Access management is critical to protecting a business’s assets, but implementation has languished because of cost and complexity. In particular, application- and server-based techniques take too much time, apply to only one application at a time, and fail to provide enough protection because they leave the rest of the network wide open. The new frontier in access management is to implement access control directly in the network infrastructure. This approach, based on intelligent infrastructure, provides a simpler, faster, and dynamic means of controlling access to corporate resources, with tighter security to boot.
Why has access management emerged as such a critical task? Traditionally, we allowed anyone inside the building to go anywhere on the LAN – they were assumed to be a trusted insider. But now, with today’s increased reliance on contractors and business partners, as well as guest demands for network access while onsite, the outsiders are now the insiders. The simultaneous change to migrate to digital storage of nearly all critical business assets, and insider awareness of the value of that information, has dramatically increased corporate risk.
Businesses today must enable the connectivity and access people require to do their jobs effectively and businesses require to collaborate with outside entities, but they must also ensure their valuable online assets are not compromised.
Application-based controls have been available for a long time and indeed will continue to flourish. Details about which personnel can complete which steps in an order entry and fulfillment process, for example, will continue to reside within a company’s enterprise resource planning (EPR) application. But not all applications have such controls, and implementing basic control over who can access a certain application is not scalable when attempted application by application.
Similarly, server-based controls have their place too, with IT able to designate folder and file access directly on servers. Again, however, the scalability issue is severe, with IT needing to designate for each folder and file, on every server, which groups of people should be allowed access.
Network-based controls have the advantage of applying controls within the infrastructure so that IT does not have to go to each application or each folder on a server to designate access rights. These tools, however, have also had significant scalability issues to date. IT has historically had only the most primitive of tools at their disposal – the use of virtual LANs (VLANs) and access control lists (ACLs).
VLANs and ACLs are challenging to configure, relying on IP addresses and TCP port numbers and an arcane syntax. Plus, IT has very few testing or troubleshooting tools available to determine if an ACL has been properly configured or to know when or against whom an ACL has been used to block access. In these days of increased business scrutiny, with auditing and compliance concerns impacting the majority of businesses, IT needs a fresh way to embed controls in the network.
More intelligent infrastructure, with knowledge of the user and application and the ability to enforce access policies based on that information, are the key to IT’s ability to keep pace with changing business practices while protecting assets on the LAN. Intelligent LAN appliances and next-generation switches can deliver this user and application control. Having such intelligence embedded in the infrastructure gives IT the simple tools they need to support connectivity without risking valuable data. The intelligent appliances allow IT to embed control in networks without making any other infrastructure changes, while intelligent switches are the smart choice for any network expansion or upgrade.
Intelligent infrastructure leverages many existing assets. It ties into the directory structure, with its user groups in place, and uses that data to automatically authenticate users as they come onto the LAN and place them into a role. IT can also designate “security zones,” classifying files, servers, and applications into their appropriate business use and outlining which groups can access those zones.
With these two basic steps, IT has just answered the most challenging aspects of access management – who should go where on the LAN. And by tying into directories, IT is able to automatically keep up with individual user changes, provisioning and deprovisioning users readily. Plus, by elevating policy to roles, IT simplifies the control matrix needed – those who process bill payments need to be in the PCI (Payment Card Industry) role and have rights to the servers and applications hosting credit card data. This approach is much simpler than trying to create ACLs to block the IP addresses that shouldn’t reach those servers.
IT can also use this user and application intelligence to get more granular about their controls. It may be appropriate, for example, for a bank teller to access customer accounts out on the floor, but that same access – by the same person, to the same application – would not be appropriate from the back office location. Application- or server-based controls cannot provide this level of context to ensure appropriate access management.
This intelligence also provides layers of protection for IT beyond policy enforcement. An understanding of application behavior means that an application with aberrant behavior is now identifiable, and can be stopped. So if an application or device is being used inappropriately, to propagate an attack or attempt data access it shouldn’t have, the intelligent infrastructure can detect and stop this traffic.
Plus, by embedding this intelligent control in the infrastructure right at the user edge of the LAN, IT gains much tighter control throughout the LAN. Using ACLs, embedded on a core switch only, leaves the rest of the LAN wide open, to both intentional attacks or the accidental spread of malware.
Centralized policy creation, distributed to enforcement devices throughout the LAN, vastly simplifies the task of access management in today’s LANs. Appliances and switches that offer intelligent control over users and applications provide the critical foundation needed to support the business today. This intelligent infrastructure allows IT to support the full scope of users “inside” and “outside” the business, quickly roll out new applications and locations, and yet simultaneously protect the vital assets at the heart of today’s companies.
Jeff Prince is chief technology officer for ConSentry Networks. Jeff has more than 18 years of experience developing networking and ASIC technologies. Jeff holds eight patents related to networking technologies, and he has a BS in Computer Engineering from California State University Chico. Jeff is also a managing partner at Prince Ventures, LP.
Senin, 03 November 2008
Jumat, 03 Oktober 2008
ONStor introduces new midmarket enterprise NAS solution for resellers
ONStor Inc., a provider of clustered NAS solutions for primary and value-tier data storage for enterprises and content-rich organizations, introduced the Pantera 3110 and Pantera 3110-HA integrated NAS solutions -- designed to be sold exclusively by IT solution providers. The simple-to-buy, simple-to-sell, file data storage products are offered at entry level price points and deliver data center class performance in an energy efficient, small 1u form factor ideal for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as enterprise workgroup environments. The new Pantera filers integrate ONStor's unique virtual file server functionality with Nexsan's SATABoy RAID storage system. The products will enable channel partners to offer their SME customers a turnkey NAS solution with the flexibility to grow quickly and respond to storage need fluctuations without business disruption while maximizing power and cooling efficiency.
"ONStor has always been loyal to the channel both in North America and in our global sales execution," said Tom Gallivan, senior vice president, worldwide sales at ONStor. "In order to increase our channel presence and compete in the midmarket, we've chosen to create a product set that makes it easy for our channel partners to install, deploy and sell true enterprise class NAS functionality at entry level price points."
Both the Pantera 3110 and 3110-HA systems allow midmarket data center managers the ability to start with a lower capacity system and seamlessly grow continually to keep up with the unpredictable growth of unstructured data. Each product provides enterprise features such as RAID 5 and RAID 6 storage for high availability, virtual servers, snapshots, a scalable file system and clustering capabilities. This offers IT solution providers a powerful, scalable, yet cost-effective NAS solution to better serve their customers.
"Unstructured data growth is impacting the midmarket with tremendous force, as these organizations have even smaller IT budgets and less resources to house space- and power-hungry storage devices than large enterprises," said George Crump, president of industry analyst firm Storage Switzerland. "The Pantera 3110 Series of products give SMEs the best opportunity to both consolidate the footprint and management of their file serving environments while dramatically shrinking power consumption. ONStor has hit a home run by developing an advanced integrated NAS solution at a price that makes sense for the midmarket and is simple for the channel to sell."
SATABoy is a high-capacity (14TB in 3U) product that provides organizations with unparalleled storage flexibility to meet real-world business objectives. It is highly scalable and enables cost-effective storage of large amounts of information online. In addition, SATABoy's exceptional performance ensures faster response times for mission-critical applications.
The Pantera 3110 has an estimated street price of $30,000 with 7TB of storage and the Pantera 3110-HA has an estimated street price of $50,000 for 10TB of storage. For more information visit www.onstor.com.
ONStor's Partner Program
ONStor's partner program includes the Margin Advantage Program and Elite Solution Partner Program. The programs offer qualified partners the benefits including:
Increased revenue and profit: The program provides aggressive incentives to both the channel and ONStor sales teams. Depending on the level of participation, various levels of discounts are offered on ONStor hardware and software licenses.
Sales and marketing support: This includes sales and technical training, access to a secure ONStor partner network site, sales guides, presentations, lead generation and marketing activities, business/territory planning and educational product information.
Education and training: ONStor provides free instructor-led training to ONStor Margin Advantage and Elite Solution Partner members.
Technical tools and materials: This includes online training webcasts, best-practice guides, technical briefs, and white papers continually updated with the latest technical information on ONStor's products.
source : http://www.wwpi.com
"ONStor has always been loyal to the channel both in North America and in our global sales execution," said Tom Gallivan, senior vice president, worldwide sales at ONStor. "In order to increase our channel presence and compete in the midmarket, we've chosen to create a product set that makes it easy for our channel partners to install, deploy and sell true enterprise class NAS functionality at entry level price points."
Both the Pantera 3110 and 3110-HA systems allow midmarket data center managers the ability to start with a lower capacity system and seamlessly grow continually to keep up with the unpredictable growth of unstructured data. Each product provides enterprise features such as RAID 5 and RAID 6 storage for high availability, virtual servers, snapshots, a scalable file system and clustering capabilities. This offers IT solution providers a powerful, scalable, yet cost-effective NAS solution to better serve their customers.
"Unstructured data growth is impacting the midmarket with tremendous force, as these organizations have even smaller IT budgets and less resources to house space- and power-hungry storage devices than large enterprises," said George Crump, president of industry analyst firm Storage Switzerland. "The Pantera 3110 Series of products give SMEs the best opportunity to both consolidate the footprint and management of their file serving environments while dramatically shrinking power consumption. ONStor has hit a home run by developing an advanced integrated NAS solution at a price that makes sense for the midmarket and is simple for the channel to sell."
SATABoy is a high-capacity (14TB in 3U) product that provides organizations with unparalleled storage flexibility to meet real-world business objectives. It is highly scalable and enables cost-effective storage of large amounts of information online. In addition, SATABoy's exceptional performance ensures faster response times for mission-critical applications.
The Pantera 3110 has an estimated street price of $30,000 with 7TB of storage and the Pantera 3110-HA has an estimated street price of $50,000 for 10TB of storage. For more information visit www.onstor.com.
ONStor's Partner Program
ONStor's partner program includes the Margin Advantage Program and Elite Solution Partner Program. The programs offer qualified partners the benefits including:
Increased revenue and profit: The program provides aggressive incentives to both the channel and ONStor sales teams. Depending on the level of participation, various levels of discounts are offered on ONStor hardware and software licenses.
Sales and marketing support: This includes sales and technical training, access to a secure ONStor partner network site, sales guides, presentations, lead generation and marketing activities, business/territory planning and educational product information.
Education and training: ONStor provides free instructor-led training to ONStor Margin Advantage and Elite Solution Partner members.
