2. About Audax Group
• Background
- Founded 1999, ~140 ppl, offices in Boston & New York
- Investor in lower-middle market companies
- Manage over $5B of assets through our private
equity, mezzanine debt, and private senior debt
businesses
3. Copy Data Management Visualized
Status Quo
Infrastructure-Centric Data Management
1 Redundant – Multiple silos, same 4 primitives
2 Complex – Keep adding to relieve “symptoms”
3 Slow – Moving lots of data across networks
DUPLICATION + INFRASTRUCTURE +
OPERATIONS + COMPLEXITY + COST
Information-Centric Data Management
1 Flexible – Any environment (virtual, hybrid…)
2 Simple – One integrated data protection app
3 Fast – Data mounts directly to production
4. A whole new market category…
13 March 2013 ID:G00248888
To go from good to great, storage administrators should
evaluate these types of tools:
“Copy data management: These products can
perform a host of functions, including backup,
archiving, replication and creation of test data
using a minimal number of copies.”
5. …And a ‘Best Practice’
Best Practices for Repairing the Broken State of Backup
“The notion of copy data
management — which reduces the
proliferation of secondary copies of
data for backup, disaster
recovery, testing and reporting — is
becoming increasingly important to
contain costs and to improve
infrastructure agility.” 15 August 2013 G00252768
Dave Russell
VP Distinguished Analyst
6. Copy Data Growth Drivers
Q: What are the reasons for growth of secondary data copies?
Increased number of applications
More copies per application are created
Larger size of secondary copies to be created
Regulatory requirements to store data for a
specific period of time
New/expanded use of business analytics
Lack of data copy management tools and/or
practices
Other
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
N=556
% of respondents
9. Context and Problem
• Situation
- Resource & time intensive business processes require
immediate systems performance and limited downtime
- 5 ESX Hosts, 50 servers, 16TB storage, Dual LTO4
- 500k emails/mo (3,500/FTE); annual data growth 10%
• The Problem
- Backup window entering business day
- Business continuity technology didn’t protect all
systems & relied on tape* for server restoration
- Level 1 RTOs range 5hrs (SQL) to 12hrs (email), 48hrs (file)
- Backup email service not acceptable for multi-hour use
* If tapes are corrupt, RPO grows to 7 days or longer.
10. Objectives
• Justification & Business Case
- Fully protect all company systems
- Eliminate need for expensive Tier 1 storage
- Establish Co-Lo for systems and personnel
- Free-up expensive real estate (i.e., NY Server Room)
- Avoid growing IT staff
• Specific Goals & Timeline
- 3 month project start-to-finish
- Major improvement of RPO/RTO
12. Approach: Options
• Alternatives Considered
- Expand existing host-based replication software
(DoubleTake, WANSync)
- Veeam + new storage
• Pushing limits of tech at a comparatively higher cost
• Considerations
Failover: How long to “spin up”
server in Production site? DR?
Application support: Linux,
Exchange, SQL, Server,
SharePoint?
Storage: How much required?
De-dupe/compression (important
if using one device for backup)?
Replication: Site-to-site onpremise capable? Site-to-Cloud
(If so, what limitations, if any)?
Severability vs. Integration:
Acceptable risk if part of VM
environment (vs. standalone)?
Data Restore: Server vs. itemlevel? Number of snapshots?
How long to “spin up” server?
Cost: Savings from HW/ SW
elimination, avoidance &
downsizing? Staff optimization?
Timing: Natural refresh cycle of
related HW/ SW (e.g., storage,
dedupe, backup, data center)?
Connectivity: Local
environment (Fibre vs. iSCSI)?
WAN (1MB/5/10/100/1GB)?
13. Approach
• Strategies
- Engage business management to participate in people/
process change and define system priorities
- Embrace opportunity around architecture change
• Technologies Leveraged
- Actifio, VMware, Cisco, Metro-E (100MB)
14. Our Actifio Environment
SITE A: PRODUCTION
SITE B: FAILOVER
Ingest Server ONCE
only changed blocks
Capture
(zero backup window)
Instantly mount recovered data
(zero restore window)
Recreate data
on demand
only unique blocks
Store
(10X lower storage)
Incremental restore for BC
Move only unique blocks
(70% less bandwidth)
Instantly mount
recovered data
(zero restore window)
Recreate
data on
demand
15. Challenges & Results
• Biggest Challenges
- Overly aggressive protection SLAs @ start
- Multiple power outages during transition
- Metro-E providers didn’t provide “true” Layer 2
• How Did We Overcome Them (Or Not)?
- Increased RPOs for Level 2 & 3 systems
- Stopped synchronization for 18 hours to re-index
system
- Implement Network Interface Devices (NIDs) to route
all Layer 2 traffic (necessary for Metro-E High
Availability)
16. Challenges & Results
• Results: $ and Intangible
- Increased short-term costs, but $150k less than
alternative.
- Met all RPO/RTO objectives; didn’t meet timeline
• Metro-E networking issues were unforeseen
• Upside Surprises
- Added near real-time restoration of item-level objects
from any backup of Exchange & SharePoint
- Decided to move Production to Co-LO; new storage
implementation to be handled through Actifio
17. Lessons Learned & Recommendations
• Lessons Learned
- Engage telecom carrier Engineering early on
- Use project as opportunity to review Business
Continuity on a holistic basis
- Partner w/ cross-functional vendor (storage, backup)
• What Would We Do Differently?
- Less aggressive with Level 2 & 3 SLAs @ start
- Test network technology earlier & more often
18. Quantifying The Problem
The Copy Data Ratio (CDR)
Total Data in
Environment
(TB)
Total Amount
of Production
Data (TB)
100
Example: (45TB / 8TB ) x 100 = 563
19. Quantifying The Problem
The Copy Data Ratio (CDR)
What’s Your Number?
100 – 150
150 – 350
350 – 700
700 –
1,000
Optimistic
Opportunistic
Urgency
Crisis
563
20. Evaluating CDR Score in Relation to
Operational Complexity
High
3
1
Opportunity for
savings, some
efficiency gains
Transformational
opportunity for
savings,
efficiency gains
Tools
in Use
563
4
2
Limited savings,
efficiency
opportunities
Large opportunity
for savings,
efficiency gains
Low
Low
Copy Data Ratio
High
21. Summary
• Copy data is a source of significant spend and
inefficiency in the enterprise
• Impact felt most severely on revenue-generating and
business-agility initiatives
• Delays / issues due to resource drain from copy data
sprawl
• Important to understand the magnitude of the
problem
• Calculating the Copy Data Ratio (CDR) can help
influence an action plan based on effort / impact
analysis