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Spectra Logic Backup and Recover Blog

“Why I’m Thankful…for Big Data Storage”

Posted At : November 23, 2011 10:55 AM | Posted By : Kevin Dudak
Related Categories: BlueScale Management Software, Big Data

We should all be Thankful as “Big Data” improves storage for everyone.

It’s the beginning of the Holiday season, with Thanksgiving travel in full swing.  I’ll be getting 10 hours of windshield time shortly, as I’m headed to see family.

As more of our customers have moved into the world of “Big Data” we have been looking at how to make storage ready for ExaScale.  ExaScale sized storage has challenges that storing a handful of Terabytes never imagined.  Spectra announced the 12thgeneration of BlueScaleearlier this month with a lot of advancements for Big Data customers.  While “Big Data” can mean a lot of different things to different organizations, one thing that is common is the need to storage and manage huge amounts of information.  We spent hours working with our customers over the last year looking at where we could make massive storage easier to use. 

Simply booting up a multi-petabytelibrary can be time consuming.  Traditionally, a library will reinventory itself when rebooting.  This takes a few minutes on a library with 50 tapes, but will take hours on a library with 15,000 tapes.  Spectra’s BlueScale 12 operating systemwill not force a fresh inventory on reboot.  If you didn’t change any tapes, why waste all that time?  If you did open the library and change things, then you can tell the system to update the inventory, whichwill save our customers hours.

The number of components that might need code updates over the life of the library grows with data storage as well.  What would take a few minutes with a 2 drive tape library could take hours with a 120 drive library.  With BlueScale 12, updates are done in parallel, so 120 drive sleds can be updated in the time of one.   

Of course, most organizations are not rebooting their libraries or updating firmware every month.  We have continued to increase the assistance Media Lifecycle Managementgives our customers.  The analytics we evaluateon our Certified Media combined with Data Integrity Verificationon the data written automatically lets informs administrators if there is an issue.  They do not need to spend any time managing it, it just works.  BlueScale 12 adds MLMsupport for TS1140 technologytape media in Spectra T-Finitylibraries. 

These enhancements and more, like the XML interface, Carbide Clean and RAIT make managing the largest storage environments easy and reliable.  The great thing about Spectra T-Series libraries is they all run BlueScale.  OursmallerT50ecustomers get the same software updates and benefits as our largest T-Finitycustomers.    All our customers do not generate multiple petabytes of data, but they all have data that is important to their business.  Being able to bring the advances that“Big Data” drives to all our customers is something I am thankful for.

Now, back to the road. Safe travels this holiday season!

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Crying Wolf Over Data Breaches: How Active Archive Environments Can Help

Posted At : June 9, 2010 9:10 AM | Posted By : Simon Mitchell
Related Categories: Media Management, BlueScale Management Software, Archive, Security & Encryption

The high importance of data protection is top of mind these days – specifically in light of some high profile cases of data loss in the UK. News of some potentially impending legislation this side of the pond has again drawn attention to the issue of how companies look after customer data.

The story that caught my eye is here – and covers news that a European Commission review of data laws will require data-breach notification from a wide range of businesses. Initially this will be aimed at telcos but there are no reasons I can see why the legislation will not be extended to other businesses.
When we talk data breaches we’re often talking about firewalls, DMZs, access control, encryption technology – the standard tools and techniques used to secure data within the corporate network. However, I also think this is very much a storage story as well – specifically in terms of how customers archive sensitive data.
 
If this legislation is passed we will need to find a happy balance between vigilance and pragmatism. What we don’t need is a situation where every single potential data breach is reported, causing panic every time there is the slightest possibility of information falling into the wrong hands. This will result in a situation very much like that faced by the ‘Boy who cried wolf’. People will soon turn off, and then the legislation becomes meaningless.  We need a system whereby organisations have a measured approach to assessing the extent of any potential breach and what data may have been compromised.
If we are going to achieve this balance then companies will have to put in place the procedures and technologies to give them a very granular view of what data is stored where. Helping customers achieve this for archived data is one of the reasons why Spectra Logic   became a founding member of the Active Archive Alliance. AAA has been set up to address some of the barriers which stop IT departments achieving the kind of satisfactory archiving architecture described above.
 
Much of the confusion around archiving has been caused by conflicting messages put out by vendors as well as a lack of integration between technologies at various levels of the overall archiving stack. Active archive environments are a better way to classify, manage and route data. From the point of creation, data in an active archive can be classified as sensitive (if necessary) and then managed within a framework of policies which govern where and how it should be stored, including the level of protection it should be given.
 
If Active Archives can help customers achieve these levels of granularity in the governance of archived data then we should be able to find a balance which makes this forthcoming legislation enforceable and valuable. Ideally we will get to the stage where data-breaches simply cannot happen but that is unrealistic. What should be realistic is having IT departments know exactly what data is where within their infrastructure and how it is being stored. This should ensure that we’re not inundated with ‘false-positive’ warnings and that when a company cries “Wolf!” the villagers lock their doors!

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Question: Can Disk Replace Tape? Answer: Unobtanium

Posted At : February 26, 2010 4:14 PM | Posted By : Meade E. Ahmogle
Related Categories: BlueScale Management Software, Tape Backup, Tape Drives, Disk Backup, Archive

Dear Ms. Meade,
I am charged with architecting a backup system without any single points of failure. Obviously, tape is SO failure-prone that I am not including it at all. How do you think I should configure such a system?
Sincerely,
Tape is Doomed

Dear Doomed,
You are doomed if you rely solely on disk for your data backup.  A possible interpretation of your question may be “How much disk does it take to replace tape?”  The answer is “unobtainium”—that is, you can’t replace tape using disk.

Further, the very concept of single point of failure is terribly funny in a terribly dark way. Failure is inevitable, unless you plan to address human imperfection? What about acts of natural and man-made disaster that may affect the national power grid? Switch problems? What about loose screws, including any screwed-up (or self-perceived screwed over) employee?

Instead, consider asking a question that does have an answer—“How can I reliably protect data?” The answer is “disk and tape.”

Ms. Meade is a major fan of disk with RAID 6, offered in Spectra’s nTier disk. With RAID 6, up to three disks can fail without affecting data integrity. Go disk and go RAID. However, disk (even with RAID 6) can’t be considered failure-proof because it has its own Achilles’ heel (aka single point of failure): the RAID controller. You can have all the data you want on all the spinning disk you want—but if the controller fails, the brains are gone, and the bits and bytes you’ve carefully protected are toast. Whither goest the RAID controller, so goeth the data. Dead controller= permanently decomposed data. So disk alone, even with the marvels of RAID, is not enough to provide true disaster recovery and continuity of operations.

Further, please note that your information about tape as failure-prone is completely wrong. Tape is, it turns out, incredibly reliable.  With tape’s reliability increase of 700% over the last decade, multiple layers of ECC protection, and smart Spectra libraries tracking media and drive health, tape meets and beats disk in terms of reliability. If you’re worried about a single point of failure,  make sure you get two tape drives. Consider the T950 and T-Finity libraries’ global spare feature—which is an installed drive that can be directed to take over in case of a drive failure.

Ms. Meade admits that she is curious about the pointy-haired boss who directed you to create the no single point of failure unobtanium backup environment….

 

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