Technical tools and materials: This includes online training webcasts, best-practice guides, technical briefs, and white papers continually updated with the latest technical information on ONStor's products.
source : http://www.wwpi.com
Open-E announces new data storage server for VMWare
Open-E, Inc., a provider of unified IP storage management software and VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program member, introduced its latest product offering, Data Storage Server (DSS) for VMware ESX 3.5. VMware provides TAP program members with tools to develop products that are complementary to VMware virtualization software and help deliver high-value solutions to joint customers. Data Storage Server for VMware ESX 3.5 will provide mutual customers with enhanced capabilities for consolidating storage environments.
“DSS effectively leverages VMware virtualization to solve storage management challenges in virtualized server environments, enabling customers to consolidate storage resources,” said Bernie Mills, senior director, alliances programs at VMware. “We are pleased that Open-E is helping to deliver added value to customers with innovative technology combined with the significant business benefits of VMware virtualization, including lower capital and operating expenses, business continuity, strengthened security and reduced energy consumption.”“This alliance with VMware validates DSS for consolidation of storage resources in a virtual infrastructure to support more comprehensive data protection,” said Krzysztof Franek, CEO of Open-E. “Our combined solution allows datacenters to provision their storage easily and cost-effectively. It also provides for enhanced functionality with built-in data protection; virtualization; backup and recovery; and volume replication for disaster recovery – all with any-to-any connectivity.”With more than 800 members worldwide, the VMware TAP program works with best-of-breed technology partners to provide them with a comprehensive set of VMware technical and marketing services, support, tools and expertise to deliver enhanced value to joint customers.
source : http://www.wwpi.com
“DSS effectively leverages VMware virtualization to solve storage management challenges in virtualized server environments, enabling customers to consolidate storage resources,” said Bernie Mills, senior director, alliances programs at VMware. “We are pleased that Open-E is helping to deliver added value to customers with innovative technology combined with the significant business benefits of VMware virtualization, including lower capital and operating expenses, business continuity, strengthened security and reduced energy consumption.”“This alliance with VMware validates DSS for consolidation of storage resources in a virtual infrastructure to support more comprehensive data protection,” said Krzysztof Franek, CEO of Open-E. “Our combined solution allows datacenters to provision their storage easily and cost-effectively. It also provides for enhanced functionality with built-in data protection; virtualization; backup and recovery; and volume replication for disaster recovery – all with any-to-any connectivity.”With more than 800 members worldwide, the VMware TAP program works with best-of-breed technology partners to provide them with a comprehensive set of VMware technical and marketing services, support, tools and expertise to deliver enhanced value to joint customers.
source : http://www.wwpi.com
Jumat, 12 September 2008
Webinar spam
by Ken Anderberg
Every day, my Outlook inbox fills up with invitations to attend a variety of webinars. Here is a recent two-day sampling of topics covered by these online events: disaster recovery, workload automation, deduplication, aligning ITSM strategies, improving security, monitoring user activity, customer identity protection and IT automation. Who has the time?
Why am I so blessed to receive so many invitations, perhaps 10 to 15 every day? Simply because I am subscribed to several technology magazines, a situation I suspect is similar for a large percentage of Communications News' audience. There are a lot of technology-related magazines out there, as most of you know. Some, like this one, cover a myriad of topics important to IT management, and others focus on vertical segments, such as security or telephony.
Every time you sign up for one of these magazines, however, you also are signing up to receive e-mail invitations to attend Web seminars or virtual trade shows. (Note: Communications News does not conduct webinars, so we don't pester our subscribers with e-mails to attend.) And you don't just receive one such invitation per event; they keep coming until you sign up to attend and even more after the event has been held.
Why are they pushing you so hard to sign up for these events? First of all, these are commercial ventures, with sponsors signed on and participating in the presentations. These sponsors generally are guaranteed a certain number of attendees, so the publications keep bombarding their subscribers with e-mail promotions until enough people sign up. The sponsors receive the list of all attendees and generally follow up with calls or e-mails to sell their products or services to what are considered interested buyers.
I have participated in several such Web events, including one virtual trade show. My experiences, however, have been less than satisfactory. The webinars I have sampled lacked useful, hands-on information, often being more infomercial than educational. Even the stated interactive benefit of these is suspect, as you can pose questions to the presenters, but there is no guarantee an answer will be given. The process is kind of like sending a query into a dark room and hoping a voice responds with a useful answer.
Not all of these online events are the same, of course. I've only sampled a few. The ones I'm now ignoring in my inbox might be worthwhile, or they could still be a waste of time. I'll never know, because now these messages have become spam. Delete.
Ken Anderberg
kanderberg@comnews.com
COPYRIGHT 2008 Nelson Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
Radiant Logic launches RadiantOne Virtual Context Server
Radiant Logic recently introduced its RadiantOne Virtual Context Server (VCS) that expands upon Radiant Logic’s identity virtualization platform. By extracting contextual information buried in application silos, RadiantOne VCS enables better integration of business processes.
RadiantOne VCS publishes information out of application silos by dynamically generating English sentences out of application metadata. Those sentences are organized into meaningful views acting as contextual links across business processes. This enables information to be searched, retrieved across application silos and updated in the right context.
As noted by Forrester Research’s report, Information-As-A-Service: Delivering Real-Time Information Drives Market Toward Mainstream on May 2, 2008, “Enterprises increasingly need the ability to search information across the organization more easily and quickly to meet business and legal requirements and to support information and knowledge workers. Yet searching across many types of databases and content can pose a challenge, especially if the data is archived or stored in multiple content repositories of different types.”
This information, often in the form of transactional data in the enterprise, is fragmented across business functions and buried into forms and application logic. Integrating this information without a common semantic layer has been a constant challenge of data integration. RadiantOne VCS bridges the void between understanding transactions within and across silos by translating low level data transactions into English sentences.
“By generating plain English sentences out of transactional data and linking those sentences by context, RadiantOne VCS creates a radical new way to integrate data silos,” said Claude Samuelson, PhD and vice president of engineering at Radiant Logic, Inc. “RadiantOne VCS’
patent-pending technology enables a simple keyword search (such as Google) to reveal the who, what, when, how, and why of data, all while enforcing the security that is critical to applications and users. And because RadiantOne VCS understands the nature of relationships between objects within an existing application, updates are performed within the context of an existing process.”
source http://www.wwpi.com/Rabu, 23 Juli 2008
An overview of continuous data protection
by Pat Hanavan
IT organizations have been caught between a rock and a hard place. Charged with protecting their company's information, IT organizations have established aggressive service level agreements (SLAs) that impact the manner in which they implement data protection by setting recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO).
Organizations struggle with shrinking or non-existent backup windows, the need to recover quickly, often to a specific point in time, and even meeting compliance or regulatory guidelines. Backing up to tape is no longer adequate; not only is it difficult to administer for backups and recoveries, but it lacks the speed, reliability, flexibility and simplicity IT needs to meet stringent SLAs. Backing up to disk using virtual tape emulation or virtual tape libraries also falls short as the administration of the solution is tape-centric and schedule driven. Add in the explosion of data, along with the challenge of protecting remote offices, and you have the challenge facing many of today's business--with IT sitting on the front lines of aligning business needs with today's technology.
As a result, a growing number of IT organizations are augmenting their traditional backup and recovery strategies with continuous data protection (CDP) solutions. CDP dramatically improves RPOs and RTOs while eliminating backup windows. What's more, CDP not only reduces the need for tape in the backup and recovery process but it also makes recovery easy enough that users can often recover their own files, without help from IT.
What is CDP?
CDP is a process that lets organizations continuously capture or track data modifications and stores changes independent of the primary data, enabling recovery points from specific points in the past. CDP systems may be block, file-, or application-based and can provide fine granularities of restorable objects to infinitely variable recovery points in time.
CDP reduces the complexity of the data protection system and eliminates the classic challenge of theing backup window because it eliminates the need for full, incremental, or differential backups by protecting data immediately and then continuously backing it up to disk. CDP is not a complete replacement for traditional backup but rather an important component of a well-rounded backup and recovery strategy.
Can CDP be leveraged for backing up and recovering email? As the predominant form of communication for business transactions, email is an application that is mission-critical to organizations of all sizes. It generates a huge amount of information that must be immediately available and protected. The loss of a single message may generate hours of unnecessary and frustrating labor for administrators and/or users and can lower productivity or affect business operations. And with the introduction of Exchange 2007, organizations need protective solutions that can support the latest offering from Microsoft.
Not surprisingly, the amount of email data requiring protection and availability is growing exponentially. IT, in turn, is faced with the challenge of backing up this critical data within the existing backup window and recovering it quickly. Moreover, they must not only be able to back up and recover whole email databases but they also require a system which enables recovery of individual mailboxes or emails. However, if administrators want to back up email databases for complete disaster recovery purposes and be able to recover individual email, folders, or mailboxes, they typically have had to do separate backups.
New granular recovery technologies have emerged that enable mail messages, mailboxes, and folders to be restored individually without having to restore an entire email database, and without separate and redundant mailbox backups. In an Exchange environment, for example, only a single-pass full or incremental backup of Exchange is required, which dramatically decreases the time required to protect all mailboxes while also reducing the backup storage requirement.
CDP significantly streamlines backup and recovery of email by completely eliminating the need to perform scheduled daily email backups, and speeding recovery, thereby delivering email continuity for businesses.
How does CDP enable end users to recover their own data?
Because CDP is a disk-based protection and recovery solution, it is possible to enable end users to retrieve their own data. Some CDP solutions provide this type of functionality; some utilizing a simple Web interface that requires no training and enables end users to retrieve previous versions of files without contacting IT. Empowering end users to retrieve their own data frees up IT to focus on other business-critical needs of the organization.
With these self-service recovery solutions, retrieving lost, corrupted, or overwritten data is as easy as searching for and downloading a file from the Internet. There is no backup tape to locate or load and no additional information to restore to find the correct file. Best of all, these solutions do not require the installation of client software or agents on individual desktops laptops, and a familiar web paradigm requires no additional training. Users need only a standard Web browser, making data retrieval easier than ever.
Does CDP help protect against data loss or corruption resulting from security threats?
DP offers inherent security against threats by protecting data from the impact of destructive attacks from viruses, worms, Trojan horses and the like. By continuously backing up data, CDP enables organizations to retrieve the last "clean" version of data that was stored before the attack. Being able to "dial back" to just before a loss is a huge win for today's businesses and IT.
What role does traditional tape backup play in data protection today?
