities, using the command line can be orders of magnitude more efficient. Nonetheless, the newest generation of computer science graduates has significantly less experience with CLIs than data protection veterans. IBM Storage User Interface Architect Martine Wedlake said this is one of the many reasons IBM has taken a more "graphical" approach with Operations Center. For CIOs considering their staffing needs over the next five, 10 and 15 years, this is an especially important consideration. "The art of running things from the command line is disappearing. Operations Center is going to be a real benefit to admins who grew up in a GUI world," said IBM's Daniel Muret. Even if primary TSM administrators still need to be comfortable with a CLI, Operations Center allows support staff to be drawn from a wider pool. "If you have a dedicated TSM administrator and need someone to back them up, Operations Center is going to be perfect for that," Muret said. However, even for those with years of experience spent in front of Linux terminals, there are areas where a CLI is significantly less efficient than a graphical approach. This is especially true of reporting and monitoring. Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 5

9 The Morning Coffee Report Figure 1: TSM Operations Center Dashboard Every TSM administrator spends the first part of their workday doing the same thing: reviewing the previous day s backups and identifying issues that require immediate attention. With a CLI, producing this "Morning Coffee" report is cumbersome and inefficient. Muret said he needs 24 command windows to review the status of his environment, whereas Operations Center allows him to get the same status update in a single screen. Roger Stakkestad, Storage Architect at Peanuts AS in Norway, has had a similar experience: "TSM Operations Center gives me an excellent status overview at a glance. Before, it would be virtually impossible to get the same overview of a TSM environment." The core of Operations Center is the Overview Dashboard, which provides the at-aglance overview. The Overview Dashboard highlights the percentage of TSM clients, applications, virtual machines, and servers that are "at risk" (as defined by each admin's custom thresholds), as well as providing an overview of TSM server performance and availability. With this release, administrators can click on items requiring attention to call up the relevant shell window and take action. In upcoming versions, they will be able to perform actions such as reviewing logs or migrating storage devices from within the Operations Center GUI. (See more in the "Control and Automation" section, below.) Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 6

10 Signal and Noise As experienced TSM administrators will immediately recognize, summarizing the output of a TSM instance on a single screen requires the synthesis of a huge amount of data. IBM determined that it was important to separate the signal from noise. While TSM generates vast amounts of data, Operations Center presents administrators a view of only the most important data for what they need to do, at a glance, so they need not wade through activity logs, historical logs, etc. The result is not just a dashboard that will make it easier for younger administrators who are more familiar with GUIs to use TSM. It is an invaluable tool for experienced veterans. IBM s Colin Dawson described the evolution he witnessed over the course of the development process, saying: "[E]ven experienced admins who said, I'm never using a GUI at the beginning of the process came away saying, Okay, I'm definitely going to use this dashboard. Less experienced users recognized the value of the Operations Center right away." Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 7

11 IBM s New Approach to Software Development Customer-Centric, Transparent Development It took IBM s developers nearly two years to identify and present exactly the right information in the Operations Center Dashboard. To be precise, the dashboard went through 14 iterations over the course of 18 months. Rather than a "stealth development" process, developers shared every mockup with active TSM administrators, and used their feedback to improve the next version. IBM implemented this approach to assure that the dashboard would give TSM administrators the most important features and capabilities in the format that makes the most sense in a live environment. Rather than relying on their assumptions about what users might need to arrive at that goal, IBM invited them to join their "Early Access Program." IBM's Colin Dawson describes the development process this way: "We created 15 different mockups of the Operations Center dashboard. We would send them out to customers in our Early Access Program every four to six weeks, and have a call to discuss their feedback. We iterated through it a number of times, refining the design until everybody said, 'Yes, this is what I want. This is what I need to be successful.' We spent months doing this before we wrote a lick of code." The Early Access Program Members of the Early Access Program were thrilled with IBM's new approach. Richard Spurlock (Cobalt Iron): IBM's development team conducted usability studies with customers before the beta even started. It was fantastic. Wanda Prather (CFI International): We met the developers at the Pulse conference last year, and they flew out to the East Coast to meet our user group and discuss what we need. They made sure to gather interactive feedback from actual users. Continuing Development This release does not mean that IBM's developers are going to stop iterating based on customer feedback. It simply lays the foundation for the next stage of development. It expands the base of TSM users who can work with the new dashboard, and offer feedback and advice on what they need next. In the broadest sense, however, the next stages are already defined: Control and Automation. Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 8

12 Conclusion: Control and Automation The current release of TSM and the TSM Operations Center represents Phase One of a continuous development process. Up until this point, IBM developers have built the Operations Center Dashboard in cooperation with members of the Early Access Program. That program will remain in place. Customers who use the Operations Center Dashboard in a live environment will also have the opportunity to contribute feedback and set the direction for the next two major phases of development for TSM. Control As even some of the most committed CLI advocates found over the course of the Early Access Program, visual dashboards represent a huge advance over monitoring and reporting on data systems with manual commands or custom scripts, which need to be revised with each update. While many TSM users will still prefer to use a command line to actually manage their data stores, others will want to do so with a GUI. Early Access Members are already testing GUI control features that allow them to perform many functions (including migrations and backups) with a few clicks. IBM expects to include this functionality by the end of Automation After introducing Control features and therefore a fully interactive GUI in the next major iteration of TSM Operations Center, IBM will enable the automation of certain administrative tasks based on custom thresholds. This area is still in the very earliest phases of design and development. As before, its final form will depend on multiple iterations based on customer feedback. Edison: Streamline Data Protection with Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center Page 9