Thought Leadership White Paper

August 2012IBM Software

Consolidate your backup systems to save money and reduce risksSimplify the control and automate the management of your backup and restore environment

2 Consolidate your backup systems to save money and reduce risks

IntroductionWith data continuing to grow at alarming rates and IT environ-ments continuing to become more distributed and complex, the strains and costs of providing data protection and recovery capabilities are getting the attention of many executives. Gartner estimates that by 2014, at least 30 percent of organizations will have changed backup vendors due to frustration over cost, complexity or capability.1

Adding to this complexity, most companies have on average more than two backup software solutions deployed, as indicated in a recent survey by Storage magazine.2 And many organizations utilize a considerably larger number of backup tools, as they have expanded to new countries, acquired new subsidiaries, deployed new platforms and applications, expanded protection to remote offices and employee workstations, and come under new regulatory or governance mandates.

Contents

2 Introduction

2 Customer scenario: Backup and restore consolidation project

9 Implement your project with Tivoli Storage Manager

11 Transform and consolidate with IBM Tivoli

11 For more information

While some organizations justify adding a specific type of backup tool to meet each new challenge, complexity and costs often increase with each new tool. This issue raises the question: When a data disaster occurs, are you confident that the right person with the right training will log into the right system, restore the right data to the right place, do it in a timely manner and not make anything else worse in the process?

As the complexity of your environment grows, so does the likeli-hood of your answer to that question being “no.” Since you may have already consolidated your servers, your storage and your networks, it is probably time to consider consolidating your backup and restore systems onto a single, scalable, cost-effective unified recovery management platform.

Customer scenario: Backup and restore consolidation projectDemonstrating the potential benefits and cost savings of this backup consolidation strategy, the approach taken by one multi-national utility company provides a prime example. This company has been geographically expanding and acquiring regional utilities for several years, with each new acquisition presenting an entirely different IT environment with different rules governing each entity.

It quickly became obvious that this distributed and independent model of IT management was costing the company millions of dollars, and the data protection and recovery systems were

3IBM Software

assumed to be a major contributor of excessive costs. But the company could not prove with certainty that this was the case—no single person had more than a narrow window into the over-all environment.

To begin assessing its infrastructure and looking for potential solutions, the company decided to turn to IBM® Global Technology Services®. The company’s management and IT staff already knew they had 22 distinct data centers, but they only had a rough estimate of the hardware and software deployed and used in each data center for backup and recovery. IBM understood that approaching this challenge with a manual question-and-answer style analysis would have proven difficult, time consuming and costly, and likely would have produced less-than-perfect results, so IBM brought in a business partner, Butterf ly Software. This software firm based in the United Kingdom had developed a unique software product capable of thoroughly assessing an organization’s backup environment, determining cost projections, recommending a replacement solution and providing a total cost of ownership comparison for the new backup and restore solution. This software tool—the Butterf ly Analysis Engine—provided a solid starting point for the utility company to begin its consolidation effort.

Butterfly Analysis EngineThe Butterf ly Analysis Engine includes a unique library contain-ing efficiency and effectiveness statistics for various storage, server and infrastructure configurations. It provides a complete view of an organization’s existing data and infrastructure, pres-ents the findings in an easily understood format that enables

organizations to assess the cost and risk implications of staying with the current environment, and compares that to the pro-posed consolidated backup environment. By using empirical data from the client’s own systems, this capability ensures that organizations can make informed and confident migration decisions.

Butterf ly can automatically scan the backup and restore environ-ment in minutes (without the need for host agents), process Butterf ly Metrics (using up to 4,000 raw data indicators), and provide a comprehensive, easy-to-read, single-pane report. This report can be completed in only a matter of days—with no disruption to production teams—and can be used to:

●● Visualize the size and complexity of the current environment●● Analyze exposure to risk and test recovery time and recovery

point objectives●● View risk and performance indicators across the complete

backup infrastructure●● Directly compare current and potential backup environments,

even across proprietary systems with a supporting business case

●● Investigate strategic options and compare alternative configurations

Assessment and solution proposalAfter receiving the Butterf ly Analysis Engine Report, the utility company gained an insightful picture of its backup environment, as shown in Figure 1.

4 Consolidate your backup systems to save money and reduce risks

Figure 1: The Butterfly Analysis Engine Report provides a comprehensive, simplified view into the backup and restore environment.

5IBM Software

●● Two petabytes of backup data were stored on more than 10,000 tape cartridges.

●● Predictive growth up to 125 backup servers and more than 22,000 tape cartridges was estimated to take place over the next three years.

