How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy

Transcription

1 Enterprise Strategy Group Getting to the bigger truth. White Paper How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy Investigating the Ways in Which And Enables Better Data Protection Outcomes than Or By Jason Buffington, Principal Analyst and Monya Keane, Senior Research Analyst June 2017 This ESG White Paper was commissioned by HPE and sponsored by Intel. Distributed under license from ESG.

2 White Paper: How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy 2 Contents Introduction... 3 Plan for Hybrid Everywhere... 3 Hybrid Production Infrastructures... 3 Hybrid Production Architectures... 3 Hybrid Data Protection Media... 4 Hybrid Data Protection Methods... 5 Assessing the Hybrid Solutions of HPE... 6 HPE s Hybrid Production Infrastructure Solutions... 6 HPE s Hybrid Production Architecture Solutions for Public Clouds... 6 HPE s Hybrid Data Protection Media Solutions... 6 HPE s Hybrid Data Protection Methods... 8 The Bigger Truth... 8

3 Introduction White Paper: How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy 3 As the dictionary defines it, hybrid simply means something made by combining two different elements. In modern IT, hybrid usually describes a mixture of on-premises and cloud-based resources. In data protection, a hybrid approach might mean combining methods or combining media. There are very few pure environments in IT anymore. Not too many organizations rely on just one type of storage platform. Few IT infrastructures use servers made by just one vendor. Converged and hyperconverged infrastructure appliances have increasingly become important building blocks of a modern IT ecosystem. The intent of this paper is not to overuse the term hybrid but merely to emphasize that IT organizations today must work in an and world, rather than an or world to meet the demands of their users. In an and world, IT architectures and strategies leverage an ever-broadening variety of tools while still supporting and propelling a single strategy. Plan for Hybrid Everywhere At least four distinct hybridizations apply to modern IT production and protection: Hybrid production infrastructures. Hybrid production architectures. Hybrid data protection media. Hybrid data protection methods. Hybrid Production Infrastructures The underlying structure at many highly virtualized organizations won t consist of servers and arrays bought from a single vendor. Yes, many organizations do follow the best practice of using a standardized server infrastructure supplied by a single dominant vendor, but they almost certainly also have inherited secondary server and storage elements perhaps thanks to departmental or project-centric deployments, rogue acquisitions of equipment, or even M&A events. The result is a heterogeneous on-premises hardware farm. In addition, many IT organizations have embraced purpose-built architectures (for example, converged/hyperconverged infrastructures) to support key workloads, or they have deployed monolithic stacks to support certain database platforms. IT organizations are looking to establish a diverse yet complementary hardware infrastructure in other words, a hybrid production infrastructure (on-premises). Hybrid Production Architectures The days of the all-onsite data center are over. While many organizations may continue to utilize onsite data centers as the majority of their IT infrastructure strategy, it is inevitable that cloud services will become part of almost every IT architecture over the next few years. Already, for instance, 78% of all organizations are using some type of public cloud service, according to recent ESG research. 1 For most organizations, it is not a question of using the cloud or not. It is a question of how many clouds will they use to supplement their modern on-premises data center. Specifically, they may decide to use: Cloud storage Cloud storage can supplement near-line production storage and/or augment data protection and preservation architectures (more on that later). 1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2017 Public Cloud Computing Trends, April 2017.

