======================================================================== ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: OLIVER RIST http://www.infoworld.com ======================================================================== Monday, October 25, 2004
TWO SYLLABLES OF IT TERROR By Oliver Rist Posted October 22, 2004 3:00 PM Pacific Time Backup. If there's a more annoying and ofttimes downright dreaded bisyllabic word in an IT manager's life, I don't know it. Unless you include divorce, downsize, or colonoscopy. Yeah, I can count, but polysyllabic or not, that last one is pretty dreadful. Just like getting that backup call. ADVERTISEMENT -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- PLUCK - FREE DOWNLOAD IE browser add-on helps you find, organize and share your most worthy online information. With an Outlook-like interface, manage and review your RSS feeds with ease. Define powerful searches that persistently scour the Internet to deliver your latest product, news or sports headlines. Organize your results and favorite links in folders that can be shared with friends or synchronized with multiple computers. Free! DOWNLOAD PLUCK NOW! http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=9879C3:2B910B2 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Is it me, or was backup just a mite more sane once upon a time? Suddenly, backup sizes seem like they've doubled, even for smaller businesses. And the bigger companies now have lawyers asking me about backup for compliance reasons. They want everything saved and available for recall whenever their golf schedules permit. But when it comes to paying for a system more efficient than tape, the CEO types always put on their don't-fix-it-if-it-isn't-bleeding-and-screaming-for-help faces. I cover my posterior with these clowns the same way most of you do: full disclosure. I explain the limits of tape, and espouse the benefits and low cost of disks. Their eyes just glaze. We set up a working tape system; then we test it and test it again. Our stuff works. But I make damn sure all clients know that off-site storage, retrieval, and the periodic testing of off-site tapes is up to them. We can do the testing, but they need to get us those tapes. Nobody does. Ever. Then it happens. The inevitable call. Something crashed, burned, disappeared, or sued, and we need to back up from an older tape set. I say, "Sure. Just get me the tape." Sometimes a couple of days will go by before I get the next call where they usually say they can't find the tape in question or that somebody fed the entire container to the dog. Then they start getting nasty with me, insisting that I should have kept an additional copy somewhere else on their servers. We discuss disk-based backup again, and I'd like to feel smug, but it's hard to do that when the client's hosed. Yeah, we're getting around to Microsoft, because Microsoft is getting around to backup. For enterprise clients, I've never been a Microsoft man. Use Veritas and forget about it. Small Business Server has a backup utility built in, but no matter what tape hardware we use, we almost always get a 50 percent success rate. Most of us have simply decided that Redmond can't do backup, so we've moved to find a company that can. Well, sometime next year, the good folks from the rainy state want to try to change our minds. At my recent Redmond appointment for re-education, I got a demo of an early stage of DPS (Data Protection Server). Far more than a simple backup utility, Microsoft wants DPS to encompass a full hierarchical storage management system with a heavy emphasis on disk-to-disk and then eventually tape. The company's case for this is compelling, and I don't need to quote it because most of us have been quoting it for some time now. Storage is cheap, so having an extra half-T between your production half-T and your pile of tape cartridges makes a whole lot of sense. But Microsoft isn't stopping there. That behavior would lack the required seductiveness inherent in most Redmond products. DPS works with Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, and especially Windows Storage Server 2003. It uses features from these underlying platforms, including replication and volume shadow copy, and combines that with what looks to be a robust policy-based management system to set up a living, breathing storage archive. The hidden benefits are many. For one, many users will be able to perform their own file-by-file recovery operations using the self-help technologies in XP. Volume shadow copy can be scheduled, and the bandwidth it requires can be intelligently managed using DPS. Shadow copies can also be clocked, aimed at specific file sets, or even set up as general system snapshots. All using what Microsoft hopes will be fast RAID arrays with hot-swap drives for almost total reliability at every site. Looking back on it, I might have had a bit of a moon face on. Every third word out of the spokesman's mouth during this demo was disk. I mentioned tape, but Microsoft only mentions tape as a tagalong member at the end of the DPS chain. Come to think of it, I heard no mention of direct support in DPS for tape archiving. Either Microsoft didn't bother mentioning it, or Redmond expects you to run that system yourself. Considering that most folks still view tape as an inevitable end point for archive data, such an omission could really hurt the street TCO of a DPS solution. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about it for a while, as DPS won't be available until late next year. When it does, I think a serious discussion about tape is at hand. Oliver Rist is a senior contributing editor at InfoWorld. ======================================================================== TECHWORLD: THE NEW WEB SITE FOR UK IT PROFESSIONALS Techworld is IDG's Web site for the IT professional. 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