BandL Weblog

Why B&L Is Looking Forward to Symantec Vision 2011

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How’s this for a scary statistic: No less an authority than former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, says that every two days we are generating as much information as we did during the period from the beginning of civilization until 2003. This comes as no surprise to the individual who wrestles with an avalanche of e-mail, texts and tweets—or to the company that struggles to manage mounting volumes of data, including high percentages of inactive data, that choke IT systems.

Archiving is part of the solution for alleviating the challenges and costs of managing production catalogs bloated with inactive data—a subject I discussed here recently. But just because we know archiving has to be part of the solution, that doesn’t make it a no-brainer. Organizations need to understand what data to retain and for how long and to make the right choice from among a whole host of archival tools, solutions and providers.

That’s why I’m looking forward to discussing this issue in more detail at the upcoming Symantec Vision 2011 conference in Las Vegas from May 2-5. In a breakout session called “Archival Data Management: Strategies & Solutions” (SSB04), I’ll be sharing practical strategies to help your company manage archived data, including:

1. Understanding how inactive data strains your business operations
   From bloating catalogs to making disaster recovery more arduous to increasing your dependency upon your backup vendor, inactive data is a drag on efficiency and the bottom line. We’ll discuss the business case for archiving inactive data.
2. Determining what constitutes archival data in your organization
   Archival data means different things to different organizations. And companies have a range of reasons for retaining archived data, whether it’s Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA compliance, legal requirements or “just in case.” The key is to clearly define and build your archival strategy around the right definition for your organization.
3. Selecting the best and most cost-effective archival data management tools and solutions for your organization
   We’ll discuss tools for managing, accessing and restoring archived, inactive data and factors to consider in your decision process.

B&L is proud to be a Gold Sponsor of Symantec Vision 2011. In addition to our breakout session, we’ll be at Booth 312 talking about why tape doesn’t suck and handing out some bumper stickers we created to get our point across :)

By the way, if you are not going but would still like a bumper sticker, just email me here and we'll send you one.

So if you’re in town, I hope you’ll attend the breakout session and stop by our booth (312) to hear more. Aside from our activities, the conference will offer many other specialized knowledge tracks, technical sessions, hands-on labs, and one-on-one opportunities, as well as expanded training and certification exams. It’s an outstanding opportunity to gain exposure to technical experts and useful information from Symantec, one of our Alliance Partners.

Are you going? Let us know in our comments section.

Hope to see you there!

 

Managing Inactive Data

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It seems like no matter where I go lately or what I read, someone’s talking or writing about the data explosion. It’s no secret that the quantity of data in the business universe is growing at a blistering pace, possibly doubling every 14 months or so.

In some ways, more of a good thing is…well, a good thing. The sheer volume of data at the disposal of many businesses opens up new possibilities in terms of analytics. With the right strategies and tools in place, organizations could start to understand, and make better decisions about, their customers, competitors, markets and products or services better than ever before thought possible. Significant productivity gains might be right around the corner thanks to this new level of data-driven decision-making. And, who knows—as companies find ways to turn this overabundance of data into a wealth of actionable information, we might see innovation of whole new businesses and industries—like the advisory service MasterCard has already built using its existing credit card purchasing data.

Too Much of a Good Thing

 In other ways, more can be too much of a good thing. An estimated 60 to 90 percent of production catalogs is inactive data. For compliance, potential litigation, analytical or “just-because” reasons, businesses are keeping these ever-growing stores of inactive data for longer and longer timeframes. As inactive data and retention timelines grow along with the overall data explosion, so does the challenge and cost of managing, storing and protecting this seldom-accessed—yet still business critical—asset.

Companies keeping all of this active data online are paying to procure, run and maintain unused backup servers and applications. They’re buying more and more storage hardware to back up catalogs bloated with inactive data. Their backup and restore windows are growing unbearably long to accommodate these clogged catalogs. Their migrations are unmanageable because there’s just too much data in production. What’s worse, after going to all of this expense and trouble to manage files that may never be opened again, they can’t find what they’re looking for when they need it.