4 White Paper: How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy 4 Cloud-hosted servers Also known as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), cloud-hosted servers can help IT organizations continue to leverage the management techniques they prefer without the burden of managing a large, on-prem hardware infrastructure. For many organizations, the first production-specific foray into cloud services might involve temporarily or permanently migrating some virtualized servers from onsite hosts to a hyperscale cloud provider. Cloud-based applications Also referred to as software-as-a-service (SaaS), these platforms for cloud-based and productivity (e.g., Gmail or Office 365) or cloud-based enterprise software (e.g., Salesforce) have become vital components of many modern IT strategies. As on-prem and cloud-based production servers and services modernize and diversify, associated data protection strategies must evolve, too. Otherwise, those protection infrastructures will be unable to accommodate the everdiversifying workloads. In fact, even if production infrastructures had not started encompassing cloud services and private cloud building blocks such as converged and hyperconverged infrastructures, data protection architectures would still need to embrace a hybrid approach to meet tomorrow s needs. Hybrid Data Protection Media One of the most tired arguments in data protection is disk versus tape. First, that argument should be revised to disk, tape, or cloud. And the conversation should not be centered on or but rather on and because all three media are relevant. To be clear, each of the three media types are irreplaceable in adhering to modern SLAs efficiently and reliably: Disk For organizations of almost any size, disk is the cornerstone of data recovery. However, as agile and efficient for quick recovery as disk-based solutions can be, they will be cost prohibitive without disk-based deduplication. Tape Even today, tape remains a mainstay for long-term retention (i.e., preservation durations that are measurable in years). Many legacy IT administrators clearly remember the days of unreliable or slow-performing tape. But modern tape cartridges boast a durability profile that is actually higher than that of single-disk spindles. Today s tape libraries also boast capacities and performance exceeding the data transfer and retrieval rates that almost any organization might need. And for the foreseeable future, tape is going to provide those capabilities at the lowest cost per terabyte. Cloud Some cloud architectures might boast speeds semi-comparable to disk, or economics semi-comparable to tape. But often, the power of cloud services centers more on agility and durability, not on being able to displace disk or tape. Just as a variety of cloud services can augment on-prem production capabilities, a variety of cloud services can augment on-prem data protection efforts by providing cloud-based storage, bolstering BC/DR preparedness via disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS), supporting backup of remote workloads such as branch office- or endpoint device-generated data via backup-as-a-service (BaaS), and facilitating non-data protection reuse scenarios including dev/ops and patch testing. To better understand the hybrid uses of these discrete forms of data protection media, one need only look at how various combinations are being used within organizations primary backup solutions today (see Figure 1). 2 2 Source: ESG Research Report, 2017 Trends in Data Protection Modernization, to be published.

5 White Paper: How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy 5 Figure 1. Data Backup Media Usage Today Thinking about your organization s environment today, which of the following best describes how the data backup process is generally managed for protecting on-premises servers? (Percent of respondents, N=387) Data is backed up over the WAN directly to a secondary corporate site such as a headquarters location or other corporate data center (no onsite storage of backup data) (D2WAN), 11% Data is initially backed up to onsite disk storage and a copy is then sent to a cloud storage service provider (D2D2C), 10% Data is initially backed up to onsite disk storage and a copy is sent over the WAN to offsite disk (D2D2WAN), 18% Hybrid Data Protection Methods Data is backed up over the WAN to a cloud service provider (no onsite storage of backup data) (D2C), 3% Source: Enterprise Strategy Group Backup alone is not enough. When considering the rigorous SLA expectations of business units, the simple act of making backup copies of data to be restored in case of a crisis is insufficient. Organizations need to complement their backups with other data protection mechanisms in a holistic way (see Figure 2). Figure 2. The Spectrum of Data Protection Don t know, 1% Data is initially backed up to onsite tape storage and a copy is sent off site via removable media (i.e., tape) (D2T2T), 13% Data is backed up to onsite disk storage with no offsite copy (D2D), 10% Data is backed up to onsite tape storage with no offsite copy (D2T), 10% Data is initially backed up to onsite disk storage and a copy is sent off site via removable media (i.e., tape) (D2D2T), 25% Source: Enterprise Strategy Group

6 White Paper: How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy 6 Assessing the Hybrid Solutions of HPE Looking at the diverse technology elements and methods described above, it would be easy to presume that IT organizations should expect to struggle with a broad range of vendors, products, and resulting integration-related nightmares. But that isn t necessarily the case. One vendor whose portfolio encompasses the entire range of hybrideverywhere production and protection is Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). HPE s Hybrid Production Infrastructure Solutions HPE is perhaps best known historically for its server infrastructure. But it also has evolved to become a complete data center vendor of choice. HPE s many best-of-breed offerings include: HPE ProLiant servers and appliances. HPE ProLiant Gen10 Servers are among the world s most secure industry-standard servers, offering high performance and secure silicon to protect your confidential information. HPE storage, including 3PAR platforms for enterprises and Nimble Storage as a newly announced addition to the portfolio to support anyone looking for a hybrid flash storage architecture. The acquisition of Nimble strengthens HPE s leadership in hybrid IT and creates a comprehensive, leading-edge storage portfolio by bringing together Nimble s entry-level and midrange predictive flash offerings with HPE s scalable midrange to high-end 3PAR solutions, SimpliVity solutions, and affordable MSA products. HPE SimpliVity, a revolutionary hyperconverged infrastructure appliance that HPE recently acquired to further broaden its data center infrastructure-centric offerings. Organizations can use SimpliVity as a building block for a modern private cloud. Powered by Intel. HPE and Intel have long been strong collaborators. Intel technology inside HPE servers and storage including Intel Xeon processors and Intel SSDs offers the performance, orchestration, and security features organizations need to better manage shared resources and modernize their data centers. HPE and Intel together provide these organizations with a range of innovations designed for optimized performance in a hybrid infrastructure environment. HPE s Hybrid Production Architecture Solutions for Public Clouds HPE recognizes that a mix of on-premises and cloud infrastructures is inevitable, so it has made many of its data center components the basis of infrastructures suitable for use by service providers. Thus, organizations moving from servers to services are in fact still relying on enterprise-grade, best-of-breed server and storage product lines. HPE s Hybrid Data Protection Media Solutions As mentioned, HPE has one of the broadest portfolios of data protection media available in the market. And it has been innovating and advancing that portfolio in numerous categories: Deduplicated disk for rapid recovery The HPE StoreOnce line (see Figure 3) encompasses a broad range of deduplicated disk-based solutions, from virtual appliances and small form factors suited for SMBs, to enormous enterprise-scale deduplication platforms providing petabytes of deduplicated capacity.