The Butterf ly Analysis Engine Report provided the company with a topographical view of the environment, depicting each of its data centers, with the type and number of servers and stor-age devices in each data center. The report also displayed the recommended replacement architecture for the company, based on Tivoli Storage Manager.

The full report shown in Figure 1 identified specific hardware and software architecture information (as detailed in Figure 2) for the current (source) environment and revealed several key concerns:

●● Multiple backup applications (with licenses and maintenance) were in use, including one very old version of CA ARCserve, four versions of Symantec NetBackup, seven versions of Symantec Backup Exec and three old versions of IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager.

●● 72 backup and media servers were spread across 22 sites.

SOURCE EnvironmentSource Software Architecture

Source software environment based on NetBackup 5.1, 5.1 MP5, 6.5.6, and 7.0, ARCserve v7, BackupExec v7.2, v7.3, v8.0, v8.5, v8.6, v9.0 and v9.1, Tivoli Storage Manager v5.4.0, v5.4.6 and v5.50 Earliest software release date May 2004Standalone backup servers—manually reported [detail unavailable] Seventy Two backup management servers in twenty two data centre locationsFULL and INCR backup methodology and policy enforced throughout the environment72 active backup management server addressing a total of 1091 client entities1091 configured backup clientsActive data retention policy vary from 14 days to Over 7 yearsSoftware agents in use are Sybase, NDMP, MS-SQL-Server, Filesystem, Oracle, MS Exchange, SAP

Source Hardware ArchitectureBackup management server technology based on Windows 2003, Solaris and AIX-RS/6000, NovellBackups are conducted over the TCPIP network and via MEDIA ServersTotal number of physical tape libraries is 20Library types in environment are IBM 3576, IBM 3573, IBM 3584, Overland NEO and IBM 4560SLX 156 Physical tape drivesTotal physical volumes onsite reported 2340Offsite physical volumes 8122Tape volumes are produced for offsite recoverySingle copy of production data on tape mediaDisk STAGING in use on backup servers543 Active backup policesManual tape handling in remote sitesHardware compression in use

•

••

••

••••

••••

•••••

••

•

•

Figure 2: Included in the Butterfly Analysis Engine Report is an analysis of the source software and hardware making up the backup and restore infrastructure.

6 Consolidate your backup systems to save money and reduce risks

Before After

Figure 3: The report’s topology comparison can provide dramatic results, demonstrating how sprawling and complex backup and restore systems can be significantly streamlined.

Looking at the topology comparison in Figure 3, you can see that the company’s current environment, shown on the left, has 72 backup servers distributed in 22 different locations. The pro-posed environment, shown on the right, consists of six backup servers in three strategically located data centers. The proposed storage solution dramatically streamlines the infrastructure,

reducing the hardware components from 156 physical tape drives and 20 tape libraries to 30 Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Ultrium 5 tape drives in three IBM tape libraries. The proposed environment also includes four IBM System Storage® ProtecTIER® Deduplication Gateway devices for data reduction.

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Cost analysis revealing tremendous savingsButterf ly has built years of best-practices experience into its Analysis Engine Report calculations, which were instrumental in creating an insightful report for the utility company. As shown in Figure 4, the savings the utility company can expect to see over the next 36 months after transforming its data-protection envi-ronment can be substantial, including the following potential hardware and cost reductions:

●● 94 percent reduction in the number of tape cartridges (22,307 to 1,167)

●● 90 percent reduction in the number of tape drives (323 to 30)●● 94 percent reduction in the number of tape libraries (52 to 3)

TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP 36 MONTHSINFRASTRUCTURE SOURCE

UNITS COST

TARGET

UNITS COST

TAPE VOLUMES

VAULT SLOTS

LIBRARY

TAPE DRIVES

MASTER SERVER

MEDIA SERVER

VTL/DISK TBs

TOTAL

OCCUPANCY (TB)POWER (KVA)

INFRASTRUCTURE SAVINGS

RESOURCE REQUIREMENTSMan Years after 36 months

TOTAL SAVINGS

6319459

101131

3,072,3236,747,210$ $

22307

2543952

323

111

15

0

1003805

164133

723706

2858792

1801738

1950370

1167

0

330

6

0

184

52529

0

249125

374191

1069560

2289522

54%

45%

$

$

3,674,888

4,785,977

13.7 3,781,089 2,670,0008 $$

Figure 4: The potential total cost of ownership savings provided in the report presented substantial power-usage and cost reductions for the utility company.

●● 95 percent reduction in the number of master and media backup servers (126 to 6)

●● 93 percent reduction in power usage (459 kVA to 31 kVA)

Overall, the Butterf ly Analysis Engine Report calculated a three-year infrastructure savings of 54 percent and an overall savings of nearly USD5 million. The report also included a detailed breakdown, shown in Figure 5, comparing the 36-month projections for the source (before) and the target (after) infrastructures including the type and number of hard-ware components, the power usage of the components and the total power usage.

