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Branch
Office Data Consolidation Adds Streamlined Recovery
By
KELLY HARRIMAN-POLANSKI
 Companies
with branch offices must maintain continuous access to information to
expand their business and maximize their competitive edge. However,
these organizations are faced with a dilemma: how can they cost-effectively
manage the process of protecting branch data while also keeping it available
to support business operations?
There are inherent risks and costs associated with backing up and protecting
branch office data onsite in the branch. First, it is costly because
it requires each office to be equipped and maintained with backup software
and equipment. It also requires some method for media rotation from
each branch, with local operators responsible for rotating and tracking
the media and typically paying a services company for pickup of the
media at the end of each week. If there is a problem, the recovery is
only as good as the backup, and often times the backup turns out to
be difficult or impossible to find or resides on worn unreadable media.
In addition, any operational changes or omissions at the branch level
can have repercussions across the company, making simple interruptions
time consuming, costly, and potentially impossible to resolve.
In order to reduce the cost and complexity of securing branch office
data, companies are turning to replication. By deploying replication
as part of their corporate data protection strategy, companies are able
to consolidate information to a central location where they can use
their enterprise backup methods, people, and equipment. Data consolidation
from remote sites enables reliable, lower-cost data protection and recovery.
This approach also enables companies to increase their ability to comply
with data protection and retention requirements by putting branch data
management in the hands of the systems and storage management teams
most able to effectively manage it.
The Business Problems
Succinctly stated, branch office backup doesn’t work. In part,
it doesn’t work in the branch because businesses cannot afford
to staff remote offices with highly skilled backup operators. Backup
within branches also doesn’t work for IT budgets, which are stretched
thin in an attempt to accommodate the ever-expanding requirements for
data protection and management as new branches are opened and as data
continues to grow. The annual maintenance fees and service contracts
associated with attempting to maintain branch backup are also draining
budgets from more strategic investments urgently required in the data
center locations.
Additionally, dealing with tapes is a major hassle for branch office
employees because they are made responsible for knowing when backups
are supposed to happen, when tapes are supposed to be rotated, and where
back-up tapes are supposed to be stored. They are also responsible,
usually without sufficient training, to ensure that backups are completing
successfully. Most of the time, if a tape jams or some other problem
occurs that prevents a backup from being completed, the problem is not
discovered until the worst possible moment: during a recovery. Being
responsible for these types of critical activities distracts employees
from their normal tasks, which can include serving customers, and slows
the branch networks and systems during the hours that the backup is
performed that impacts customer service and other branch business operations.
As could be expected, many companies have no idea how much data they
have in their branch offices, and when they find out, they are often
surprised to learn what it is costing them to try to protect that data
and how long and difficult restoring data within those environments
can be when failures occur. In the event of an outage, it is not unusual
to have to fly in someone from headquarters that can put the system
back on its feet again. This, of course, takes more time and costs more
money. The situation is worsened by the nature of the business conducted
within branch offices: these can be bank branches, department stores,
doctor’s offices, and hotels that deal directly with customers,
collect money, or have other customer-facing business activities.
Bottom line, a tremendous amount of money is being spent to manage data
in a tremendously inefficient and ineffective way. For example, many
of the tapes used for backup at the branch offices are not fully loaded
with data when they are taken offsite, so storage space and the cost
of the tape is underutilized. As a result, branch office backup and
recovery is wasting a tremendous amount of money. How much? According
to a survey conducted by In-Stat MDR, 40 percent of IT budgets for enterprise
companies will be spent on branch offices in 2004, and that percentage
is growing. Something has to change.
The Move to Replication
Replication technology with real-time, continuous capture and transmission
of changed data, offers some relief to these problems. Replication encourages
hardware and data consolidation within the branch – which can
save money and ease data management – while removing the burden
and responsibility of operating backups from branch office personnel.
At the same time, it greatly enhances data protection and recovery by
transmitting all new or changed data in real time to central locations
as it is created. This precludes the permanent data loss that frequently
occurs in conventional systems when data is changed or added after the
last backup. So, when a failure occurs, recovery can now restore data
to the last moment before the failure – instead of to the last
time a backup was made.
With replication, the personnel previously burdened with operating onsite
branch office backup are freed up to concentrate on serving customers
and running the business. In addition, branch data is put in the hands
of professional, trained storage and systems administrators and in centralized
locations where businesses can afford to place robust data management
infrastructure. For example, e-mail archives and repositories required
for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations can be more
easily achieved and are more cost effective in centralized locations.