We may not have the whole answer to managing the data explosion—after all, none of us has ever managed the 1,842 exabytes of data predicted to exist by the end of 2011. But I do think we know the first step to getting our arms around the challenges of managing ever-growing stores of inactive data: archiving. By archiving data sets that are still needed, yet rarely accessed, we can affordably keep this data accessible and protected until we need it or until a time where we can expire it safely.

And to make the job easier, organizations should be using data management software, like our Archived Data Manager and Vertices Tape Management System. With these types of tools, you are able to store, protect and track all your data with a click of a mouse.

What do you think? Is archiving the answer you need? How are you dealing with our exploding digital universe?  

 

The Economics of Tape

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In recent posts, I’ve mentioned tape’s relatively low cost as one advantage of this data storage medium. Now, I think it’s time to take a closer look at the economics of tape.

First, what do we really mean by “relatively low cost?” Of course, the answer depends on the variables you factor into your cost comparison. Storage timeline, data type, media specs, energy costs and many more assumptions can affect the result. Even accounting for differences in these variables, though, the results are clear: tape is more cost-effective than disk for long-term storage and archiving. 

• A study by The Clipper Group found that for long-term storage, the average tape-based solution costs 1/15 of the average disk-based solution. The same analysis found that the average disk-based solution uses 238 times the energy of the average tape-based solution, and its energy costs exceed the entire TCO of tape.
  
  
•  An analysis by BackupWorks.com calculated the cost of a tape backup solution to be about ¼ that of a disk backup solution.
  
  
• The cost per megabyte of storage has been cited at less than half a cent for tape and at least 2.5 cents for disk.

Tape costs less than disk in terms of energy (to run the IT infrastructure and cool the data center), floor space, equipment, media and maintenance—especially over the long term. These are the facts, and they are (more or less) undisputed.

Granted, few data backup, recovery and storage solutions are based purely on disk or tape. More commonly, a balanced enterprise storage strategy incorporates both. So, clearly, direct costs are not the only consideration when it comes to choosing storage media. Organizations also have to consider the business costs of meeting their service level agreements. The question organizations need to ask is this: How can we most cost-effectively meet the service level requirements of the business?

For some business needs and data segments, the need to achieve rapid recovery time objectives will outweigh the cost benefits of tape. But for other business requirements and data segments—specifically for long-term storage and archiving, as we’ve said—intelligently incorporating tape into your enterprise storage approach can help minimize total cost of ownership. And that’s a strategy you can take to the bank.

LTO-5: Changing the Way You Look at Tape

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In case you needed more proof of tape’s ongoing role in the data storage world, you’ll find it in a sales figure from late last year. Specifically, shipments of LTO-5 (Linear Tape-Open Generation 5) cartridges doubled from Q3 to Q4 2010, and this tape format now accounts for 10 percent of total cartridge sales. The LTO format in general, initially released in 2000, now comprises nearly 90 percent of the overall tape market.

Why are these figures and LTO-5 itself important to the conversation about tape’s continuing role in an enterprise storage strategy? Because LTO-5 is changing what have been accepted facts about tape in our industry for some time. As a result, here are some of the new facts of life when it comes to tape.

FACT: Tape is evolving. 
The simple fact that leaders in our industry continue to develop newer, better and faster generations of tape tells us that this media is anything but stagnant. LTO-5 has twice the capacity and is 15% faster than its predecessor. Organizations will continue looking for these advances in cost-effective capacity, which will become even more relevant as data stores continue to grow exponentially and archive timelines lengthen. Although adoption of newer generations of LTO may take some time, especially in a recovering economy, offering increasingly better products to meet customer demand is one hallmark of an adaptive and evolving technology whose lifeline is far from at its end.