8 Consolidate your backup systems to save money and reduce risks

Transformation Benefits

Architectural Changes

Commercial, Technical & Operational benefits of a single, unified strategic B&R platformVirtual Tape library providing massive performance improvements in backup and restore

Data centre space savings across environment

Avoids ad-hoc unplanned spend

TSM progressive incremental and source de-duplication reducing data volumes to be managedImproved backup and recovery time and throughputClear, efficient backup success reporting

Reduction of intersite bandwidth with source de-duplication during the backup operationIncreased efficiency of backup due to resource availability and reliability

Standardises on a high performance virtual tape platform with site consolidationConsolidated virtual tape library for de-duplication

Environment scaled to 36 months usageIncreased use of tiering for backup data and associated de-duplication benefitsVirtual tape library providing improved direct to tape mount capabilityTSM disk caching for backup of more systems within the backup window

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•

•••

••

••

••••

•

Figure 6: Several operational benefits to the company were outlined in the report, detailing how the proposed consolidation project can improve performance and efficiency across the backup and restore environment.

Operational Issues ResolvedInfrastructure Issues

Operational Issues

IO device errors on tape devices

Small library and drive infrastructureMultiple back level generation tape Infrastructure

Complexity of tape library/drive environmentIO errors unchecked in physical tape environmentTape library microcode not standardAllocation and backup server allocation for new clientsManagement complexity due to number of physical and virtual elementsManagement and handling of large amount of physical tape mediaBackup retry requests exceeding number of triesFlat file backup attempts on structured data typesInsufficient system resources on backup clients to complete backup operations

Reported backup success rate 87%

Unsupported backup application softwareUnsupported backup server operating systems

Daily FULL backup operations to be retained for extended retentionBackup jobs running through business day510 non-successful backup jobs during collected summary periodNot all servers have DR capabilityNo clear scalability model for growth and additional workloadVariety of media types and drive types for supportVariable throughput and data density capabilitiesRerun coverage of failed backup operationsBackup operations not completing within defined backup windowTape library support and maintenance cost and complexityRemote site manual tape movements and reliabilityFROZEN tape cartridges

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••

••

•

••

•

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•

••

••

•

••

•

••

•

Figure 7: The company was able to view a list of issues that could be resolved by carrying out the consolidation project. The report provided simple and clear suggestions for resolving both infrastructure and operational issues.

Infrastructure transformation benefitsThe Butterf ly Analysis Engine Report also includes projected operational benefits for the proposed consolidation project, as shown in Figure 6. Among the many backup and restore benefits, this list identified opportunities for improved perfor-mance, data reduction, data center space savings and improved efficiency. The report also provided a list of architectural changes including a number of beneficial consolidation and standardization measures.

SOURCE Hardware InfrastructureExisting

Growth

INFRASTRUCTURE VENDOR TIER MODEL QTY KVA

Library

Master Server

Media Server

Drive

Library

Master Server

Media Server

Drive

MIX

MIX

MIX

MIX

MIX

MIX

MIX

MIX

Mix

Midrange

Entry

Mix

Mix

Midrange

Entry

Mix

MIX

MASTER

MEDIA

LTO/SLDT

MIX

MASTER

MEDIA

LTO/SLDT

20

72

7

156

48

216

14

15.6

293.654.4

78.0

16.0

16.7

165.1458.7TOTAL

TOTAL

TOTAL32

39

8

167

TARGET Hardware InfrastructureVENDOR TIER QTY KVAINFRASTRUCTUREBuyIBM

IBM

IBM

IBM

IBM

Master Server

Disk

VTL (TB)

Library

Drive

EnterpriseEnterprise

EnterpriseEnterprise

Entry

6

48

136

3

30

MODELMASTER

TS7650

TS3500LTO

15

1.9

10.2

1.5

2.1

30.8

30.8TOTALTOTAL

Figure 5: The report provided a breakdown of the company’s hardware infrastructure and power usage, detailing the estimated power-usage reductions of the proposed consolidation solution.

In addition to listing the potential benefits for the proposed project, the report included a detailed listing of infrastructure and operational issues that could be resolved, as shown in Figure 7, if this transformation project were to be implemented.

