It’s the time of year to make predictions (a bit late really) about the year ahead. On the subject of prophecy, George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch that “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” That’s not a sentiment I would argue with, so let’s just say I’m willing to make mistakes!
In general, I’m not one for making predictions. They usually come down to stating the obvious or throwing a random long ball and hoping the receiver yanks it out of the air, David Tyree style for any of you New York Giants fans out there. However, if I must put on the hat and play Carnac the Magnificent, I will stick to broad trends rather than highly specific predictions.
In the data protection world, I can predict with confidence that:
#1 — Traditional Backup Will Remain Broken
This prediction is a lock because it can’t be otherwise. Traditional backup – by which I mean file-based backup – has been broken by massive data growth and increasing virtualization of applications. It won’t fix itself because the architecture is fundamentally flawed. Many users still struggle with it and take a Band-Aid approach to “fixing” it by adding more tape drives or replacing tape drives with a dedicated deduplication disk target. Doing this only drags out the pain. Sooner or later you’ll have to replace what you’re doing. Moving from “Traditional Backup Vendor A” to “Traditional Backup Vendor B” isn’t going to solve your problems either.
Don’t worry though, because as my next prediction states:
#2 – Modernized Backup Will Remain Unbroken
The thing about backup is that we’ve already solved that problem. Now we just have to convince you that there really is a better way! I’ve written about this many times, how it’s possible to make your backup dreams come true by modernizing backups with snapshots.
The only thing standing between you and a fast, efficient and reliable data protection environment are old technologies and outdated approaches. But the key is to modernize your backup from end to end, because:
#3 – Deduplication Will Continue to Be Insufficient
Data deduplication is a great technology, but it’s a single ingredient in what has to be a full recipe for modernized data protection. You can’t just replace your tape with a deduplication target and think it will solve all your problems (despite the many vendors trying to sell you on this story). Does deduplication still matter? Yes it does, but by itself it will leave you disappointed.
The final thing to think about is disaster recovery. In other words, how do I get my data from “here” to “there” so I’m protected when something bad happens “here”? Disaster recovery (DR) isn’t always cheap or easy, and many organizations struggle to do it well (or at all) for a variety of reasons. This brings me to my final prediction:
#4 – Disaster Recovery Will Continue to be a Challenge Except When It’s Not
Like backup, DR is a problem that’s been solved if you re-examine how you do things. With NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup, we’ve simplified DR by letting you consolidate all your backup data onto a single platform, and then replicate that data using SnapMirror. Add to that a number of different recovery technologies all from the same backups, and you’ve got your disaster recovery all done.
On the other hand, you can keep handling DR with five different technologies, massive outdated run-books, an Ouija Board and who knows what else. It’s easy to predict that something bad will happen eventually if your DR plans aren’t in order.
When it comes to New Year’s Resolutions, fixing your DR plans should be high on the IT department’s list of things to do in 2012 if it isn’t already. If you need some help with that and some new ideas, please let us know.