For decades, tape has proven to be an effective means for data protection and recovery. Tape is an inexpensive medium for storing data, and its portable format can easily be moved offsite. IT administrators are also familiar with tape and tape backup procedures, making it a relatively simple task to perform-although only trained administrators can recover data from tape.
Tape based backup systems also lacks the flexibility and simplicity that many organizations need today in a data protection solution. Speed of recovery, most especially for individual files or emails, is also an issue with tape solutions. Proper tape media management and rotation, combined with the need to monitor and manage the health of the tape hardware are complex systems which require IT knowledgeable personnel.
Today, more and more organizations are moving to a disk-to-disk-to-tape strategy. They are leveraging the inherent speeds and reliability of disk-based backup--including continuous protection- and then migrating backed up data to tape for secondary data protection and longer term data protection or offsite storage.
Utilizing both disk-based and tape-based data protection systems and methods in the right manner will bring the greatest protection for businesses, and will help IT align its strategies to best meet business needs.
Pat Hanavan is Vice President, Product Management, Data & Systems Management Group at Symantec.
www.symantec.com
COPYRIGHT 2007 West World Productions, Inc.COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group
IT organizations have been caught between a rock and a hard place. Charged with protecting their company's information, IT organizations have established aggressive service level agreements (SLAs) that impact the manner in which they implement data protection by setting recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO).
Organizations struggle with shrinking or non-existent backup windows, the need to recover quickly, often to a specific point in time, and even meeting compliance or regulatory guidelines. Backing up to tape is no longer adequate; not only is it difficult to administer for backups and recoveries, but it lacks the speed, reliability, flexibility and simplicity IT needs to meet stringent SLAs. Backing up to disk using virtual tape emulation or virtual tape libraries also falls short as the administration of the solution is tape-centric and schedule driven. Add in the explosion of data, along with the challenge of protecting remote offices, and you have the challenge facing many of today's business--with IT sitting on the front lines of aligning business needs with today's technology.
As a result, a growing number of IT organizations are augmenting their traditional backup and recovery strategies with continuous data protection (CDP) solutions. CDP dramatically improves RPOs and RTOs while eliminating backup windows. What's more, CDP not only reduces the need for tape in the backup and recovery process but it also makes recovery easy enough that users can often recover their own files, without help from IT.
What is CDP?
CDP is a process that lets organizations continuously capture or track data modifications and stores changes independent of the primary data, enabling recovery points from specific points in the past. CDP systems may be block, file-, or application-based and can provide fine granularities of restorable objects to infinitely variable recovery points in time.
CDP reduces the complexity of the data protection system and eliminates the classic challenge of theing backup window because it eliminates the need for full, incremental, or differential backups by protecting data immediately and then continuously backing it up to disk. CDP is not a complete replacement for traditional backup but rather an important component of a well-rounded backup and recovery strategy.
Can CDP be leveraged for backing up and recovering email? As the predominant form of communication for business transactions, email is an application that is mission-critical to organizations of all sizes. It generates a huge amount of information that must be immediately available and protected. The loss of a single message may generate hours of unnecessary and frustrating labor for administrators and/or users and can lower productivity or affect business operations. And with the introduction of Exchange 2007, organizations need protective solutions that can support the latest offering from Microsoft.
Not surprisingly, the amount of email data requiring protection and availability is growing exponentially. IT, in turn, is faced with the challenge of backing up this critical data within the existing backup window and recovering it quickly. Moreover, they must not only be able to back up and recover whole email databases but they also require a system which enables recovery of individual mailboxes or emails. However, if administrators want to back up email databases for complete disaster recovery purposes and be able to recover individual email, folders, or mailboxes, they typically have had to do separate backups.
New granular recovery technologies have emerged that enable mail messages, mailboxes, and folders to be restored individually without having to restore an entire email database, and without separate and redundant mailbox backups. In an Exchange environment, for example, only a single-pass full or incremental backup of Exchange is required, which dramatically decreases the time required to protect all mailboxes while also reducing the backup storage requirement.
CDP significantly streamlines backup and recovery of email by completely eliminating the need to perform scheduled daily email backups, and speeding recovery, thereby delivering email continuity for businesses.
How does CDP enable end users to recover their own data?
Because CDP is a disk-based protection and recovery solution, it is possible to enable end users to retrieve their own data. Some CDP solutions provide this type of functionality; some utilizing a simple Web interface that requires no training and enables end users to retrieve previous versions of files without contacting IT. Empowering end users to retrieve their own data frees up IT to focus on other business-critical needs of the organization.
With these self-service recovery solutions, retrieving lost, corrupted, or overwritten data is as easy as searching for and downloading a file from the Internet. There is no backup tape to locate or load and no additional information to restore to find the correct file. Best of all, these solutions do not require the installation of client software or agents on individual desktops laptops, and a familiar web paradigm requires no additional training. Users need only a standard Web browser, making data retrieval easier than ever.
Does CDP help protect against data loss or corruption resulting from security threats?
DP offers inherent security against threats by protecting data from the impact of destructive attacks from viruses, worms, Trojan horses and the like. By continuously backing up data, CDP enables organizations to retrieve the last "clean" version of data that was stored before the attack. Being able to "dial back" to just before a loss is a huge win for today's businesses and IT.
What role does traditional tape backup play in data protection today?
For decades, tape has proven to be an effective means for data protection and recovery. Tape is an inexpensive medium for storing data, and its portable format can easily be moved offsite. IT administrators are also familiar with tape and tape backup procedures, making it a relatively simple task to perform-although only trained administrators can recover data from tape.
Tape based backup systems also lacks the flexibility and simplicity that many organizations need today in a data protection solution. Speed of recovery, most especially for individual files or emails, is also an issue with tape solutions. Proper tape media management and rotation, combined with the need to monitor and manage the health of the tape hardware are complex systems which require IT knowledgeable personnel.
Today, more and more organizations are moving to a disk-to-disk-to-tape strategy. They are leveraging the inherent speeds and reliability of disk-based backup--including continuous protection- and then migrating backed up data to tape for secondary data protection and longer term data protection or offsite storage.
Utilizing both disk-based and tape-based data protection systems and methods in the right manner will bring the greatest protection for businesses, and will help IT align its strategies to best meet business needs.
Pat Hanavan is Vice President, Product Management, Data & Systems Management Group at Symantec.
www.symantec.com
COPYRIGHT 2007 West World Productions, Inc.COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group
An effective SME disaster recovery strategy for branch offices
by Mark Phillippi
The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season started early this year, the second time in five years a storm has formed before June 1. As a result, experts are again predicting an above average hurricane year, estimating that there is a 74 percent chance a category three or higher storm will hit the U.S. mainland.
While the chance your business will be affected by a major natural disaster or terrorist attack is slim, other causes of unplanned downtime such as a hardware component failure, fire, power outage or surge, network attack or even human error are more prevalent. It is important to ensure your company has a reliable strategy for getting the business up and resuming normal business operations, no matter what the cause. Without a disaster recovery strategy the consequences to your business could be paramount. According to the Wall Street Journal, 92 percent of small businesses that experience significant data loss due to a major disaster go out of business within five years. You don't want to become part of this statistic.
With mission-critical data growth exploding in the small to midsized enterprise (SME) market-much of it on the edge of the network in branch offices-traditional disaster recovery solutions may not be enough to ensure business continuity throughout your entire organization.
Complete Restoration Disaster Recovery
In order to protect all company data regardless of physical location and to ensure business continuity across the entire organization, SMEs need to deploy a complete disaster recovery solution that integrates local backups and remote off-site vaulting in a single solution. Using a complete and integrated solution allows your organization to restore entire systems quickly, and get them back in the production environment as soon as possible after experiencing downtime. A complete bare metal restoration solution restores systems from the ground up-including the operating system (Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc.), business applications (Exchange, SQL, Oracle, Novell, etc.), user profiles and data files, in addition to reformatting drives.
The following details what SMEs should look for in a complete disaster recovery solution that protects their data center as well as data and systems in remote offices.
Quick Recovery
When it comes to quick recoveries and an SME's ability to resume normal business operations after experiencing downtime, the stakes couldn't be higher. Simply put, if customers are inconvenienced by not being able to visit a retail location, access a Website, email a sales rep, or receive requested information in a timely manner-regardless of the reason-they will move on to a competitor. The availability of services and products at headquarters and in branch offices is absolutely vital to the health of the company, making quick restoration of the IT systems that run the business a top priority. Minutes do matter.
Most SMEs do not realize that quick restores not only rely on recovering lost data, but also rely on rebuilding damaged or lost servers and workstations. Operating systems need to be restored, drives need to be reformatted, business applications need to reinstalled, data needs to be recovered and user profiles need to be restored. End users cannot do their job unless workstations and servers are returned to their normal state before downtime occurred. This takes time.
The most effective disaster recovery solutions speed up the systems recovery process by automating this process through scripting. Automatic bare metal restore allows administrators to perform a complete systems restoration to an existing system or to a new system with different hardware. While it typically takes a seasoned IT veteran a full day or longer to completely restore a system manually, there are disaster recovery solutions that allow staffers with little IT training to recover a complete system in less than an hour.
Off-Site Backups and Vaulting
In an effort to protect against data center outages and regional natural disasters, it is essential that SMEs implement off-site backups and a remote vaulting system that store data and system information at least 150 miles away. Tape rotation at a warehouse across town, a common approach of SMEs, does not provide the same level of off-site protection since the facility will most likely be impacted by the same disruption. The best backup and recovery solutions incorporate both local and off-site backups in one package. After first performing a local backup in the branch office, the solution replicates data to an off-site location where it is stored in a data vault and is easily recoverable.
Because bandwidth and server requirements could affect performance for end users, it is essential that SMEs deploy a solution that incorporates electronic data synchronization to off-site vaults. By only sending data that is new or has changed since the last backup, the solution requires less resources and dramatically reduces the amount of data that has to be sent over the WAN. This allows backups to be completed more quickly, efficiently and reliably. In the same vein, synchronization technology enables administrators to pause and re-engage in the middle of a backup if a connection is disrupted during the data transfer, preventing administrators from ever having to manually restart a transfer.
Vendor Neutral
When a disaster hits and remote offices are pulled off-line, SMEs don't always have the luxury of being able to replace their servers with the exact model or even the same brand. Often, they must make a quick replacement with what is available. Because of this, it is important that the company's disaster recovery solution is able to restore systems to different hardware. For example, an HP server needs to be able to be restored on a Dell box if that is what is available. This also gives SMEs flexibility with their purchasing decisions, allowing them to choose hardware that is the best suited for specific business needs and budget rather than letting interoperability inhibit choice.
