Disk-based Backup does not equate to Resolution of your Data Management Problems

I spend a great deal of time analyzing and writing about different disk-based backup products. The reason is simple. Companies are buying disk-based backup products as a quick fix to their backup problems and want to know what purchasing options they have. But companies should not assume that the purchase of a disk-based backup solution, deduplicating or otherwise, equates to an improvement in the management of their production data. Rather it is just a band aid.

Disk-based backup is often implemented because companies are already at a breaking point with their current backup implementation. Current backups are not completing successfully, taking too long, not completing within designated backup windows or are problematic to manage using tape. So the best perceived solution is to bring in a disk-based backup appliance in lieu of their tape library as a backup target. However this does not solve two underlying problems that persist when disk is used as a backup target.

• Disk-based backup solutions do not reduce the amount of data that companies need to backup as they treat the symptom not the problem. The job of the disk-based backup target is to store what ever data the backup software sends its way. While deduplicating disk-based backup appliances help to minimize the amount of backup data that is stored, as long as the production data stores keep growing, so will the size of the backup data stores - deduplicated or otherwise.
• Faster backups do not translate into improved data management practices. Companies keep a great deal of data on email repositories and file servers. This data is rarely or never accessed after it is stored and consumes valuable space on production storage systems; time and overhead on the servers performing the backups; and, extra capacity on the new backup devices when the data is backed up.

So whether or not companies introduce disk as a backup target in their environment, companies need to look beyond the immediate problem of failed backups and address their deeper data management issues. A logical place companies can start to look to implement such a strategy is with their email, file stores and DB archives. Email, file data and DB archives are often the fastest growing components within corporate production data stores. Yet these data stores, if properly managed using archiving hardware and software, can result in significant savings without subjecting the company to undue risk. Bringing in file or email archiving software in conjunction with a scalable archiving solution like Permabit's Enterprise Archive, companies can:

• Optimize the placement of infrequently accessed email and file data on lower cost storage
• Improve performance of production applications
• Reduce the amount of high end storage capacity they need for production data stores

Equally important, by archiving corporate email and file data, it can contribute to significantly reducing backup times and the amount of capacity that companies need for their backup data stores. Since some recent studies find that as much as 90% or more of their production file and email data on file servers is stagnant or never accessed after 60 days, why keep paying to add more capacity to your production disk-based appliances?

Companies can keep throwing disk at their spiraling data stores or they can start to manage their data. Introducing disk based backup may solve today's backup problems but it is not a long term fix. If anything, it may only serve to mask the larger data management problem that companies already have, not make it better. Taking steps to actually manage your data and put it where it appropriately belongs may solve your backup problems, save you money now and down the road and ultimately resolve your data management problems once and for all.