The Changing Landscape of Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery (DR) means different things to different people.  For many IT professionals DR is associated with tape recovery and/or remote replication.    Recovery data from tape is fraught with challenges including rapid recovery and reliability.  Remote replication within primary storage is often complicated, expensive and inefficient requiring volumes to be restored versus specific files or data sets.

The combination of disk-to-disk (D2D) backup, data dedupe and replication offers a valuable approach to DR combining the granularity of recovering from a backup repository and the ability to leverage remote replication to store copies of data at an offsite location in the event of of site disasters and for offsite vaulting for long term retention.  For the vast majority of data this is a smart approach that serves the widest range of requirements for customers.  There will always be the need for primary remote replication but only for the corner cases in terms of who uses it and what it is used for.  However, I contend that D2D backup + data dedupe + remote replication has a much broader audience. 

Data Domain just announced an update to it's Replicator software.  I remember when Data Domain first came out with Replicator and speaking with customers that literally felt liberated by leveraging dedupe over wide area networks.  Dedupe enabled them to implement a DR strategy above and beyond what they had prior and still fit within their budgets. Five years later the solution is more mature, advanced and field proven.  Additionally, the use cases and value proposition have advanced and are proven.  Data Domain providing a combination of D2D backup + data dedupe + remote replication has impacted the data center in a number of important ways:

• Offers a cost effective and efficient DR solution that is otherwise impractical for many customers.

• Results in cost reductions include bandwidth, primary storage investment, power, cooling and floor space.
• This approach is "easy" versus perceived complications with using other DR methods (e.g. primary storage replication).
• Offers a more granular and rapid method of data recovery improving SLAs. 
• Makes it possible for customers to actually eliminate or greatly diminish the use of tape and tape libraries.  This is an important point and we are seeing momentum for tape obsolescence with a growing number of customers. 
• Multi-site replication provides a powerful and valuable solution for Enterprises with a large number of remote sites - this is enabling a new constituency to reap the rewards of this solution. Data Domain's recent expansion of 90 remote sites to a single DD690 is significant and makes it even more useful to large Enterprises. I will add, regardless of whether you have two or 90 remote sites fan into a single DD appliance at the central site is powerful especially when coupled with global dedupe. 

I have spoken to companies that did not implement remote replication because of cost - even though it was considered every year for five, eight and ten years.  And there are other companies that only replicate 10% to 20% of their data and use backup to protect the rest - they just could not rationalize the expense.  However, D2D backup + dedupe vastly changes the economics of remote replication and DR.  The landscape of DR is changing - enabled by D2D backup with dedupe - making it practical and valuable for the mainstream market.  Remote replication will drive the adoption of D2D backup with dedupe and D2D backup with dedupe will drive the adoption or remote replication.  This is a killer app on top of a killer app. 

Comments

[RDANIE]

Couldn't disagree with you more. Back-Up replication is the result of an old way of thinking (I need tape offsite!) DR is quickly becoming business continuity and Tier 1 apps often leverage Tier 3 data and need them in write order consitency. The future is everything is replicated remotely in production state and back up is not replicated. Back-Up is for local restore, remote replication is for business continuity in the event of a environmental or employee caused distruption (i.e. sets the data center on fire). If you have to go to your DR site you want the last good copy of data not a back-up from 90 days ago. Back-up replication doubles the cost and offers no benefit. What is the RTO from just DD / quantum / EMC off site with no servers, apps, storage to restore to....2 Weeks? In my eyes this is unacceptable to any organization. (Full Disclosure I am an EMC employee and can offer my customers both, just don't see the applicability of offsite back-up anymore.) Just my 2 cents

[Tony Asaro]

You are from EMC and disagree with me? I am shocked. Look - of course using remote replication for primary storage is a legitimate way to implement DR. But what all of you primary storage guys have to realize is that the majority of customers still leverage tape backup for DR - either exclusively or in conjunction with replication technologies provided by their storage systems. For many customers - it is too expensive to use primary storage remote replication for most or even all of their data. Using Data Domain versus tape for DR offers huge advantages - it is easy and economical and still fits within the acceptable RTO and RPO for most customers and most data. You may not see the need but the market does.