New Technology Is Making Much More Possible But More Complex as Well

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that a backup redesign is sweeping through IT departments. I think everyone is aware that backup has been identified as a primary IT pain point. And the reason is pretty simple actually – disk. There is so much of it. You know that most companies approach the protection of their data in a very dated manner. Although backup and recovery has been around for years, data protection solutions of old are failing to keep pace with today’s overwhelming data growth and complexity.

Although many companies have started to deploy disk-based data protection in the form of virtual tape libraries (VTLs), much of the thinking in data centres and by vendors is still tape-centric. But not just tap-centric but, more to the point, NOT application centric, NOT site centric, NOT virtual machine centric. Protection is getting harder because data centres and remote offices have evolved. Server consolidation through virtualisation technologies has changed the way companies need to think about protecting their data. How long is the backup window if there are 10 virtual machines per physical machine?

Much more is possible now with disk-based data protection: shared disk pools for protection and recovery, continuous data protection for remote office data as well as consolidation or recovery of data centre applications. (Backup Exec provides granular recovery technology and continuous data protection and Backup Exec System Recovery … does what it says on the tin.) Centralised management capabilities have improved to automate global data protection from remote offices to core data centres.

The next generation data protection with Backup Exec provides comprehensive management of enterprises’ complex environments. That means a single data protection solution that covers all databases, and applications. It also means supporting the broadest set of disk (SAN, NAS, and DAS), tape, and virtual tape library vendors, and delivering the latest data protection technologies such as virtualization, granular recovery, and continuous data protection.
Disk-based data protection is the future of backup and recovery for reasons of performance, reliability, and cost. Next generation data protection therefore means support for basic commodity disk, deduplication, replication, and continuous data protection.

Take the Backup Exec challenge – does your backup – stack up?

http://eval.symantec.com/flashdemos/other/be12_challenge/