Service provider takeaway: Service providers can help customers choose from three methods for cutting data at the source to reduce their backup windows: incremental backup, data deduplication and block-level incremental backup.
With the ever-increasing volume of data and the need for 24/7 access to company resources, the time your customers have available to perform backups is becoming more scarce. So most, if not all, of them are looking for ways to reduce the backup window. Many are turning to disk-to-disk backup as a solution. And while disk-to-disk backup can improve overall reliability, speed of recovery and electronic vaulting of backup data, reducing the backup window requires changing more variables than just the medium. That's because reducing backup windows is an infrastructure issue, not a backup target issue.
The problem is that data is growing at a much faster rate than infrastructure. With an uncertain economy, few IT budgets have room for a total upgrade to SAN-based backups or a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network.
But even in the absence of big allocations on infrastructure, there are still techniques your customers can implement to cut their backup windows.
Source-side data reduction
Short of an infrastructure upgrade, one of the more practical ways to reduce the backup window is source-side data reduction, which essentially sends less redundant data across the network. Doing so reduces both network and server resources needed. Source-side data redu
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ction and target-side data reduction strategies should work hand-in-hand and complement each other; target-side consolidation through backup virtualization is an effective approach to the latter.
To cut the backup window by reducing data at its source, there are three primary methods. We'll examine those methods and point you toward the one that's likely to give your customers the best return.
Of the three methods for reducing data at its source to meet your customer's backup window, block-level incremental backups provide the most substantial improvement in the backup process that we have seen in years. They not only reduce network resource requirements, but they also decrease the server resources, creating a near-CDP level of protection. By providing a unique presentation of the backup target, block-level incremental allows for new capabilities like zero data movement recoveries and active targets to expand the use of the backup process beyond just backup and recovery.
About the author
George Crump is president and founder of Storage Switzerland, an IT analyst firm focused on the storage and virtualization segments. With 25 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the United States, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS and SAN. Prior to founding Storage Switzerland, George was chief technology officer at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration and product selection.