Point-in-Time Recovery
Giving customers the ability to restore systems to a set point in time is an essential element of a complete disaster recovery solution. This is especially useful if a single system crashes and a database needs to be synched up with other end users. Email is another example. Point-in-time recovery allows administrators to recover deleted emails or files as needed or restore systems to a point in time within the past 30 days.
Simple Management
Most SMEs do not have the IT and staffing resources to dedicate to backup management and monitoring, making it essential that any disaster recovery solution be easy to use and automate as much manual process as possible. This is especially true on the edge of the network in branch offices where often there is no full-time IT administrator and a business staff member is typically tasked with starting the backup process each night.
It doesn't have to be this way. SMEs can make sure their disaster recovery solution is managed consistently from a central management console, giving a trained and dedicated administrator at headquarters complete access and visibility into the backup cycle. In addition, the solution needs to automate basic tasks, including the recovery process. This can help streamline IT management, prevent human errors and take business continuity responsibility off the shoulders of untrained business staff.
Scalability
Complete restoration solutions also need to be scalable to allow SMEs to expand their disaster recovery strategy in line with the business. It seems strange to think that a company can over-protect its IT systems, but it is nearly impossible to protect every server all of the time. SMEs need to determine what systems need to be protected and how fast they need to be recovered. Deploying a scalable disaster recovery solution that is flexible is a good start, as growing companies' needs can change quickly.
Some providers price their solutions on a per gigabyte of user data basis in conjunction with time-to-recovery needs. This ensures that SMEs are getting exactly what they require at an affordable price and that the IT budget is directly tied to the needs of the business.
Security
Another feature that SMEs may need is encryption technology that secures data as it is in transit and while being backed up and restored. Industry and government regulations are getting tighter every year, forcing companies-especially growing businesses-to plan for future compliance requirements, making it essential that all sensitive data is properly encrypted from the outset.
It is vital that SMEs take into account remote office computing when implementing their business continuity strategy, relying on a robust and complete disaster recovery solution that enables efficient backups and quick restores. Administrators need to ensure that they are able to manage the backup and recovery process from a central location, conduct complete restorations and recover systems to different hardware. Only then can SMEs be truly prepared for whatever Mother Nature throws their way.
Revenue Opportunity for Systems Integrators
While the need to back up remote data and branch office systems off site exists, SMEs don't always have the resources to deploy and maintain a remote disaster recovery site that is distant enough to provide protection from regional disasters. Systems integrators who already maintain large, centralized data centers can fill this niche. Given the right tools, systems integrators can establish a disaster recovery service that backs up data locally each night and replicates that data to an off-site disaster recovery site managed by a knowledgeable, dedicated IT staff.
The key to implementing a successful off-site vaulting managed service is finding the right solution to make remote backups efficient enough that bandwidth and storage costs don't cancel the margins. As stated in this article there are reliable disaster recovery solutions specifically designed for remote SME environments. In addition to the requirements discussed in the main article, make sure the solution leverages block-level backups, only backing up data that has been changed or created since the last backup. In this way, you can eliminate redundant data going over the WAN, saving bandwidth and shortening the backup cycle.
Managing customers' off-site vaulting in an efficient and reliable manner is a service that could prove highly profitable for systems integrators, especially when they already possess most of the resources required to offer the service. It not only generates additional revenue and increases margins but positions them as a full-service disaster recovery service provider and closely ties their business with the needs of their customers.
Mark Phillippi is vice president of technology and product management for Unitrends.
www.unitrends.com
COPYRIGHT 2007 West World Productions, Inc.COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group
The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season started early this year, the second time in five years a storm has formed before June 1. As a result, experts are again predicting an above average hurricane year, estimating that there is a 74 percent chance a category three or higher storm will hit the U.S. mainland.
While the chance your business will be affected by a major natural disaster or terrorist attack is slim, other causes of unplanned downtime such as a hardware component failure, fire, power outage or surge, network attack or even human error are more prevalent. It is important to ensure your company has a reliable strategy for getting the business up and resuming normal business operations, no matter what the cause. Without a disaster recovery strategy the consequences to your business could be paramount. According to the Wall Street Journal, 92 percent of small businesses that experience significant data loss due to a major disaster go out of business within five years. You don't want to become part of this statistic.
With mission-critical data growth exploding in the small to midsized enterprise (SME) market-much of it on the edge of the network in branch offices-traditional disaster recovery solutions may not be enough to ensure business continuity throughout your entire organization.
Complete Restoration Disaster Recovery
In order to protect all company data regardless of physical location and to ensure business continuity across the entire organization, SMEs need to deploy a complete disaster recovery solution that integrates local backups and remote off-site vaulting in a single solution. Using a complete and integrated solution allows your organization to restore entire systems quickly, and get them back in the production environment as soon as possible after experiencing downtime. A complete bare metal restoration solution restores systems from the ground up-including the operating system (Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc.), business applications (Exchange, SQL, Oracle, Novell, etc.), user profiles and data files, in addition to reformatting drives.
The following details what SMEs should look for in a complete disaster recovery solution that protects their data center as well as data and systems in remote offices.
Quick Recovery
When it comes to quick recoveries and an SME's ability to resume normal business operations after experiencing downtime, the stakes couldn't be higher. Simply put, if customers are inconvenienced by not being able to visit a retail location, access a Website, email a sales rep, or receive requested information in a timely manner-regardless of the reason-they will move on to a competitor. The availability of services and products at headquarters and in branch offices is absolutely vital to the health of the company, making quick restoration of the IT systems that run the business a top priority. Minutes do matter.
Most SMEs do not realize that quick restores not only rely on recovering lost data, but also rely on rebuilding damaged or lost servers and workstations. Operating systems need to be restored, drives need to be reformatted, business applications need to reinstalled, data needs to be recovered and user profiles need to be restored. End users cannot do their job unless workstations and servers are returned to their normal state before downtime occurred. This takes time.
The most effective disaster recovery solutions speed up the systems recovery process by automating this process through scripting. Automatic bare metal restore allows administrators to perform a complete systems restoration to an existing system or to a new system with different hardware. While it typically takes a seasoned IT veteran a full day or longer to completely restore a system manually, there are disaster recovery solutions that allow staffers with little IT training to recover a complete system in less than an hour.
Off-Site Backups and Vaulting
In an effort to protect against data center outages and regional natural disasters, it is essential that SMEs implement off-site backups and a remote vaulting system that store data and system information at least 150 miles away. Tape rotation at a warehouse across town, a common approach of SMEs, does not provide the same level of off-site protection since the facility will most likely be impacted by the same disruption. The best backup and recovery solutions incorporate both local and off-site backups in one package. After first performing a local backup in the branch office, the solution replicates data to an off-site location where it is stored in a data vault and is easily recoverable.
Because bandwidth and server requirements could affect performance for end users, it is essential that SMEs deploy a solution that incorporates electronic data synchronization to off-site vaults. By only sending data that is new or has changed since the last backup, the solution requires less resources and dramatically reduces the amount of data that has to be sent over the WAN. This allows backups to be completed more quickly, efficiently and reliably. In the same vein, synchronization technology enables administrators to pause and re-engage in the middle of a backup if a connection is disrupted during the data transfer, preventing administrators from ever having to manually restart a transfer.
Vendor Neutral
When a disaster hits and remote offices are pulled off-line, SMEs don't always have the luxury of being able to replace their servers with the exact model or even the same brand. Often, they must make a quick replacement with what is available. Because of this, it is important that the company's disaster recovery solution is able to restore systems to different hardware. For example, an HP server needs to be able to be restored on a Dell box if that is what is available. This also gives SMEs flexibility with their purchasing decisions, allowing them to choose hardware that is the best suited for specific business needs and budget rather than letting interoperability inhibit choice.
Point-in-Time Recovery
Giving customers the ability to restore systems to a set point in time is an essential element of a complete disaster recovery solution. This is especially useful if a single system crashes and a database needs to be synched up with other end users. Email is another example. Point-in-time recovery allows administrators to recover deleted emails or files as needed or restore systems to a point in time within the past 30 days.
Simple Management
Most SMEs do not have the IT and staffing resources to dedicate to backup management and monitoring, making it essential that any disaster recovery solution be easy to use and automate as much manual process as possible. This is especially true on the edge of the network in branch offices where often there is no full-time IT administrator and a business staff member is typically tasked with starting the backup process each night.
It doesn't have to be this way. SMEs can make sure their disaster recovery solution is managed consistently from a central management console, giving a trained and dedicated administrator at headquarters complete access and visibility into the backup cycle. In addition, the solution needs to automate basic tasks, including the recovery process. This can help streamline IT management, prevent human errors and take business continuity responsibility off the shoulders of untrained business staff.
Scalability
Complete restoration solutions also need to be scalable to allow SMEs to expand their disaster recovery strategy in line with the business. It seems strange to think that a company can over-protect its IT systems, but it is nearly impossible to protect every server all of the time. SMEs need to determine what systems need to be protected and how fast they need to be recovered. Deploying a scalable disaster recovery solution that is flexible is a good start, as growing companies' needs can change quickly.
Some providers price their solutions on a per gigabyte of user data basis in conjunction with time-to-recovery needs. This ensures that SMEs are getting exactly what they require at an affordable price and that the IT budget is directly tied to the needs of the business.
Security
Another feature that SMEs may need is encryption technology that secures data as it is in transit and while being backed up and restored. Industry and government regulations are getting tighter every year, forcing companies-especially growing businesses-to plan for future compliance requirements, making it essential that all sensitive data is properly encrypted from the outset.
It is vital that SMEs take into account remote office computing when implementing their business continuity strategy, relying on a robust and complete disaster recovery solution that enables efficient backups and quick restores. Administrators need to ensure that they are able to manage the backup and recovery process from a central location, conduct complete restorations and recover systems to different hardware. Only then can SMEs be truly prepared for whatever Mother Nature throws their way.
Revenue Opportunity for Systems Integrators
While the need to back up remote data and branch office systems off site exists, SMEs don't always have the resources to deploy and maintain a remote disaster recovery site that is distant enough to provide protection from regional disasters. Systems integrators who already maintain large, centralized data centers can fill this niche. Given the right tools, systems integrators can establish a disaster recovery service that backs up data locally each night and replicates that data to an off-site disaster recovery site managed by a knowledgeable, dedicated IT staff.
