Not perfect, but good enough

Storage system-based asynchronous replication isn’t perfect, but for many corporations it is good enough. Having just completed researching and writing a feature on the topic of storage system-based asynchronous replication for an upcoming issue of Storage magazine, it appears user adoption of asynchronous replication is no longer a rarity, at least if one believes the storage system vendors.

While I did not speak to every storage system vendor for this report (there are dozens), the ones I did speak to consistently said that anywhere from 30% to 50% of their users employ this technology. To a certain degree, one might expect these numbers from a  storage system vendor like EqualLogic, that includes asynchronous replication as part of its storage system’s base software package. But, when Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) went on the record and said that they are seeing similar adoption rates among their user base, it caught my attention.

Users of HDS storage systems generally need to license asynchronous software separately so it gives some indication as to the value users now ascribe to making copies of their data on a secondary storage system. Though it would take some time and a lot of cooperation on the part of HDS to find out what percentage of their licensed users actually use this feature and on what scale, it does follow that if users paid for it that a high percentage of them are probably using it.

Companies are figuring out they can repurpose money budgeted for tape and offsite storage and instead use it to buy cheaper secondary storage systems with asynchronous software. Companies can then do point in time snapshot of their production data, replicate it offsite and use it for daily backups, faster restores and, in a worse case scenario, recover their application from the data copy.

Is this architecture perfect? No. But companies are running out of time waiting for the perfect scenario and tape is certainly not it. At least in this scenario, recoveries happen much faster than waiting on restores from tapes residing in someone’s warehouse. Companies are looking for a more cost effective means to improve their backup and recoveries without breaking the bank and it looks like for a growing number of companies, storage system-based asynchronous replication is a reasonable compromise between perfection and what is affordable.

 

 Storage Security FAQ [41:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download