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Backup Planning with Sun StorEdge™ Resource Managment Suite Software

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Copyright Information 2002, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Backup Has Become the “Killer App” with Storage Networks . . . 6

Why Bother with Backups? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Cost of Downtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Efficient Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Using Sun StorEdge™ Resource Management Suite Software to Ensure Data Protection and Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Backup Antidote: Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Software8

Data Decisions Are Empowered by Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Streamlining Backup Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Instituting Backup Best-Practice Processes Starts with Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Capacity Auditing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Performing Networkwide File Prospecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Planning Better Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Gauging Backup Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Balancing Backups For Better Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

iv Backup Planning with Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Software—February 2002

5

Backup Planning with Sun StorEdge™ Resource Management Suite Software

AbstractIndustry reports continuously cite the billions of dollars that U.S. firms spend yearly due to significant data loss and the millions of business days each year they must devote to recreating lost data. Many of these same companies have no formal policy describing how or how often data should be backed up to best protect corporate information. In fact, corporate data protection practices are most often implemented only after a disaster occurs and large amounts of data have been either damaged or lost. Even more distressing are the companies that have policies in place, but do not enforce the safeguards.

According to researchers, by 2003 the average company will store ten-fold increases over today's storage needs (see Table 1). This fact is supported in part by the way businesses increasingly leverage the Internet, generating enormous amounts of critical business data on a daily basis that needs to be stored, protected, and managed. While business models change, data amounts increase, and the availability of information becomes the competitive advantage, IT managers will be offered an overabundance of data management products to satisfy their voracious appetites for enterprise storage.

Network backup strategies have progressed from isolated islands of storage and responsibility to environments where storage and control have transformed into centrally managed functions. As businesses increase the amount of information they generate and store, having an effective data backup/restore solution is a core element of the storage strategy for any enterprise.

6 Backup Planning with Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Software—February 2002

Backup is becoming a much more complex issue as IT professionals deal with:

• Shrinking or disappearing offline backup windows

• Increasing dataset sizes

• Integration of backup with HSM and disaster-recovery planning strategies

DataQuest (April 2000)

Backup Has Become the “Killer App” with Storage NetworksCorporate expectations of the growth of storage requirements indicate no slowdown in the near future. In fact, companies predict more than 100% increases in the coming years, and 1-2 TB databases (and greater) are becoming increasingly common. In response to this trend, corporations are adopting new storage network architectures (SAN, NAS) to accommodate the growth, thereby creating a whole new market for heterogeneous backup and restore solutions - the new "killer apps."

The rapid growth of disk storage is fueled by Internet/Intranet computing, ERP applications, e-mail, more demanding and productive users, better desktop productivity tools, and the decreasing cost per megabyte of disk storage. But adding more disk capacity to networks has serious ramifications, especially for nightly backup operations. The large backup stores that these applications create add considerable traffic and stress to networks and systems trying to keep up with normal operational loads. Hundreds of files and database elements must be included in the backup schedule at different frequencies, all within shrinking backup windows.

Table 1: WW Data Management Products Market Revenue History and Forecast by Subsegment (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

Topic 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004CAGR (%) 2000-2004

Backup/Recovery Network 539.3 787.2 1,178.4 1,699.2 2,390.7 3,241.8 4,234.7 5,320.4 35.2

Backup/Recovery Host 669.6 668.4 752.3 769.7 789.2 813.1 840.3 870.0 3.0

HSM/Archive 201.9 252.0 286.5 334.9 385.6 440.6 508.9 594.2 15.7

Total Data Management Products 1,410.8 1,707.6 2,217.2 2,803.8 3,565.4 4,495.6 5,583.9 6,784. 25.1

Backup Planning with Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Software—February 2002 7

As a result, efforts are underway to rapidly adopt new storage networks to consolidate information and offload backups from business networks to improve performance, information management, and data availability. Without this strategy, many of these data protection problems will persist, placing business continuity at risk.

Why Bother with Backups?

Cost of DowntimeThousands of personnel hours and millions of dollars in IT budgets are wasted each year by typical organizations that implement ineffective backup procedures. Industry surveys have estimated that data outage tolerances range from 1-3 hours, due to the associated high cost of downtime. For example, in a 7 × 24 × 365-operating environment, 99.89 percent of uptime is equivalent to one hour of downtime per year. Analysts have generally indicated that an hour of storage-related unscheduled downtime per year could range from 6-8 percent of the annual hardware cost of storage.