The key to implementing a successful off-site vaulting managed service is finding the right solution to make remote backups efficient enough that bandwidth and storage costs don't cancel the margins. As stated in this article there are reliable disaster recovery solutions specifically designed for remote SME environments. In addition to the requirements discussed in the main article, make sure the solution leverages block-level backups, only backing up data that has been changed or created since the last backup. In this way, you can eliminate redundant data going over the WAN, saving bandwidth and shortening the backup cycle.
Managing customers' off-site vaulting in an efficient and reliable manner is a service that could prove highly profitable for systems integrators, especially when they already possess most of the resources required to offer the service. It not only generates additional revenue and increases margins but positions them as a full-service disaster recovery service provider and closely ties their business with the needs of their customers.
Mark Phillippi is vice president of technology and product management for Unitrends.
www.unitrends.com
COPYRIGHT 2007 West World Productions, Inc.COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group
Reflections on virtualization for the SMB
by Mark Ferelli
In both the server and storage industries, the potential for business in serving small to medium businesses can be substantial. For many vendors, it is uncharted territory and an appreciation of the pain points of the SMB is a key action item.
It is all too tempting to look at the SMB as just a smaller version of the enterprise data center. But the yawning difference between the SMB and the enterprise in terms of the delta in budgetary resources, staffing resources, legacy resources and the IT mission makes this vision difficult to sustain.
Where commonality does exist is in the requirement for the efficient and cost-effective use of servers and storage. Both the SMB and the enterprise are increasingly committed to cost reduction and consolidation in server and storage acquisition and operation. Consolidation in particular is popular, since it represents the use of less space, less electricity, and fewer hours and personnel committed to management of the assets.
To attain these lofty goals, the SMB can now look to virtualization as a strategy. Properly applied, virtualization reduces total cost of operation and boosts performance of the assets that have been virtualized.
Server Virtualization
For purposes of this discussion, virtualization comes in two flavors: server and storage. Server virtualization creates a level of abstraction permitting a single computer to act as several computers. It gives the user the impression that multiple servers exist on a single box. Each server session enjoys its own dedicated memory space, dedicated storage space and emulated processor.
There are two major applications offering server virtualization support. One is Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (For the desktop, Microsoft offers Virtual PC, which came to the Redmond giant with the acquisition of Connectix. This was the same implementation that allowed Mac systems to run DOS type sessions to achieve cross platform compatibility.) The other is VMware, the godfather of server virtualization applications running a broad series of operating systems.
Other major virtualization applications are available from companies such as SWsoft and XenSource, although they represent a small piece of the virtualization pie. There also are tools that can be used for deploying virtual servers, migrating servers and protecting servers aside from those offered by the virtualization vendors themselves, such as Acronis True Image and Acronis Full Circle. In addition to migrating from the physical to virtual environments, these tools also can be used to migrate from a virtual server to a dissimilar hardware-based virtual server or from a virtual server back to a physical server. Working together, the Acronis tools also can be used for backup and disaster recovery of virtual servers in an SMB and enterprise environment.
Most recently, VMware has taken aggressive steps to bring server virtualization to the SMB, focusing on that key SMB requirement: Ease of use. VMware Server, VMware's low-end virtual generator, has been free since July 2006. Some 70% of its 1.2 million downloads is reported to have gone to small or medium-sized businesses. To satisfy that essential ease of use requirement, VMware is offering VirtualCenter for VMware Server.
VirtualCenter is a single management console for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtual machines. It includes a high-availability module and a VMotion virtual machine module that migrates from one physical server box to another. It also includes a dynamic resource allocation module for assigning memory, CPU duty cycles, and network bandwidth between virtual machines on a pool of physical servers. The SMB version of VirtualCenter is restricted to the VMware Server, an older form of virtual server technology that translates virtual machine needs through the physical server's operating system.
Storage Virtualization
Storage virtualization is well defined in Tom Clark's definitive work Storage Virtualization: "the logical abstraction of physical storage systems and thus, when well implemented, hides the complexity of physical storage devices and their specific requirements from management view." Even a basic understanding of virtualization delivers both data center manager and SMB multiple benefits: a better handle on downtime, better general storage performance, fewer problems of lost data, and the ability to aggregate storage devices, delivering best use of storage assets.
The need for storage virtualization appears, as a rule, when it is necessary for the SMB to implement a storage area network (SAN). This determination is often a function of the amount of data to be stored. If storage requirements require more than 2 TB, a SAN is widely considered by IT professionals to be the preferred solution to direct- or network-attached storage. This is because SANs allow storage scaling over time and provides such benefits as high availability, high performance, scalability and ease of management.
Virtualization in a SAN involves abstracting the logical (or virtual) presentation of stored data from the physical disk asset where the data actually rests. The result is a more efficient use of storage assets. Data could migrate from one device to another in the background while the virtual presentation of the storage remains constant
Storage virtualization is anything but new, even if the phrase is new to the SMB. The reorganization of storage in a RAID array with data striping onto multiple drives is a type of virtualization. Virtual tape was pioneered by IBM many years ago. In fact, the most basic type of virtualization is disk partitioning, where multiple partitions appear as separate disks to the operating system.
Why Virtualize?
The SMB can look at virtualization as a route to achieve a variety of benefits in terms of storage management, many of which have been discussed here. But taking a long view, virtualization is a reliable route to the development of a utility infrastructure, where server processing and storage are managed as resources similar to the way electricity and water are managed for homes and businesses.
Utility IT infrastructure is highly responsive and makes the best use of available hardware investments. Take, for example, the need to provide IT support for a new business process. In a conventional storage networking environment, satisfying this need will likely require the purchase of servers and either internal disks or an attached array to house the applications and data that this new process will require.
In a utility infrastructure, the new application is provisioned with processing power, and storage space is allocated from a pool of resources within the structure. The application is housed in a virtual machine and the data in support of the new business process is stored on a virtual storage volume. In cases like this one, any new capital expenditure for servers and disk storage will be commodity purchases made to increase the size of the processing and storage pool, not specifically to support the new business process.
Virtualization is an enabling technology for a utility infrastructure. Virtualization is the means by which the processing and storage are abstracted and managed separately from the underlying hardware layer.
From the point of view of server and storage management, resource allocation and IT support for SMB applications, virtualization makes a great deal of sense. Once the SMB gets over the intimidation of the V-word, the only challenge will be to choose whose utility infrastructure will best solve prevailing IT/business problems.
Mark Ferelli, formerly the chief editor of Computer Technology Review, is a freelance writer and storage specialist based in North Hollywood, CA. He can be reached at mcferelli@yahoo.com.
COPYRIGHT 2007 West World Productions, Inc.COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group
In both the server and storage industries, the potential for business in serving small to medium businesses can be substantial. For many vendors, it is uncharted territory and an appreciation of the pain points of the SMB is a key action item.
It is all too tempting to look at the SMB as just a smaller version of the enterprise data center. But the yawning difference between the SMB and the enterprise in terms of the delta in budgetary resources, staffing resources, legacy resources and the IT mission makes this vision difficult to sustain.
Where commonality does exist is in the requirement for the efficient and cost-effective use of servers and storage. Both the SMB and the enterprise are increasingly committed to cost reduction and consolidation in server and storage acquisition and operation. Consolidation in particular is popular, since it represents the use of less space, less electricity, and fewer hours and personnel committed to management of the assets.
To attain these lofty goals, the SMB can now look to virtualization as a strategy. Properly applied, virtualization reduces total cost of operation and boosts performance of the assets that have been virtualized.
Server Virtualization
For purposes of this discussion, virtualization comes in two flavors: server and storage. Server virtualization creates a level of abstraction permitting a single computer to act as several computers. It gives the user the impression that multiple servers exist on a single box. Each server session enjoys its own dedicated memory space, dedicated storage space and emulated processor.
There are two major applications offering server virtualization support. One is Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (For the desktop, Microsoft offers Virtual PC, which came to the Redmond giant with the acquisition of Connectix. This was the same implementation that allowed Mac systems to run DOS type sessions to achieve cross platform compatibility.) The other is VMware, the godfather of server virtualization applications running a broad series of operating systems.
Other major virtualization applications are available from companies such as SWsoft and XenSource, although they represent a small piece of the virtualization pie. There also are tools that can be used for deploying virtual servers, migrating servers and protecting servers aside from those offered by the virtualization vendors themselves, such as Acronis True Image and Acronis Full Circle. In addition to migrating from the physical to virtual environments, these tools also can be used to migrate from a virtual server to a dissimilar hardware-based virtual server or from a virtual server back to a physical server. Working together, the Acronis tools also can be used for backup and disaster recovery of virtual servers in an SMB and enterprise environment.
Most recently, VMware has taken aggressive steps to bring server virtualization to the SMB, focusing on that key SMB requirement: Ease of use. VMware Server, VMware's low-end virtual generator, has been free since July 2006. Some 70% of its 1.2 million downloads is reported to have gone to small or medium-sized businesses. To satisfy that essential ease of use requirement, VMware is offering VirtualCenter for VMware Server.
VirtualCenter is a single management console for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtual machines. It includes a high-availability module and a VMotion virtual machine module that migrates from one physical server box to another. It also includes a dynamic resource allocation module for assigning memory, CPU duty cycles, and network bandwidth between virtual machines on a pool of physical servers. The SMB version of VirtualCenter is restricted to the VMware Server, an older form of virtual server technology that translates virtual machine needs through the physical server's operating system.
Storage Virtualization
Storage virtualization is well defined in Tom Clark's definitive work Storage Virtualization: "the logical abstraction of physical storage systems and thus, when well implemented, hides the complexity of physical storage devices and their specific requirements from management view." Even a basic understanding of virtualization delivers both data center manager and SMB multiple benefits: a better handle on downtime, better general storage performance, fewer problems of lost data, and the ability to aggregate storage devices, delivering best use of storage assets.
The need for storage virtualization appears, as a rule, when it is necessary for the SMB to implement a storage area network (SAN). This determination is often a function of the amount of data to be stored. If storage requirements require more than 2 TB, a SAN is widely considered by IT professionals to be the preferred solution to direct- or network-attached storage. This is because SANs allow storage scaling over time and provides such benefits as high availability, high performance, scalability and ease of management.