7 White Paper: How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy 7 Figure 3. The HPE StoreOnce Family Source: HPE Tape for long-term retention HPE StoreEver continues to epitomize true innovation in the LTO standard for tape technology. Its LTO-7 drive boasts transfer rates of 300 MB/second, 15 terabytes of compressed capacity per cartridge, and an MTBF rating of 250,000 hours (at 100% duty cycle). In addition, HPE s tape libraries bring together multiple enterprise tape drives and formats for backup and archival repositories that can accommodate up to 1.52 exabytes of compressed data. 3 Cloud enablement for agility and assured data survivability Several components of HPE s portfolio are in various stages of innovation related to cloud enablement. One of the latest is StoreOnce CloudBank (see Figure 4). CloudBank is an upcoming StoreOnce feature that enables users to leverage external object storage (cloud or on-premises) including AWS S3, Microsoft Azure Blob, and others for long-term backup data retention. Organizations can use any supported ISV to protect 100+ petabytes 4 of data with an object storage cost starting from $0.001 per GB/month. 5 Figure 4. HPE CloudBank Functionality Source: HPE 3 2.5:1 compression ratio using TS1155 drives and media. 4 Considering dedupe ratio of 20:1 and AWS (S3) standard object storage pricing of $0.02 per GB/month. 5 Considering dedupe ratio of 20:1 and AWS (S3) standard object storage pricing of $0.02 per GB/month.

8 White Paper: How HPE Is Enabling a Hybrid-everywhere Data Protection Strategy 8 HPE s Hybrid Data Protection Methods Solution components from HPE enable a range of data protection mechanisms covering backup and more: Backup is addressed not just with HPE Data Protector, but also through several strategic alliances with software vendors such as Veritas and Veeam (now available from HPE via the HPE Complete program). Each partner has invested engineering energy into properly integrating the backup software technologies with HPE s StoreOnce disk and StoreEver tape offerings. Snapshots are possible using either of HPE s premier production storage platforms (3PAR and Nimble). Yet they are manageable and leverageable via third-party backup software as well as via the HPE 3PAR Recovery Manager Central (RMC) integration tools and console. RMC software combines the performance of snapshots and replication with the protection of backups, enabling the backup of application-consistent snapshots from 3PAR to StoreOnce, independent of backup server software. This provides application owners with faster protection for flash environments while reducing cost and complexity. In a recent development regarding recovery granularity, HPE has announced integration between RMC and Veeam Explorer, providing yet another agile recovery outcome. Replication is achievable between arrays across the three HPE core storage platforms 3PAR, Nimble, and StoreOnce again, with management capabilities often being extended through RMC and/or backup software interfaces. The Bigger Truth In times past, operating in mixed mode was considered a transitional state. As your IT group changed from one architecture, platform, or solution to another, everyone operated under an implicit understanding that eventually, the older components would be decommissioned as part of the IT transformation effort. Hybrid everywhere is not a transitional state. It is more accurate to characterize it as the new end-state that is, a destination for IT. It reflects the fact that in IT, and can enable much better outcomes than or. Of course, and results in diversity, which can in turn result in complexity. And complexity is the enemy of reliable IT service delivery that is, unless the power of hybrid-ness is channeled into and driven by a single strategy. Ideally, that strategy would unfold as a partnership between the IT organization and a single vendor and its offerings. In that manner, an IT organization becomes free to focus on leveraging the power of hybrid instead of struggling to connect all those hybrid pieces. Fortunately, one company that really understands hybrid everywhere for both production and protection also happens to be one of the most highly regarded for technological quality and customer-focused orientation HPE. All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at Enterprise Strategy Group is an IT analyst, research, validation, and strategy firm that provides actionable insight and intelligence to the global IT community by The Enterprise contact@esg-global.com Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. P