If an organization cannot afford to lose a day's or an hour's worth of work, then IT must run more frequent backups. Ensuring the highest levels of availability is a delicate balance between minimizing the frequency of unscheduled downtime vs. scheduled downtimes. The differences and impacts between them are not subtle. When unscheduled downtime occurs, a problem has already occurred. Systems, applications, networks, or storage have failed for unknown reasons and data is no longer available. Production may be halted and revenues lost forever. Prudent organizations must focus on the most effective and secure ways to recover from such losses. A good system administrator needs to proactively take steps to prevent unscheduled downtime and avoid losing data.

Efficient StrategiesThree general issues motivate the need for developing effective and efficient backup strategies:

• Backup Requirements Are Not Well PlannedTraditionally, tools have not been available to audit the amount of secondary storage needed for full, differential, or incremental backups. Estimating the amount of tape capacity required for nightly backups is inaccurate and time-consuming.


• Backups Run through Backup Windows or Never Finish Unfortunately, it has become all too common for backups to run continuously, because there is simply too much data to back up. The once steadfast backup window, for all but some companies, has disappeared in the 7 × 24 × 365 global economy. The negative impact of backup-job overruns and continuous backups on user productivity can range from moderate to severe, depending on how badly network performance suffers or how much data is not backed up.

• Existing Storage Investments Are Not Optimally UsedNo matter how big your tape library is or how fast your backup server and tape drives are, the performance of your storage investments remains nonoptimal, if your backup servers and clients are not correctly balanced.

Using Sun StorEdge™ Resource Management Suite Software to Ensure Data Protection and Availability

The enormous growth rate of backup estimates has exposed the inefficiencies of many organizations' backup coverage and their vulnerability to unplanned outages. Not too long ago, you could hear an IT administrator confidently state, "Don't worry, people will never fill up 20-GB drives." That has all changed in the high-availability e-commerce world, attempting to satisfy a global market that does not sleep.

Backup Antidote: Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite SoftwareSun StorEdge™ Resource Management Suite software is a storage infrastructure monitoring, analysis, reporting, and event management solution. Companies who depend on storage for their critical e-business operations require a knowledge-based storage resource management tool to efficiently manage growth and availability in their storage environments, lower the total cost of storage ownership, exceed service-level agreements, and accurately forecast future storage needs.

Table 2: Estimated Current and Future Backup Store Sizes

Current Backup Range Estimates 2001 Backup Range Estimates

100-200 GB 700 GB

1-2 TB 7-10 TB

10 TB 17-20 TB


Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software solutions and capabilities enable IT organizations to apply best-practice efforts to optimize network backup strategies. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software now plays an important role in reducing the backup complexities associated with data classification, auditing, planning, reporting, and improving operational efficiencies and availability.

Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software solutions reinforce IT decisions by determining the importance of data and measuring the impact of data loss or contamination. The comprehensive suite of storage management software tools improves storage availability by proactively monitoring the condition and status of enterprise storage resources (physical and logical). Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software information helps IT prevent unplanned downtime due to out-of-space conditions or storage configuration changes and delivers critical business-continuity reporting. This type of reporting allows IT to get a single, consolidated view across the storage infrastructure that shows key information such as how much data is backed up, which backup servers are exceeding their backup windows, what the status of each backup job is, and where backup and recovery bottlenecks may potentially be located.

In support of developing and strengthening backup strategies, AberdeenGroup research suggests that a well-crafted storage resource management solution must deliver an effective process and an architecture to support that process. Their research further suggests that such a process/architecture must have the following characteristics:

• In-depth data collection process

• Centralized data repository database

• Effective analytical tools to analyze the collected data

Table 3: Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Software Solutions Identify the Operational Importance of Enterprisewide Data

Enterprise Data Data Classification

Vital Essential, irreplaceable, or necessary to recover

Important Essential/important, replaceable only with difficulty or extra expense; not vital to recovery

Useful Loss would be inconvenient, readily replaceable; not essential to recovery

Not Necessary No longer necessary


• Heterogeneous platform support so that Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software solution data about the user's heterogeneous servers, storage infrastructure elements, and storage-intensive applications can be collected and analyzed

• Logically centralized administration that simplifies the administrator's task by allowing the administrator to ignore physical locations when viewing the storage topology

Figure 1 Backup Storage Topology.


Data Decisions Are Empowered by Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Knowledge

Decisions about data and availability are not made continuously - no one has the time. Making these types of decisions requires a comprehensive understanding of the data conditions that exist throughout the network. This generally takes too much time to accomplish and involves too many resources amidst many complex and strategic IT projects. For example, important decisions about how to access the net worth of organizational information would have to be accomplished by identifying data that is either redundant or underutilized. Even daily decisions on which storage management discipline to apply to a particular combination of server, operating system, available storage media, data structures, or applications are not made every day, due to lack of time, personnel, and knowledge about storage resources.