Virtualization in a SAN involves abstracting the logical (or virtual) presentation of stored data from the physical disk asset where the data actually rests. The result is a more efficient use of storage assets. Data could migrate from one device to another in the background while the virtual presentation of the storage remains constant
Storage virtualization is anything but new, even if the phrase is new to the SMB. The reorganization of storage in a RAID array with data striping onto multiple drives is a type of virtualization. Virtual tape was pioneered by IBM many years ago. In fact, the most basic type of virtualization is disk partitioning, where multiple partitions appear as separate disks to the operating system.
Why Virtualize?
The SMB can look at virtualization as a route to achieve a variety of benefits in terms of storage management, many of which have been discussed here. But taking a long view, virtualization is a reliable route to the development of a utility infrastructure, where server processing and storage are managed as resources similar to the way electricity and water are managed for homes and businesses.
Utility IT infrastructure is highly responsive and makes the best use of available hardware investments. Take, for example, the need to provide IT support for a new business process. In a conventional storage networking environment, satisfying this need will likely require the purchase of servers and either internal disks or an attached array to house the applications and data that this new process will require.
In a utility infrastructure, the new application is provisioned with processing power, and storage space is allocated from a pool of resources within the structure. The application is housed in a virtual machine and the data in support of the new business process is stored on a virtual storage volume. In cases like this one, any new capital expenditure for servers and disk storage will be commodity purchases made to increase the size of the processing and storage pool, not specifically to support the new business process.
Virtualization is an enabling technology for a utility infrastructure. Virtualization is the means by which the processing and storage are abstracted and managed separately from the underlying hardware layer.
From the point of view of server and storage management, resource allocation and IT support for SMB applications, virtualization makes a great deal of sense. Once the SMB gets over the intimidation of the V-word, the only challenge will be to choose whose utility infrastructure will best solve prevailing IT/business problems.
Mark Ferelli, formerly the chief editor of Computer Technology Review, is a freelance writer and storage specialist based in North Hollywood, CA. He can be reached at mcferelli@yahoo.com.
COPYRIGHT 2007 West World Productions, Inc.COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group
Secure edge messaging appliances with embedded LDAP maximize email protection by Mike Dodson
It's no wonder that email is such a big thorn in IT's side. Mail volume doubles every six to nine months; an astonishing 80-90 percent of it unwanted and/or abusive. Four hundred and fifty new viruses attack companies every month. Eighty-five percent of abusive mail is sent by a zombie computer, with 500,000 new zombies launched daily according to Commtouch. Directory Harvest Attacks (DHAs), meanwhile, are increasing by as much as 30 percent annually. Not surprisingly, managing email and email security is getting more complex and more costly. Or is it?
The typical organization uses messaging software that runs on dedicated servers. In companies that use anti-virus and anti-spam software, IT managers often spend hours or days trying to get email server and email security software to work together. Upgrades are incremental and expensive and can cause server-to-server and other incompatibilities that disrupt email service. To continue protecting the growing message volume, companies must add new servers regularly in a virtually endless cycle of budget-and-build.
More importantly perhaps, standalone email security taxes bandwidth and does not provide adequate protection. Typically, email security is architected as a separate layer in front of the messaging firewall. While this method simplifies deployment, it often requires additional connections through the firewall, which can burden the messaging infrastructure with unanticipated load and vulnerabilities. In this architecture, recipient validation and per-recipient policy enforcement requires reaching through the firewall to directly query the corporate directory. Thus a breach in email security would leave organizations vulnerable to theft of user IDs and passwords and even HR and financial data.
Every surge in email traffic from spam or virus attacks places load demands on the corporate firewall and corporate directory. This in turn causes a loss in quality of service of the corporate network and mission-critical applications that depend on the corporate directory. In the worst case, if the directory is not sized to handle email traffic spikes, a spam attack could halt user access to valuable internal applications such as a CRM program.
To maintain quality of service, companies must continually add capacity to the corporate directory, firewall and other network components to accommodate the ever-increasing volume of spam. Or they can find an alternative architecture.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Integrated Protection at the Edge
According to IDC ("Messaging Solutions with 'Baked In' Security Delivers for IT and Messaging Users"), appliances that integrate messaging and security make better sense. A secure appliance is inexpensive, requires minimal administration, and blocks up to 80 percent of unwanted email at the firewall, reserving network bandwidth for email you do want. All essential messaging and security features are combined in a single box-from antivirus and anti-spam protection to integrated LDAP for recipient verification at the edge, to reputation filtering and user policy controls. Finally, appliance system upgrades can be made locally without removing the appliance, with no risk of incompatibility because security and messaging features reside on one platform.
Reputation filters add another layer of protection. Most reputation filters are a global one-size-fits-all, allowing for little or no customization to bar unwanted traffic from entering the network. But many organizations find these static filters impractical. Flexible reputation filters, on the other hand, not only take into account the sender's reputation, but also the recipient's level of sensitivity to missing a legitimate message that may have come from a sender with a bad reputation.
Flexible-reputation filters based on SMTP etiquette and RFC compliance are uniquely effective at blocking zombies and other sources of spam because they can block new abusers with no reputation history. It also provides a clear path for legitimate senders.
Spammers and hackers will continue finding new, more devious ways to use email to wreak havoc on corporations. A secure messaging appliance with an embedded LDAP server and flexible reputation filters at the network edge is our best defense.
Mike Dodson is the director of security strategy for Mirapoint. To access the IDC whitepaper, "Messaging Solutions with 'Baked In' Security Delivers for IT and Messaging Users," visit Mirapoint's Web site at http://www.mirapoint.com/idc.
COPYRIGHT 2007 West World Productions, Inc.COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group
The typical organization uses messaging software that runs on dedicated servers. In companies that use anti-virus and anti-spam software, IT managers often spend hours or days trying to get email server and email security software to work together. Upgrades are incremental and expensive and can cause server-to-server and other incompatibilities that disrupt email service. To continue protecting the growing message volume, companies must add new servers regularly in a virtually endless cycle of budget-and-build.
More importantly perhaps, standalone email security taxes bandwidth and does not provide adequate protection. Typically, email security is architected as a separate layer in front of the messaging firewall. While this method simplifies deployment, it often requires additional connections through the firewall, which can burden the messaging infrastructure with unanticipated load and vulnerabilities. In this architecture, recipient validation and per-recipient policy enforcement requires reaching through the firewall to directly query the corporate directory. Thus a breach in email security would leave organizations vulnerable to theft of user IDs and passwords and even HR and financial data.
Every surge in email traffic from spam or virus attacks places load demands on the corporate firewall and corporate directory. This in turn causes a loss in quality of service of the corporate network and mission-critical applications that depend on the corporate directory. In the worst case, if the directory is not sized to handle email traffic spikes, a spam attack could halt user access to valuable internal applications such as a CRM program.
To maintain quality of service, companies must continually add capacity to the corporate directory, firewall and other network components to accommodate the ever-increasing volume of spam. Or they can find an alternative architecture.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Integrated Protection at the Edge
According to IDC ("Messaging Solutions with 'Baked In' Security Delivers for IT and Messaging Users"), appliances that integrate messaging and security make better sense. A secure appliance is inexpensive, requires minimal administration, and blocks up to 80 percent of unwanted email at the firewall, reserving network bandwidth for email you do want. All essential messaging and security features are combined in a single box-from antivirus and anti-spam protection to integrated LDAP for recipient verification at the edge, to reputation filtering and user policy controls. Finally, appliance system upgrades can be made locally without removing the appliance, with no risk of incompatibility because security and messaging features reside on one platform.
Reputation filters add another layer of protection. Most reputation filters are a global one-size-fits-all, allowing for little or no customization to bar unwanted traffic from entering the network. But many organizations find these static filters impractical. Flexible reputation filters, on the other hand, not only take into account the sender's reputation, but also the recipient's level of sensitivity to missing a legitimate message that may have come from a sender with a bad reputation.
Flexible-reputation filters based on SMTP etiquette and RFC compliance are uniquely effective at blocking zombies and other sources of spam because they can block new abusers with no reputation history. It also provides a clear path for legitimate senders.
Spammers and hackers will continue finding new, more devious ways to use email to wreak havoc on corporations. A secure messaging appliance with an embedded LDAP server and flexible reputation filters at the network edge is our best defense.
Mike Dodson is the director of security strategy for Mirapoint. To access the IDC whitepaper, "Messaging Solutions with 'Baked In' Security Delivers for IT and Messaging Users," visit Mirapoint's Web site at http://www.mirapoint.com/idc.
COPYRIGHT 2007 West World Productions, Inc.COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group
Rabu, 02 Juli 2008
?Green storage?: strategies for enhancing energy efficiency
Energy costs in the data center are rising at a dizzying rate. They already account for the second largest line item associated with datacenter operations and are predicted to rise to 50% of the overall IT budget in just a few years.
Steadily rising energy costs have been the norm for some time now, with customers paying more for power every year. Today, the average cost of utilities for a 100,000-square-foot data center is running at a staggering $5.9 million annually, and it?s getting worse. Even if an enterprise devotes this level of spend to energy every year, it runs the risk of running out of power eventually, especially if it?s powered via an older utility infrastructure: Gartner reports that by 2008, 50% of IT managers will not have enough power to run their data centers. Compounding this problem, data centers waste energy on inefficient server and storage infrastructures, with wastage calculations running as high as 60% in many environments. Yet in spite of these present and future challenges, the situation is not entirely bleak.
IT has already made inroads into controlling energy costs associated with servers. With ten million--and counting--servers installed in the U.S. alone, corralling runaway server costs has already resulted in significant energy savings. IT managers have focused their early energy efficiency efforts on consolidating and virtualizing servers, moving away from the common x86 server model with an average 24-hour utilization rate of 10% to 15% toward powerful new server technologies for which utilitization rates run 75% and higher. The savings have been dramatic: in data centers optimized for energy efficiency, cost savings gained by reducing the power footprint for cooling and electrical approach 80%. And the energy savings does not stop at the server itself: consolidation also reduces the number of power-grabbing switches, backup servers, and other server-related components.
Yet in spite of dramatic gains in server consolidation and energy savings, there remains a gaping hole in the enterprise data center: storage. IDC pegs raw storage growth now approaching a whopping 60% compounded annual growth rate. Storage is gobbling up power, and the same principles that govern server power savings should be applied to storage as well.
Storage: A World of Its Own
Historically, servers have consumed much more power than storage, but this trend has changed in recent years. Two factors have changed this dynamic: Server technology is on a very fast development path, so the same
amount of server power consumption last year will deliver more
processing power on this year?s server technology. Storage technology
is limited by hard disk drives that have been evolving at a more
measured pace, so the number of drives per server is growing.