FACT: Tape can operate independently of the backup software.
There was a time when you could access data on a tape only using a machine that had the proprietary backup software loaded. With LTO-5 and the IBM-created, no-cost Linear Tape File System (LTFS), this challenge falls by the wayside and tape becomes easier and faster to use. Now, any computer running LTFS software can read any LTO-5 tape. This feature takes full advantage of the next new fact about tape…

FACT: Tape allows for easy file system access.
LTO-5 has added the capability to access files on tape just like you would on disk. This is because LTO-5 includes two data partitions that support a tape file system. One partition holds metadata that creates an index of the data on the tape, while the other partition holds the actual data. With LTFS loaded, the LTO-5 tape appears like a drive within the operating system, allowing for easy click, drag-and-drop file opening, deletion or modification. Again, faster, easier use positions tape for continued existence in the storage sphere.

FACT: Tape remains in demand.
The market is still alive for the economical and environmentally sound storage capacity that tape offers—especially as organizations look to archive data for longer due to compliance and legal requirements and to store an overabundance of rich media files. In fact, a while back, survey data showed that 60% of managers operating disk-only systems said they intended to add tape back into their environments.

With LTO-5 and LTFS, the tape industry is demonstrating its ability to keep up with—or maybe even ahead of—market demand. In my opinion, that’s proof positive that tape lives on.

 

Getting Back to the Basics with HIPAA Compliance

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A recent news item in the healthcare space caught my eye: Organizations are struggling with HIPAA compliance. In fact, a recent survey found HIPAA to be #1 on respondents’ list of most difficult regulatory challenges from a technology standpoint. Now, while this might not be much of a news flash to those in healthcare IT, it still invites a closer look at how organizations are dealing with HIPAA compliance these days.

HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was enacted in 1996 with the goal of ensuring that healthcare organizations adequately protect sensitive patient information and medical data. Complying with this broad-reaching regulation was no small task from the outset, and it’s becoming even more challenging as more organizations make, or at least consider, the transition to electronic medical records.

One requirement that seems to be tripping firms up, over the past few months anyway, has to do with providing patient records upon request. HIPAA patient rights rules require healthcare providers to supply a patient with a copy of his or her medical records within 30 days of the patient’s request. In February, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its first fines for HIPAA noncompliance to a health insurance company that failed to provide not just one medical record upon request—but 41. The price tag for the insurer: $1.3 million for denying patients access to their records and another $3 million for failing to cooperate with the department’s investigation. My guess about what the problem was behind the scenes: The insurance company just couldn’t find the data in a timely fashion, or maybe at all.

Not surprisingly, the size of this fine seems to be serving as something of a wakeup call for healthcare organizations to get smarter about how they manage patient data. While I have no way to know for sure, here’s what I think some firms will find they’re missing: the basics. Proactive testing and adjustment of archival procedures to satisfy HIPAA requirements. Simple IT security measures to ensure data integrity. A data retention policy and practices that include a methodology and tools to locate specific media—both online and offline—quickly and painlessly.

Sometimes it takes a reality check—one with a hefty pricetag—to bring us back to the basics.

6 Reasons Why Tape Is the Best Medium for Long-term Storage

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In a recent post, I talked about the fact that we no longer need to defend tape’s right to exist in the data storage world of today and tomorrow. That’s because tape has proven its strong suit as part of a balanced enterprise storage strategy, especially when it comes to long-term storage and archiving. As we see every day with our clients, there’s a reason why tape lives on—several, in fact.

So what exactly are the advantages of tape, particularly over the long term? In a nutshell, here’s what makes tape the medium of choice for the long haul:

1. Tape is low cost.
   Tape is relatively inexpensive (less than a penny per gigabyte) to buy, operate and store in the long run.
   
   
2. Tape is secure.
   Because they’re stored offline, tapes provide protection from system corruption and online security threats, particularly if files are encrypted.
   
   
3. Tape is green.
   Tape is high density, so it consumes relatively little in the way of energy and floor space. The environmental advantage becomes especially critical over the long term, when you consider that storage needs are increasing by 50 percent each year.
   
   
4. Tape is portable.
   It can be stored off site and allows terabytes of data to be moved quickly for a data center relocation or disaster recovery, for example.
   
   
5. Tape backup is accessed sequentially.
   Tape drive backups are stored and can be accessed sequentially—a big advantage, say, in a case like Google’s e-mail restore.
   