Although the IT staff is responsible for making storage resource management decisions, large-scale decisions are made infrequently and include:

• Where to host the backup resources for a particular application

• Whether to purchase a large tape library

• When to invest in the expansion of a major disk subsystem

In contrast, small-scale storage resource management decisions are made more frequently and include:

• Whether to migrate or archive a particular set of files

• Policy decisions that include full or incremental backups

Large-scale enterprise conditions constantly change and can alter routine policy and discrete decisions about the information landscape. The quality of input to the IT planning process about new applications, network devices, and users can easily change the performance balance of system and network loads and affect the response characteristics of backups. Effective storage resource management solutions help to determine appropriate IT decisions about the criticalness of data and suitable backup strategies to impose.

Streamlining Backup OperationsPlanning a backup architecture can be challenging and complex and requires many resources, affecting time and money. But when you apply the capabilities of Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software to the backup planning process, the


challenges are diminished, because you begin with knowledge about existing enterprise storage conditions - location, data type, sizing, vulnerability, and historical data trends. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software's backup planning and reporting capabilities ensure that capacity optimally matches the abilities of the network resources by providing information about backup requirements, existing conditions, capabilities, potential for growth, and recommendations on how to deploy the backup solution.

IT managers understand the importance of ensuring that backups are optimized, efficient, and meet the enterprise demands and expectations of data protection, while making certain that all files are reported for a complete restore. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software helps enable IT to understand the enterprise and streamline the process steps of planning and optimizing networkwide backups in the following manner:

• Identify how much secondary storage is required for full and incremental backups

• Determine how many files and how much storage are being consumed and modified daily

• Locate the size and number of vulnerable network files that have been modified but not backed up

• Report the oldest files that have been modified but not backed up

• Perform networkwide scans to locate duplicate files or create stale file analysis reports

• Set alerts for new disks, new file systems, and new computers to ensure that they are known and included in the backup

• Determine strategies for data destination regarding where to place tape devices and what capacities they require

• Support decisions by administrators about available network bandwidth, as well as defining the boundaries for the backup window


Figure 2 Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Software Support for Backup Operations.

Instituting Backup Best-Practice Processes Starts with Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite Software

Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software solutions are the underpinning for developing a well-constructed networkwide backup plan. The "need-to-know" information provided by Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software helps enable administrators to scope and analyze the trending of storage, improve networkwide backup planning processes, and determine the vulnerability of data. The business advantage of this information lies in the frequency that it can be delivered. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software nonintrusively polls network storage resources at frequencies determined by the IT manager to provide timely reporting about the status of files.

Capacity Auditing Auditing existing capacity to obtain an objective view of the current backup planning strategy is critical to the success of efficient backup and recovery for any enterprise. Using vital Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software information during


this process ensures verification that critical data is identified so that it can be included in the backup. Incomplete backups are usually the result of unrealistic expectations and inefficient planning.

Worthwhile capacity auditing exercises must consider current as well as future enterprise storage needs. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software delivers this capability by providing capacity planning reports that reveal current conditions and valuable historical trends and analysis of networkwide storage capacity. This information establishes a basis to predict future data growth.

Figure 3 Managed Computers Summary for All Domains Report.


Figure 4 Capacity Planning By Computer Report.

Performing Networkwide File ProspectingIdeally all data on the network should be included in a backup scheme, but issues of cost, convenience, and time may make this impractical. So, the first step to ensuring complete backups is to use Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software's independent reporting tools to gather data about storage for backup planning and budgeting, and to look at the feasibility of instituting storage chargeback policies.

The Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite File Reporter accurately profiles networkwide data and provides detailed file-attribute information reports in support of backup operations. The File Reporter analyzes network files associated with Largest Files, Stale Files, Duplicate Files, Multimedia Files, and Files By Owner, and increases the impact and value of IT backup planning processes on disk partitions or servers. With the File Reporter, you can create custom reports to search on any file attribute that might be important to the backup. Detailed Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software file analysis tells IT planners the type and condition of data that may


potentially be in the backup dataset scheme. Conversely, the File Reporter identifies the files that should not be included in the backup scheme, creating a more efficient process.

Figure 5 Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite File Reporter, Duplicate Files Report.