Increased business continuity requirements, which necessitate the
replication of data to protect against system, site or even regional
failures, and the growing trend to leverage a great variety of
information for business operations are driving customers to store
more data than they ever have before. And because of stringent
compliance regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley, many organizations have
decided that it is safer to retain all company information.
As a result, even though data centers may commonly cut 50% or more power consumption with server consolidation projects, without a corresponding effort on the storage side, data centers will continue to suffer from significant ? and unnecessary--energy demands.
Energy demands in the storage domain occur both in the server-to-storage data path and in storage-to-storage tiers. Energy management requires a comprehensive approach with end-to-end management from servers to primary storage to storage tiers.
Storage and Servers
Even now, the majority of storage utilized in many large computing environments is attached to small servers. There is a shortsighted but common IT purchasing practice that promotes the acquisition of another cheap server with additional disk drives when more storage is needed for an application. However, the reality is that each drive is only utilized 10-15% on average. Simple math demonstrates what a waste of energy and resources this practice translates into. Scaling out cheap servers is tempting at the outset because it is so easy to do, but it will bite back via poor management capabilities and energy drain in the long run. Instead of going with an energy-intensive and cumbersome direct-attached storage (DAS) model, plan purchases around optimized, networked storage.
Tiered Storage
Information lifecycle management and tiered storage strategies are critical to managing storage on many levels, and power consumption is an important factor. For background, a tier one array configured with 73 GB drives might deliver significantly more performance than a tier two array configured with 500 GB drives, but it also consumes a lot more energy per terabyte stored because it requires many more drives to achieve the same capacity.
As a general guideline, the easiest way to maximize energy efficiency in an array is to utilize the largest capacity drives that your application ?s availability and performance requirements will permit. Since the power used by the drive is about the same regardless of capacity, the larger the drive, the more efficient it will be in terms of watts per terabyte stored. By moving less critical or under-used data to a lower storage tier, you can reduce the number of tier one spindles and streamline the associated backup infrastructure. Whether you are tiering storage across multiple arrays, or tiering within a single array, it makes sense to consider energy efficiency in the context of equipment acquisition and lifecycle policy management.
As with server-focused energy conservation projects, kick-start your storage energy savings by consolidating your storage infrastructure. Consolidated storage assures more efficient, centralized management and dramatic power savings, and also alleviates staffing resource and training constraints.
Certainly, when compared to DAS, the merits of consolidated networked storage are clear. Once your organization has replaced hundreds, even thousands of its under-utilized, direct attached drives with efficient and/or virtualized arrays, power consumption is greatly reduced.
In the realm of networked storage, the merits of consolidation are equally compelling. By consolidating storage into as few array frames as possible, you can reduce power drain while minimizing the performance latency that is inherent to distributed, multi-frame storage. With the emergence of storage arrays that enable ?in the box? storage tiering, users can now match storage resources to service level requirements of their key applications based on performance, availability, functionality and environmental considerations ? all from a single management interface. By leveraging policy-driven Quality of Service (QoS) technologies and mixing/matching disk drive types within an array, the benefits of consolidation and tiered storage can be achieved in tandem.
Capacity Management
The final component to realizing significant power savings is to manage overall stored capacity. Begin by conducting a ?backup audit? to identify where information is stored, where redundancies are consuming excess storage capacity, and opportunities for information consolidation. From there, choose incremental backups, snapshots, and other advanced storage technologies to slash the overall volume of data you are storing and protecting.
Single-instance archiving is another technology that can help minimize capacity needs. This capability, featured within advanced disk-based archiving platforms, maximizes storage capacity utilization and reduces the over allocation of storage and associated power demands. Similarly, emerging data de-duplication technology eliminates redundant copies of stored data, enabling up to 300:1 data reduction for backup and storage applications. By leveraging these technologies to minimize redundant data, you ?ll be well enabled to achieve additional energy savings.
Summary
Improving power efficiency is one of the largest challenges facing today ?s data center managers, particularly in large data centers or in metropolitan areas where power demand is highest and resources are being pushed to the limit. For some, it is not just about escalating utility bills, but a more foreboding threat: running out of power capacity to support growth. New solutions and strategies to help store information more intelligently can deliver significant impact as it relates to improving power efficiency, including planning tools to accurately calculate power requirements, and best practices for configuring storage systems with high capacity disks. In addition, new service offerings provide a holistic approach to assess, plan, design and build efficient data centers as well as provide recommendations for consolidation, virtualization and tiering strategies.
Start with a comprehensive assessment and project plan. Evaluate workloads and configurations to determine present and future energy consumption across data center assets, ideally both servers and storage. Other assessments should include data center capacity and utilization along with facility and energy costs.
Your goal is to lower data center and IT infrastructure costs by lowering power consumption, retiring old equipment and better utilizing existing equipment, resolving energy issues leading to downtime, and designing the data center according to industry standards and best practices. In this way, you can achieve dramatic energy savings, plus better ROI from centralized management, tiered storage, consolidation and capacity management.
By Bob Wambach is senior director, storage product marketing, EMC Corporation
source : http://www.emc.com
Steadily rising energy costs have been the norm for some time now, with customers paying more for power every year. Today, the average cost of utilities for a 100,000-square-foot data center is running at a staggering $5.9 million annually, and it?s getting worse. Even if an enterprise devotes this level of spend to energy every year, it runs the risk of running out of power eventually, especially if it?s powered via an older utility infrastructure: Gartner reports that by 2008, 50% of IT managers will not have enough power to run their data centers. Compounding this problem, data centers waste energy on inefficient server and storage infrastructures, with wastage calculations running as high as 60% in many environments. Yet in spite of these present and future challenges, the situation is not entirely bleak.
IT has already made inroads into controlling energy costs associated with servers. With ten million--and counting--servers installed in the U.S. alone, corralling runaway server costs has already resulted in significant energy savings. IT managers have focused their early energy efficiency efforts on consolidating and virtualizing servers, moving away from the common x86 server model with an average 24-hour utilization rate of 10% to 15% toward powerful new server technologies for which utilitization rates run 75% and higher. The savings have been dramatic: in data centers optimized for energy efficiency, cost savings gained by reducing the power footprint for cooling and electrical approach 80%. And the energy savings does not stop at the server itself: consolidation also reduces the number of power-grabbing switches, backup servers, and other server-related components.
Yet in spite of dramatic gains in server consolidation and energy savings, there remains a gaping hole in the enterprise data center: storage. IDC pegs raw storage growth now approaching a whopping 60% compounded annual growth rate. Storage is gobbling up power, and the same principles that govern server power savings should be applied to storage as well.
Storage: A World of Its Own
Historically, servers have consumed much more power than storage, but this trend has changed in recent years. Two factors have changed this dynamic: Server technology is on a very fast development path, so the same
amount of server power consumption last year will deliver more
processing power on this year?s server technology. Storage technology
is limited by hard disk drives that have been evolving at a more
measured pace, so the number of drives per server is growing.
Increased business continuity requirements, which necessitate the
replication of data to protect against system, site or even regional
failures, and the growing trend to leverage a great variety of
information for business operations are driving customers to store
more data than they ever have before. And because of stringent
compliance regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley, many organizations have
decided that it is safer to retain all company information.
As a result, even though data centers may commonly cut 50% or more power consumption with server consolidation projects, without a corresponding effort on the storage side, data centers will continue to suffer from significant ? and unnecessary--energy demands.
Energy demands in the storage domain occur both in the server-to-storage data path and in storage-to-storage tiers. Energy management requires a comprehensive approach with end-to-end management from servers to primary storage to storage tiers.
Storage and Servers
Even now, the majority of storage utilized in many large computing environments is attached to small servers. There is a shortsighted but common IT purchasing practice that promotes the acquisition of another cheap server with additional disk drives when more storage is needed for an application. However, the reality is that each drive is only utilized 10-15% on average. Simple math demonstrates what a waste of energy and resources this practice translates into. Scaling out cheap servers is tempting at the outset because it is so easy to do, but it will bite back via poor management capabilities and energy drain in the long run. Instead of going with an energy-intensive and cumbersome direct-attached storage (DAS) model, plan purchases around optimized, networked storage.
Tiered Storage
Information lifecycle management and tiered storage strategies are critical to managing storage on many levels, and power consumption is an important factor. For background, a tier one array configured with 73 GB drives might deliver significantly more performance than a tier two array configured with 500 GB drives, but it also consumes a lot more energy per terabyte stored because it requires many more drives to achieve the same capacity.
As a general guideline, the easiest way to maximize energy efficiency in an array is to utilize the largest capacity drives that your application ?s availability and performance requirements will permit. Since the power used by the drive is about the same regardless of capacity, the larger the drive, the more efficient it will be in terms of watts per terabyte stored. By moving less critical or under-used data to a lower storage tier, you can reduce the number of tier one spindles and streamline the associated backup infrastructure. Whether you are tiering storage across multiple arrays, or tiering within a single array, it makes sense to consider energy efficiency in the context of equipment acquisition and lifecycle policy management.
As with server-focused energy conservation projects, kick-start your storage energy savings by consolidating your storage infrastructure. Consolidated storage assures more efficient, centralized management and dramatic power savings, and also alleviates staffing resource and training constraints.
Certainly, when compared to DAS, the merits of consolidated networked storage are clear. Once your organization has replaced hundreds, even thousands of its under-utilized, direct attached drives with efficient and/or virtualized arrays, power consumption is greatly reduced.
In the realm of networked storage, the merits of consolidation are equally compelling. By consolidating storage into as few array frames as possible, you can reduce power drain while minimizing the performance latency that is inherent to distributed, multi-frame storage. With the emergence of storage arrays that enable ?in the box? storage tiering, users can now match storage resources to service level requirements of their key applications based on performance, availability, functionality and environmental considerations ? all from a single management interface. By leveraging policy-driven Quality of Service (QoS) technologies and mixing/matching disk drive types within an array, the benefits of consolidation and tiered storage can be achieved in tandem.
Capacity Management
The final component to realizing significant power savings is to manage overall stored capacity. Begin by conducting a ?backup audit? to identify where information is stored, where redundancies are consuming excess storage capacity, and opportunities for information consolidation. From there, choose incremental backups, snapshots, and other advanced storage technologies to slash the overall volume of data you are storing and protecting.
