NetBackup OpenStorage and FalconStor

Today I am posting an interview with John Lallier, Vice President of Technology at FalconStor. FalconStor partners with us in the context of our OpenStorage program and we also work with FalconStor to qualify their virtual tape libraries for use with NetBackup.

Q) Tell us a little more about yourself. How long have you been with FalconStor and what is your role there?

A) I’ve been with FalconStor from the beginning, having worked with ReiJane Huai and the other founders first at Cheyenne Software and later Computer Associates. As VP of Technology, I oversee the work with our OEM partners using our products (EMC, IBM, Sun, etc.) as well as the large strategic partners such as Symantec.

Q) I'm interviewing you specifically about the OpenStorage program. You are among the first few vendors to release an OpenStorage solution. From your perspective what is the problem the OpenStorage program is trying to solve in the backup and recovery workflow?

A) While virtual tape library (VTL) products offer a number of advanced features, they are generally hidden from the backup applications. This is because the VTL has to imitate a physical tape library (PTL), so unless the PTL has an equivalent feature, the VTL cannot explain it to the backup application. So while VTLs can translate a feature like compression into terms of the PTL, it cannot translate more advanced features like deduplication and remote replication. Open Storage understands that VTLs are advanced disk systems and provide the backup application and the VTLs a means of exchanging higher-level information.

It’s also important for backup administrators to have a single view into their operations. By allowing the backup application to see the advanced functions that the VTLs are performing, the backup administrator can now see these along side of his/her other backup tasks. Catalog consistency can be maintained, and management is simplified.

Q) What has the customer reaction been to the Open Storage devices that you have shipped so far?

A) We have had a good deal of interest in our Open Storage support. Our VTL customer base is very enterprise oriented, and enterprise users tend to have lengthy technology update cycles that include detailed evaluation periods. Their backup environments are highly complex, built up over years of operational experience. So they don’t immediately move to new technology. But they are seeing the value offered by Open Storage and there is interest. The fact that our VTL supports classic tape emulation along with Open Storage at the same time actually makes migration easier. A user can switch a few backup jobs over to Open Storage for evaluation, while keeping the remainder of their backup environment on the tape emulation side.

Customers are also interested in FalconStor VTL because we are the first and still the only vendor supporting Open Storage over Fibre Channel. This lets users take advantage of the speed of Fibre Channel and their existing SAN backup infrastructure.

Q) What enhancements are you planning to implement in the near future?

A) We are adding support for NetBackup on Windows hosts to the original release for NetBackup on Solaris.

Q) What sets your deduplication solutions apart from the competition?

A) FalconStor deduplication was designed with our existing VTL customers’ environments in mind. Since so many of our large enterprise customers use VTL to accelerate backup to meet ever shrinking backup windows, we decided that deduplication would be best done outside the backup window rather than during it. Making deduplication an independent process, rather than an inline operation, allows us to build very large scale deduplication configurations without changing the original VTL arrangement.

Q) Among those companies who are implementing Open Storage, what differentiates FalconStor from the competition?

A) As part of the enterprise performance design, our Open Storage option is designed to use separate management and data movement connections. This allows us to move data over Fibre Channel connections rather than IP connections where Fibre Channel is available. The end result is far faster data movement, more backup network capacity and faster backup speeds. In non-Fibre Channel environments, iSCSI can be used either on a dedicated IP SAN or on the same IP connection used for management.

Q) You company has a number of products related to backup. Where do you see the balance between tape and disk in the future?

A) FalconStor expects most of the initial backup data to go to disk in the future, either in the form of VTL with deduplication or continuous data protection (CDP). Disk will be the primary media for restore or disaster recovery. A subset of these backups would then be transferred to physical tape to meet archiving/compliance requirements.

Q) Do you use NetBackup and OpenStorage internally for production backups?

A) While FalconStor makes it a practice to use all of our storage products internally, we’re not currently able to use our Open Storage option because our production backup servers use Backup Exec rather than NetBackup. But we look forward to the future support for Open Storage that Symantec has announced for Backup Exec. We do conduct regular testing with Open Storage in our extensive test lab environment. We have also worked with Symantec to implement our VTL systems in some of Symantec’s training facilities.

Q) If a customer wants to know more about FalconStor and your OpenStorage plugin for NetBackup where should they go?

A) Any current FalconStor customer interested in using NetBackup with the FalconStor Open Storage option should contact their reseller. Any customers who are new to FalconStor can contact us directly at 1.866.NOW.FALC to be connected with a local reseller. Further information can of course also be found on FalconStor’s website, www.falconstor.com, including a joint web seminar delivered by Symantec and FalconStor entitled Disk to Disk Backup with NetBackup and FalconStor, which is available for replay on the Library section of our website.

Thanks for taking the time to be interviewed and tell us about FalconStor's solutions. The joint web seminar mentioned above is also available for viewing at Symantec.com as well.

Tim Burlowski

Technical Product Manager

Data Protection

Symantec Corporation