Master the Diving Catch: Storage Recovery Challenges

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Master the Diving Catch Storage Recovery
Challenges Prospects

• Jon William Toigo
• Independent Consultant and Author
• Toigo Productions

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Introduction and Welcome

• Masters of the Diving Catch
• Topics for Discussion
• Fundamentals of Fielding the Ball
• How Free Agency is Wrecking the Game
• The Importance of Spring Training
• QA

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Then

• Early DR planning and storage recovery
• Comparatively simple, secretary-friendly
• Bolt-on to existing applications and host
  platforms
• 1-for-1 replacement of mainframe and DASD
• 24 to 72 hour recovery timeframe

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and Now

• DR in the Internet Era
• 7x24x365
• Lots of players heterogeneous storage platforms
  supporting heterogeneous client-server hosting
  configurations
• Faster, harder, and

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Uglier than Ever.
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Fundamentals for Fielding the Ball

• Data is a irreplaceable asset
• Goal Avoid preventable data disasters
• Corruption of asset (security, virus protection,
  backups)
• Interrupted availability (fault tolerance, meshed
  links, effective monitoring and management)
• While minimizing impact of events
  that just cant be prevented.

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All Disaster Recovery Strategies Consist of

• - EITHER -
• Redundancy
• Duplicating assets on a 1-for-1 or consolidated
  basis
• Deploying redundant assets at a sufficiently
  distant location to avoid regional disaster
  events
• - OR -
• Replacement
• Fielding new assets within recovery timeframe
  requirements

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With Data, Redundancy is the
Only Option

• Restoring data from damaged media
  (time consuming)
• Re-building data from original source materials
  (difficult or impossible)
• Recovering storage requires copies of current or
  near current data, suitable data hosting
  platform, and pre-planned strategy

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Characteristics of Many Storage Environments
Raise Challenges

• Data growth is poorly managed in most
  shops (lack of tools, lack of time, lack of
  open management standards, lack of
  strategic planning)
• Knee-jerk acquisitions of popular storage
  products leads to platform heterogeneity

Free Agency is Killing the Game(Ask any Storage
Vendor)
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Why Effective Storage Recovery Requires a Diving
Catch

• 1-for-1 replacement is increasingly costly
• Consolidation strategies are more complex
• Cross-platform data re-hosting takes time
• Lack of software tools for data re-hosting
  requires use of tape as medium
• Large (and growing) data volume calling efficacy
  of tape into question in some settings

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Cross-Platform Data Re-Hosting
Production Environment
Recovery Environment
1-for-1 Storage Platform Restoral
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Ideal Approach
Production Environment
Recovery Environment
Re-host Data On Consolidated Minimum
Equipment Configuration (e.g., Large Array or SAN)
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Reality
Software Tools for Mirroring (e.g., EMC
SRDF) Only Work with Same-Type Arrays
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What about 3rd Party Volume Managers?

• Limited platform support
• Vicissitudes of Host-Based Mirroring
• Warranty hassles

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The Continuing Need for Tape
Production Environment
Recovery Environment
Tape provides the Only Reliable means for Data
Re-Hosting To Arrays or Zoned Fabrics
OR
FC SW
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Ironies

• Tape is dead, and SANs have killed it. (?!?)
• Tape accounted for nearly 75 of SAN deployments
  through 2000, and sharing tape continues to be a
  leading SAN deployment motivator
• Tape is too slow for high volume,
  mission-critical data. You need mirroring.
  (?!?)
• Ignores tape automation, increasing capacity
  and speed of
  tape drives, and multi-stream
  capabilities
• Ignores nature of most databases
  80
  static, 20 active
• Ignores cost of mirroring

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Whos the fairest one of all?
MAN/WAN
LAN/SAN
SYMMETRICAL MIRROR (LOCAL, SHORT DISTANCE, LOW
LATENCY)
ASYMMETRICAL MIRROR (REMOTE, 2ND PROCESS, DATA
NOT SYNCHRONIZED)
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Pros and Cons of Mirroring

• CON
• Another process to monitor
• Vendor lock-in because of platform-specific
  mirroring software
• Three-tier configuration required to avoid
  latency in production applications
• High-cost solution suited only to most extreme
  data recovery requirements

• PRO
• Fast recovery of data access
• Less vulnerability to outage
• Demonstrated track record
• Adjustable to recovery requirements
• New technologies (e.g., Wave Division
  Multiplexing) reducing cost of WAN/MAN
  interconnect

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Pros and Cons of Tape

• CON
• Tape subject to wear and exposed to damage in
  transit (tape vaulting a potential solution)
• Potential conflicts with virtualization engines
• Disk prices are falling, capacities growing
• On-line data is better than near-line or
  off-line data

• PRO
• Media price lower than disk
• Well-designed strategy optimized for time-to-data
• Improving media management capabilities
• Low latency solutions can be designed
• Multi-streams make multi-TB restores feasible

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Facts are Facts

• Most IT architects embracing HSM
• Enabled by evolving infrastructure view of
  storage
• Leveraging cheaper disk platforms (IDE/ATA
  drives), tape or optical for near-line
  configurations
• Content Networking
• Problems with fault tolerance through load
  balancing in storage fabrics remain no silver
  bullets
• Server-free backup remains a holy grail
• Where does the metadata go?
• Lack of granularity in bare metal backups

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The Rise of Near-Line
LAN/SAN
IDE/ATA PLATFORMS OR TAPE (OR OPTICAL) FOR
NEAR-LINE/STATIC STORAGE
SCSI/FC DISK ARRAY FOR ON-LINE/ACTIVE STORAGE
Select hosting platform Based on data
characteristics And cost criteria
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The Trouble with Load Balancing
User
Load Balancers
Storage Servers
Fabric Switch
Data Storage
Zone B E-mail
Zone C Database
Zone A User Files
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Big Issue Potential Choke Point in Tape-based
Data Restore
Backups (Reads) From Virtual Volumes To Tape OK
Restores (Writes) From Tape To Virtual Volumes C
hoked By Virtualization software
Storage Servers
Virtual Volumes
Virtualization Engine
Data Storage
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Tape and Virtualization

• Old software RAID write penaltyagain
• 100 hours to restore 1 TB of files to
  virtualized environment
• Concordance of backup restore software and
  virtualization engine (LUN aggregation
  software) must be tested and verified

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Get to Spring Training Camp

• DR landscape complicated by
  burgeoning data and new
  technologies
  When you come to a fork in the
  road, take it.
• Proactive strategies required
  You cant think and hit at the same
  time.
• Need for frequent and thorough
  testing underscored
  You can
  observe a lot by watching.

Storage Recovery a la Yogi Berra
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The Game goes on

• True storage networks coming soon to a theater
  near you
• DataCore and FalconStor pioneering
  platform-agnostic data re-hosting
• Work on standards-based
  management continues..
• De-facto (EMC)
• Open (CIMOM)

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Tips for Staying in the Game

• Make recoverability a key criterion/consideration
  when selecting components, designing
  applications, architecting infrastructure, etc.
• Filter through the market hype by becoming
  knowledgeable about technology and its
  limitations
• SearchStorage.com
• Drplanning.org
• Join and attend a DR user group learn from peers

• And remember Yogi Berras greatest line
• Baseball (like storage recovery) is 90 mental.
  The other half is physical.

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Next Years Topic Hockey Greats Discuss Winning
Virtualization Techniques (?!_at_)
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For further information
And look for Disaster Recovery Planning
3/e and The Holy Grail of Networked Storage
Management Coming from Prentice Hall PTR in
Summer 2002