Single-instance archiving is another technology that can help minimize capacity needs. This capability, featured within advanced disk-based archiving platforms, maximizes storage capacity utilization and reduces the over allocation of storage and associated power demands. Similarly, emerging data de-duplication technology eliminates redundant copies of stored data, enabling up to 300:1 data reduction for backup and storage applications. By leveraging these technologies to minimize redundant data, you ?ll be well enabled to achieve additional energy savings.
Summary
Improving power efficiency is one of the largest challenges facing today ?s data center managers, particularly in large data centers or in metropolitan areas where power demand is highest and resources are being pushed to the limit. For some, it is not just about escalating utility bills, but a more foreboding threat: running out of power capacity to support growth. New solutions and strategies to help store information more intelligently can deliver significant impact as it relates to improving power efficiency, including planning tools to accurately calculate power requirements, and best practices for configuring storage systems with high capacity disks. In addition, new service offerings provide a holistic approach to assess, plan, design and build efficient data centers as well as provide recommendations for consolidation, virtualization and tiering strategies.
Start with a comprehensive assessment and project plan. Evaluate workloads and configurations to determine present and future energy consumption across data center assets, ideally both servers and storage. Other assessments should include data center capacity and utilization along with facility and energy costs.
Your goal is to lower data center and IT infrastructure costs by lowering power consumption, retiring old equipment and better utilizing existing equipment, resolving energy issues leading to downtime, and designing the data center according to industry standards and best practices. In this way, you can achieve dramatic energy savings, plus better ROI from centralized management, tiered storage, consolidation and capacity management.
By Bob Wambach is senior director, storage product marketing, EMC Corporation
source : http://www.emc.com
Data Loss and Data Recovery Software
Data is usually kept or stored in media like storage hard drive, storage tapes, CD, DVD, and others like flash or USB drives. Although owners can be careful about their data, accidents can happen and data could get lost. If the loss of data means a significant impact to a business, owners have the option to go to the professionals or experts of a data recovery company to help them or purchase data recovery software and do it themselves.
Treasured photos, important notes and correspondences, school- or work-related files, customer database, records, email messages are some of the many kinds of data that people store in their computers. If any of these things become difficult or seemingly impossible to retrieve by the owner, some physical or logical damage must have happened to the storage media.
Physical damage refers to possible head crash, broken motors or tapes, dusts and scratches on disks. This usually leads to logical damage, which makes data corrupted and impossible to retrieve because the operating system cannot access or extract it.
A host of things can contribute to data loss and this includes virus attack, carelessness in managing files and folders, accidental deletion of data, damaged hardware and software, corrupted systems. Data recovery is necessary in order to bring the information back from the damages that these things have caused.
Most professional data recovery companies have their own techniques in salvaging lost files. Aside from the services they render themselves, they offer their customers a way to do things on their own, if the data loss problem is simple to address. Most of their products are advertised online via their websites. They also have articles that could help people with the data loss problems.
Data recovery solutions help end users as well as service providers recover precious data that have been lost to crashes or corruption due to physical damages on the storage media. Most companies that produce this application swear on their simplicity and how effective it is.
Data recovery software is a kind of software application that serves as a utility to recover data or file by making a run-through on the drive concerned. Tools are included to help the user evaluate the damage himself and apply the necessary recovery functions that come with the box.
A package of this software application could be the answer to a person who may want to do the recovery by himself. It is cost-effective and of course, immediately available to the user if he already has one at home and another crash happens. If the user has stock knowledge about computers and data recovery and he trusts himself to do it, then a product such as data recovery software should be a good thing.
There are a lot being offered online and the manufacturers offer different approaches. The key is to shop around first and check their feedback. It is also quite necessary that the person doing the data recovery has the technical knowledge and experience to it or more damage may result.
It is bad enough that you had data loss, it will be worst if you bought the wrong data recovery software to solve it. If the data you are tasked to recover is critical, the best option still, is to consult the experts in the field.
by Jack Link
About the Author
To learn even more about data recovery visit http://www.learndatarecovery.com/ where you will find more information about data recovery software.
Treasured photos, important notes and correspondences, school- or work-related files, customer database, records, email messages are some of the many kinds of data that people store in their computers. If any of these things become difficult or seemingly impossible to retrieve by the owner, some physical or logical damage must have happened to the storage media.
Physical damage refers to possible head crash, broken motors or tapes, dusts and scratches on disks. This usually leads to logical damage, which makes data corrupted and impossible to retrieve because the operating system cannot access or extract it.
A host of things can contribute to data loss and this includes virus attack, carelessness in managing files and folders, accidental deletion of data, damaged hardware and software, corrupted systems. Data recovery is necessary in order to bring the information back from the damages that these things have caused.
Most professional data recovery companies have their own techniques in salvaging lost files. Aside from the services they render themselves, they offer their customers a way to do things on their own, if the data loss problem is simple to address. Most of their products are advertised online via their websites. They also have articles that could help people with the data loss problems.
Data recovery solutions help end users as well as service providers recover precious data that have been lost to crashes or corruption due to physical damages on the storage media. Most companies that produce this application swear on their simplicity and how effective it is.
Data recovery software is a kind of software application that serves as a utility to recover data or file by making a run-through on the drive concerned. Tools are included to help the user evaluate the damage himself and apply the necessary recovery functions that come with the box.
A package of this software application could be the answer to a person who may want to do the recovery by himself. It is cost-effective and of course, immediately available to the user if he already has one at home and another crash happens. If the user has stock knowledge about computers and data recovery and he trusts himself to do it, then a product such as data recovery software should be a good thing.
There are a lot being offered online and the manufacturers offer different approaches. The key is to shop around first and check their feedback. It is also quite necessary that the person doing the data recovery has the technical knowledge and experience to it or more damage may result.
It is bad enough that you had data loss, it will be worst if you bought the wrong data recovery software to solve it. If the data you are tasked to recover is critical, the best option still, is to consult the experts in the field.
by Jack Link
About the Author
To learn even more about data recovery visit http://www.learndatarecovery.com/ where you will find more information about data recovery software.
An Alternative Way of Doing Social Networking: Volatile Local Networks
Fact: many small businesses have a website whose return on investment is zero.
I have worked for years developing small web applications for small businesses. Every single one of them seems to desire getting on the internet, they like the idea of billions of people being able to visit their website and contact them. They think this will boost their business.
However, I also noticed that most of those small businesses do not have the will nor the capabilities to properly market their website. Being a technical person myself, until recently I simply warned my clients that they might need quite a bit of time and effort in order to effectively market their website once it was online, otherwise it just would not make sense to build it in the first place.
I offered them some extra marketing options such as google advertising tools and article submission for a reasonable fee, but many of them refused, thinking the website alone could drive a lot of new clients to them.
Sometimes this has worked very well, but most of the times my clients refused to follow my advices.
Having observed these phenomena, I thought about a solution, which I am sure will be quite popular in the future: Volatile Local Networks.
The idea started from observing people in London (UK), where I recently moved. I see lots and lots of people going to cafes with a laptop or an iPhone and surf the internet when a wireless network is available.
So I thought that it would be great if local self employed people (those within the wireless range) could actually advertise themselves in those networks, or it could be nice that small businesses could walk into a cafe with a laptop and offer the other clients some information about their business should they want to take a look at it.
This is the basic idea of Volatile Local Networks: they are local networks in the sense that information comes from servers which are physically close to clients (servers and clients may actually reside on the same laptop or post-pc-device); they are volatile in the sense that if a person walks in a cafe with a laptop serving some content and then walks out of it, the content is available only while that person is connected. A lot of nice services may be built in this way.
Moreover, if you are a self employed with an office where people come and wait for a period of time, such as if you are a doctor or a consultant, you could offer them some information to browse while you are busy, thereby telling them about aspects of your job they might not be aware of and creating more business opportunities.
Starting from that, I have written a software for the Mac called CuriosityAndVanity that is currently free to use in order to let people try that idea, but I am sure that everyone who has the necessary experience with network programming could easily create a software like that one. I hope that soon Volatile Local Networks will be another great tool for self employed people in order to grow and prosper.
Enjoy!
About the Author
Alessandro Pistocchi is a Mac fan since 1992. His background is in mathematics, physics and computer science. He currently writes software for the Mac and iPod Touch and Ruby on Rails web applications. He can be contacted at: http://www.alessandropistocchi.com
I have worked for years developing small web applications for small businesses. Every single one of them seems to desire getting on the internet, they like the idea of billions of people being able to visit their website and contact them. They think this will boost their business.
However, I also noticed that most of those small businesses do not have the will nor the capabilities to properly market their website. Being a technical person myself, until recently I simply warned my clients that they might need quite a bit of time and effort in order to effectively market their website once it was online, otherwise it just would not make sense to build it in the first place.
I offered them some extra marketing options such as google advertising tools and article submission for a reasonable fee, but many of them refused, thinking the website alone could drive a lot of new clients to them.
Sometimes this has worked very well, but most of the times my clients refused to follow my advices.
Having observed these phenomena, I thought about a solution, which I am sure will be quite popular in the future: Volatile Local Networks.
The idea started from observing people in London (UK), where I recently moved. I see lots and lots of people going to cafes with a laptop or an iPhone and surf the internet when a wireless network is available.
So I thought that it would be great if local self employed people (those within the wireless range) could actually advertise themselves in those networks, or it could be nice that small businesses could walk into a cafe with a laptop and offer the other clients some information about their business should they want to take a look at it.
This is the basic idea of Volatile Local Networks: they are local networks in the sense that information comes from servers which are physically close to clients (servers and clients may actually reside on the same laptop or post-pc-device); they are volatile in the sense that if a person walks in a cafe with a laptop serving some content and then walks out of it, the content is available only while that person is connected. A lot of nice services may be built in this way.
Moreover, if you are a self employed with an office where people come and wait for a period of time, such as if you are a doctor or a consultant, you could offer them some information to browse while you are busy, thereby telling them about aspects of your job they might not be aware of and creating more business opportunities.
Starting from that, I have written a software for the Mac called CuriosityAndVanity that is currently free to use in order to let people try that idea, but I am sure that everyone who has the necessary experience with network programming could easily create a software like that one. I hope that soon Volatile Local Networks will be another great tool for self employed people in order to grow and prosper.
Enjoy!
About the Author
Alessandro Pistocchi is a Mac fan since 1992. His background is in mathematics, physics and computer science. He currently writes software for the Mac and iPod Touch and Ruby on Rails web applications. He can be contacted at: http://www.alessandropistocchi.com
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