Planning Better BackupsThe total size of the dataset and whether you are running full backups (backing up all your data), incremental backups (backing up only the data that has changed since the last incremental backup), or differential backups (backing up only the data that has changed since the last full backup) affects your secondary storage needs. Using Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software creates a planned strategy for backup implementation that easily delivers information about how much data is backed up each night, and how much secondary storage is needed to store it all.


Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software helps you determine which file systems hold the important data and provides you with comprehensive networkwide managed computer reports about data vulnerability (data not backed up in a while). Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software's knowledge about data supports your need to know how much storage there is to back up, how many files exist, and the size of the files. With shrinking backup windows becoming a regular occurrence, Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software information lessens any impact that backups have on availability. Knowing the number and size of files that have been modified over time intervals eases your backup planning efforts by reflecting how often the data changes. This information can help you decide whether to impose incremental or full backups.

Figure 6 Managed Computer Summary for All Domains.


Figure 7 File Distribution By Vulnerability for All Domains Listed by Computer.

Gauging Backup RequirementsSun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software helps you determine how much secondary storage is needed to complete full backups of all servers and workstations in your environment and how to avoid situations where too much or too little secondary storage capacity is purchased. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software's report on stale files shows exactly how much disk space is being used on each server and workstation by files not accessed in a while and potential candidates for archiving.


Figure 8 Stale Files Report.

Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software can also report on the total space used, identifying how much storage is backed up, if a full backup is performed on all networkwide computers. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software also makes it easy to determine how much storage is needed for incremental backups. A file modification report indicates exactly how many files and how much storage is changing daily, enabling administrators to accurately size incremental backups. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software's File Creation and Modification Reports enhance backup sizing efforts by helping to determine how many files are being added or modified on the network, or on single computers and partitions.


Figure 9 Incremental Sizing: Files Modified by Domain Report.

Balancing Backups For Better PerformanceEnsuring that backup clients and servers are properly balanced is the key to keeping backup operations running inside the backup window. For example, if IT were running nightly incremental backups, then it would be ineffective to have the two largest file servers with the largest amounts of dynamic storage being backed up to the same backup server.

Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software's Incremental Balancing By Computer report enables administrators to compare the file modification activity of different servers and workstations against each other. Additionally, Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software helps identify which systems are more efficient for performing backups. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software information supports decisions about including backup servers where the data resides, helping to eliminate the complications with balancing network loads typically associated with backups.


Figure 10 Incremental Balancing By Computer Report.

In a large-scale enterprise, two servers may have 500 and 900 MB of storage, respectively, that have been modified in the past day, representing a large majority of this environment's dynamic data. In this situation, running an incremental backup in which these servers are backed up to the same server is probably not a good idea. Depending on the speed of the backup server and tape drive/library, the backup could run through the backup window and cause unplanned downtime. Separating the two machines on different backup servers and possibly including other servers with less frequent file modifications with the smaller server onto the same backup server would help ensure a more efficient, equitable balance of the backup load.

Use Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software's historical file modification trends can help ensure that this daily report is not a one-time anomaly and that these servers routinely exhibit consistent behavior. This knowledge justifies IT decisions about when to add additional backup servers and tape drives and even to cost-justify their purchase.


Figure 11 File Access Load Report.

SummaryObtaining the best backup strategy for an enterprise requires striking a balance between the perfect solution and what is possible given the restraints of time, resources, and budget. Backup strategies must always have two characteristics: reliability and efficiency.

IT spends inordinate amounts of time tracking enterprisewide data - chasing backup tapes, restoring various increments of data, and making room on servers for more data. In parallel, demands on IT services are increasing, storage-networking projects are more complex, and IT administrators must constantly do more with less. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software resolves many of today's enterprise backup and restore planning and optimization problems, and adapts easily to tomorrow's changes.

The benefits of using Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software for implementing backup strategies are:


• Comprehensive backup planning and reporting

• Optimization of network resources

• Improved backup efficiencies

• Reduced vulnerability of important business data

The central Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software database provides a single point for backup status reporting and reviewing detailed file information. It has knowledge of all files in the enterprise for implementing effective and more complete backups.

By using Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software for front-end backup planning and ongoing storage auditing, IT can make optimum use of existing backup servers and secondary storage devices, ensure more consistent backup performance, increase data protection, and maintain continuous high availability.

Implementing Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software solutions in networkwide backup planning is a reflection of IT's commitment to optimize business operations, enhance best practices, and reduce the risk of data interruption - planned and unplanned data outages. Sun StorEdge Resource Management Suite software is a strategic solution to help you develop strategies that meet the current and future needs of the company.

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