   
6. Tape is long lasting and durable.
   Tape can last up to 50 years. Even in the event of a natural disaster or a massive power grid outage, tape stands the best chance of recovery. A tape drive’s hard casing protects its contents, and even if the head of the tape fails, the media can remain functional.

There you have it. Tape’s right to life isn’t a matter of opinion—it’s a fact, and one that’s backed up by some significant advantages, especially when it comes to storing data over the longer term. As companies store more data for longer timeframes thanks to regulatory, audit and analytic requirements, we think it pays to take the long-term view.  

 

The Epsilon Data Breach: What the Rest of Us Can Learn

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Last week’s announcement of a data breach at e-mail marketing firm Epsilon has generated both significant news coverage and consumer angst over the past few days. And the ripple effect likely will continue well into the future, if and when the stolen data is put to use in spam and phishing attacks. For us in the technology sphere, the unfortunate events at Epsilon resurface the age-old question, “Have we done enough to protect our data?”

Of course, there’s no way for us on the outside to know for sure how the hackers accessed Epsilon’s data. Suffice it to say, whatever the security measures, they’ve been proven inadequate. I could speculate ad nauseam about the circumstances that led to the breach, but let’s not go there. The fact of the matter is this: No matter how robust your information security program is, every company is vulnerable in some way to a data breach.

Now, in the Epsilon breach, the hackers obtained only customer names and e-mails—I say “only” because the stolen information apparently doesn’t include social security numbers, bank account numbers, mailing addresses or other data that could prove much more harmful in the wrong hands. But, really—is “only” ever a word that should be associated with stolen tier 1 data? Because in the case of Epsilon—an e-mail marketing firm—that’s exactly what names and e-mail addresses are: business-critical, highly sensitive tier 1 data. 

The Epsilon breach begs the question for the rest of us: No matter how our organizations define tier 1 data, are we doing everything we can to adequately protect this data, our businesses and our customers (or our customers’ customers, which in the case of Epsilon include some of the world’s biggest brands)? And I don’t mean just doing everything we can in terms of information security. I also mean in terms of how we store our tier 1 data. 

While tier 1 data that is frequently accessed or currently being used must be stored online, specific unused (yet still highly sensitive and confidential) data sets can be segmented out and stored offline, i.e. on tape. When the organization needs to access these archived instances—for instance, for a specific e-mail marketing campaign—you would simply restore them from tape. Archiving specific data sets not only would protect what could be a significant percentage of the data from the threat of hackers, it also would shrink the backup window for online data—a welcome side effect.

Could storing segmented data sets offline have limited Epsilon’s exposure by keeping potentially millions of e-mail addresses out of hackers’ hands? Who’s to say? What I can say is this: The time to consider offline storage for segmented tier 1 data is now—before failing to do so makes an Epsilon out of your organization.

It's Time for Tape to Go on the Offensive

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In recent years, tape has become a much-maligned storage medium, with proponents of disk-only data storage having predicted the pending demise of tape for the past several years. Yet tape lives on. And from where I sit, all signs indicate that tape will continue to happily coexist with disk and cloud for many years to come. Because while tape is by no means the gold standard for ALL data storage, it is an essential part of a balanced enterprise storage strategy.

With this in mind, I submit that the time has come to end the disk vs. tape debate. Tape is still here. It has already proven that it retains an essential role in effective data management. Like the mythical paperless society, the tape-free enterprise hasn’t materialized—and won’t for the foreseeable future.

We can stop defending tape. Those of us who believe that tape has an ongoing storage role can stop protecting tape from the attacks and end-of-life predictions of disk-only proponents. We can instead play offense—focusing proactively on the benefits tape brings to the enterprise and the complementary role it plays to other storage media.

As we see with our clients every day, the benefits of retaining tape as a storage strategy staple are significant, especially when it comes to long-term storage and archiving, for which tape is particularly well suited. In an upcoming post, I’ll talk in more detail about the advantages of tape that make it an optimal solution for these business needs. 

Tape isn’t dead, it doesn’t suck and it no longer needs defending. Have you considered the role tape plays—and will continue to play for the foreseeable future—in your balanced storage strategy?