Centralizing data from branches not only streamlines the storage process,
but may save organizations from having to pay the huge fines that are
assessed when data is not available in response to regulatory demands.
And regulatory demands are becoming more and more stringent. For example,
while not dictating distances, as of April 11, 2003, the Securities
and Exchange Commission issued a “recommendation” that backup
is performed at offsite locations rather than at the primary locations
at which the data is created. The purpose of this recommendation is
“to strengthen the resilience of critical U.S. financial markets”
in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The SEC tightened this up
more in April 2004, with a follow-on recommendation. In this case, “recommendation”
is closely akin to an “order.”
Replication is also superior to conventional branch office backup systems
in terms of point-in-time data recovery, which is a key aspect of backup
and recovery. The problem with traditional systems is that when operating
efficiently, they record data onto tape in a stop-start fashion until
the tape is full. This means that the data is exposed to possible damage
or destruction such as by fire or flood until it is removed from the
premises. Replication avoids that situation by transmitting all new
and changed data offsite as it is created, which provides businesses
with up-to-the-moment, point-in-time recovery of data that is safe from
large-scale and regional impacts.
Advantages for Microsoft Exchange Users
Replication is a boon for businesses relying on Microsoft Exchange because
Exchange is often located in branch environments and has been inadequately
protected in most environments. By centralizing Exchange data as it
is created, storage and systems administrators can have the peace of
mind that comes from knowing that e-mail and messaging data is properly
backed up and readily available if it is needed quickly. Additional
value can be added to Exchange environments because advanced e-mail
management tools can be applied to Exchange data at the central location.
Also, because the data is centralized, it can be indexed, which makes
it even more easily accessible and compliant with company and regulatory
requirements.
Reliability and Resiliency of Replication
Windows host-based replication technologies have long been on the market.
However, it wasn’t until the last several years that sufficient
reliability and resiliency has been built into these offerings to make
them suitable for branch data consolidation including for critical applications
such as Microsoft Exchange. Businesses need reliable data replication
that will not only continue to operate consistently, but also provide
coherency of replicated data.
Overcoming Network Bandwidth Concerns
A common concern raised by IT managers considering adoption of replication
technologies is the amount of network bandwidth that will be required
and whether network connections will need to be dedicated. Of course,
exact network requirements will vary. However, with the right replication
product, networks can be effectively shared with other business traffic
by using scheduling and throttling capabilities, so network performance
can be maintained during peak usage hours and replication can be sped
up during non-peak hours, such as overnight. Replication by definition
only needs to replicate the changes in data as they occur at the branch.
When combined with built-in compression, businesses can often use existing
T1 networks shared with other traffic to carry replication from their
branch offices.
Cost Savings
To summarize, there are substantial, branch office cost savings that
result from replication:
- Backup software no longer needs to be maintained and supported,
which eliminates annual maintenance and support contract fees.
- The need for back-up servers and tape drives is also eliminated,
and more money is saved because tapes are fully utilized.
- There is a single back-up deployment team of people trained specifically
to maintain storage operations.
- Freed of back-up and recovery duties, branch office employees are
no longer in a position to make costly mistakes while handling back-up
data. In addition, they become more productive by concentrating on
their core competencies.
Conclusion
Existing branch office data backup and recovery systems are an expensive,
inefficient, and obsolete bust. They constantly put business-critical
data at risk. They require that data backup be maintained and operated
by branch office employees who were hired to perform other tasks. They
slow branch systems during backup, and they detract from customer service
and other critical branch operations. And, with increasing regulations
governing data management, attempting to manage data in branches has
become not only impractical and inefficient, but can actually risk the
reputation of the business.
Savvy storage and systems administrators realize that replication is
the logical successor to the branch office backup systems of the past.
Replication technologies have matured, to be reliable and robust enough
to carry business-critical data and to work with back-up and recovery
infrastructure at the central site. And, without requiring new investments
in hardware, networks, or equipment that would cause replication to
be too burdensome for organizations to deploy.
Kelly Harriman-Polanski is vice president of availability marketing
in EMC’s software group division. She can be reached at kpolanski@legato.com.
©Copyright
2004 Systems Support Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole
or in part in any form or medium without the express written permission
of System Support Inc. is prohibited.
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