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Unified recovery managementThe Tivoli Storage Manager family includes the ability to pro-tect and restore a very broad range of systems and applications, from laptops to mainframes, all from a single command console. It provides a strong and f lexible policy engine to tune your data-protection operations to specific and granular service requirements. It also includes advanced functionality for popular platforms such as Microsoft Windows and VMware.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery is a bundle of 10 Tivoli Storage Manager family products, offered on a capacity-based licensing model, which enables organizations to deploy the right tools in the right quantities to meet their data protection and recovery needs without worrying about adding individual product licenses. This suite includes integrated management of:

●● Protection of applications such as SAP, Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus® Notes®

●● Protection of databases such as IBM DB2®, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle

●● Remote office data protection●● Data lifecycle management (archiving and hierarchical storage

management)●● Backup and recovery leveraging storage area network (SAN)

connections●● Protection of virtual machines on various hypervisor platforms

Implement your project with Tivoli Storage ManagerThe Butterf ly Analysis Engine Report enables your organization to complete the critical first step toward consolidating your backup and restore systems. To take the next step, you can either engage with Butterf ly Software to perform the analysis, or contact IBM or your IBM Business Partner to learn if your organization qualifies for a free assessment. However, before carrying out your consolidation project, you will want to con-sider a management platform to support your new solution.

When considering a backup and recovery consolidation project, you need to make sure that the platform you are consolidating onto can:

●● Handle the diverse needs of the business●● Scale to meet and stay ahead of data growth●● Provide exceptional levels of performance, reliability and

resiliency●● Dramatically reduce data storage requirements

With the ability to meet these requirements for a wide range of organizations, Tivoli Storage Manager offers a comprehensive software suite that includes capabilities for backup and recovery, scalability, performance, reliability and data reduction.

10 Consolidate your backup systems to save money and reduce risks

Figure 8: Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery includes a number of integrated storage management features that are useful for a wide variety of applications.

Management scalabilityTivoli Storage Manager is a single-server architecture that does not require additional media servers as the amount of data in the environment grows. Its scalability is measured only by the number of data objects it manages, and it can currently manage up to 4 billion objects in a single backup server. This represents an 800 percent increase in scalability over a three-year period.

DB2 foundationTivoli Storage Manager achieves leading levels of performance, reliability and resiliency due to its built-in DB2 relational data-base. It provides faster backup processing by only transferring incremental data and faster restores with single-step retrieval and advanced tape handling. Disaster recovery planning and off-site replication are included for added resilience in IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Extended Edition.

11IBM Software

Data reductionThe unique, progressive incremental backup capability of Tivoli Storage Manager eliminates the need for repetitive full backups, which are the major cause of duplicate data in the IT environ-ment. Built-in source and target data deduplication can reduce storage requirements by another 40 percent. Standard compres-sion, automatic placement and migration of data based on its lifecycle, and advanced tape utilization technologies round out a broad spectrum of cost-saving capabilities.

Additional new featuresIn addition to including new capabilities for unified recovery management, increased scalability, disaster recovery manage-ment and data reduction, Tivoli Storage Manager also now includes IBM Cognos® Business Intelligence—an integrated business intelligence suite provided as part of IBM Tivoli Common Reporting. Cognos Business Intelligence provides real information manipulation and analysis capabilities that can be useful for a variety of organizations.

Tivoli Storage Manager has also extended its support for auto-matic client updates from Microsoft Windows to other operat-ing systems, and it has expanded support for VMware vSphere virtualized servers by offering IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtualized Environments.

Transform and consolidate with IBM TivoliThe latest advancements incorporated in the Tivoli Storage Manager family of data protection and unified recovery management software products, combined with the latest in IBM storage hardware systems, can help organizations transform

and consolidate their unwieldy, unreliable, and costly multi- vendor situations. The operational benefits of an IBM backup consolidation project not only have the potential to save your organization a significant amount of money, but can also help you have assurance that when a data disaster strikes, you will have the confidence and the ability to quickly restore the right data to the right systems and help keep your organization performing at its peak.

For more informationTo learn more about consolidating your backup and restore environment to save costs, eliminate complexity and reduce risks, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit: ibm.com/software/tivoli/solutions/backup

And to see for yourself how much your backup and restore systems might be improved, ask IBM about producing a Butterf ly Analysis Engine Report for your organization.

To learn more about Butterf ly Software, visit: butterflysoftware.net

Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the software capabilities that your business needs in the most cost-effective and strategic way possible. We’ll partner with credit-qualified clients to customize a financing solution to suit your business and development goals, enable effective cash management, and improve your total cost of ownership. Fund your critical IT investment and propel your business for-ward with IBM Global Financing. For more information, visit: ibm.com/financing

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Produced in the United States of America August 2012

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1 Dave Russell, “The Future of Backup May Not Be Backup,” Gartner, September 22, 2011.

2 Rich Castagna, “Backup Software Quality Awards,” Storage, July 2012: http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/magazine-sections/2012/07

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