When selecting a Purpose Built Backup Appliance (PBBA), performance, expressed in terms of reducing the backup window, is often the primary focus of the selection process. While reduction of backup window is important, the performance of the backup appliance is typically not the sole factor in total backup performance. Not meeting the backup window timeframe is also not the sole reason for incomplete backups. The complexity of the process and the lack of flexibility in the process have built a house of cards where failure may be inevitable. When selecting a PBBA, consideration must be given to a wide range of performance issues as well as reduction in complexity and increased flexibility.

The speed at which the PBBA can receive or ingest data and write it to disk is only one factor in performance. There are many other variables that need to be dealt with like the speed at which servers can send data to the network, the speed at which data can be sent across the network and the speed at which the backup server can subsequently send data to the PBBA, which may mean another trip across the network. The efficiency that the PBBA brought to storage needs to be positioned closer to the backup server and the applications it protects.

Complexity

Performance is not the sole problem with the backup process. A key problem is the complexity of the process itself. The complexity is caused by the growth of servers (virtual and physical), growth in capacity and the growth in retention requirements. These various forms of growth have lead to multiple backup applications, multiple backup targets and private networks specifically for backup.

Each of these individual components all need to be managed and monitored by the backup administration team. This “team” is often a single person burdened with other tasks like server administration and application support. Simplification is key not only for successful completion of backup jobs but also in employee retention.

Flexibility

Compounding the above complexity problem is the need for flexibility. There is a never-ending quest for a single backup solution and where possible backup processes should be consolidated to reduce costs and flatten the process. There is also the reality that there are times when point data protection products are more suited to the task at hand. In some cases it simply takes more time for the legacy backup application vendors to provide as robust support for a new platform than a vendor who creates a backup application from scratch. During that time an application or platform owner may want to leverage a point solution initially to benefit from unique protection capabilities or recovery features.

While these solutions can be justified, their introduction does make the data protection process more complex. That complexity is compounded if each of these point data protection solutions requires their own backup storage.

Smarter Performance

Neither of these challenges is necessarily performance related but both can have the same impact of a backup window not being met; incomplete or invalid backups. This is why the selection criteria for backup infrastructures has to move beyond just a performance discussion. The PBBA selection process needs to also consider how the device will make the backup process simpler to manage and more flexible to the changing data center.

Software Enabled PBBAs For A Simpler, More Flexible Backup Process

The first generation of PBBA typically was a custom designed storage hardware system designed to rapidly ingest data and to store that data cost effectively via deduplication or compression. The next generation of PBBA has been designed with added software functionality that integrates into a variety of backup and business applications in order to efficiently leverage the performance of the servers and networks that are already in place. In addition this software integration makes the backup process itself more flexible and easier to manage.

The key is to move the PBBA closer to the application that is creating the data. The PBBA moves closer to the application by providing a series of software assets that integrate with the backup and business applications in the environment. The goal of these software assets is first to provide complete performance optimization by bringing data efficiency to the data transfer process. This can be done by reducing the amount of data that the applications have to generate and transport. Second, PBBAs should increase simplicity by integrating with the backup application to allow interaction with the PBBA to be controlled from that backup application. Third, they should provide a facility by which a variety of backup applications and business applications can interface directly with the PBBA.

An example of this is the approach chosen by EMC’s Data Domain Appliances. These appliances now come with an impressive array of software assets, in the form of DD Boost, that accomplish these above goals. Internal EMC applications like NetWorker and Avamar can interact with the appliance but also third party backup applications like Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec, and Quest vRanger can leverage these software assets. DD Boost is now being extended to the business application itself. Recently EMC announced DD Boost for RMAN that allows direct interaction with the Data Domain PBBA.

As a result a combination of enterprise backup, point data protection solutions and business applications can reduce the amount of data they send to the Data Domain appliance as well as allow those applications to directly control it. The impact is a simpler, more flexible backup environment that can address performance without simply throwing hardware, that won’t be fully utilized, at the problem.

EMC Data Domain is a client of Storage Switzerland 

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