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 Backup  Software  is  Dead.  Long  Live  Data  Management!  

 

Quick,  what  was  the  first  backup  method?  ….  The  second  
punch  card.  Just  in  case  the  first  one  was  jammed!  

There  is  a  disturbance  in  “The  Matrix”  

Backup  software,  as  we  know  it  today,  emerged  during  the  
1970’s  with  the  advent  of  disk  drives  being  used  as  primary  
media.  At  the  time,  disk  media  was  cost  prohibitive  to  store  
anything  but  production  data  and  tape  was  a  cost-­‐effective  
alternative  to  store  copies  of  data.  The  behavioral  differences  
between  the  random  access,  block-­‐addressed  disk  and  the  
sequential  access,  streaming  tape  media  created  a  need  for  
software  that  could  bridge  the  data  movement  and  format  
between  the  two  disparate  media  types.    

Backup  software  designers  had  to  find  a  trade-­‐off  between  
downtime  that  a  business  could  afford  to  backup  the  data  
(“Backup  Window”)  vs.  the  downtime  resulting  from  the  time  
to  recover  lost  data  (“Restore  Window”).  

Backup  software  was  born.    

Deployment  of  Backup  software  in  IT  infrastructure  led  to  the  
creation  of  a  whole  new  set  of  processes  and  operational  
behaviors.  

 The  design  of  backup  software  assumes  no  other  activity  
during  the  Backup  Window.  As  businesses  grew,  application  
operations  time  started  to  overlap  with  the  Backup  Window,  
while  at  the  same  time,  increase  in  data  size  expanded  the  
Backup  Window  itself.  This  meant  that  backup  software  was  
unable  to  complete  its  operation,  leaving  critical  business  
information  vulnerable  to  loss,  without  impacting  business  
applications.    

Backup  software  began  humbly  enough  with  the  function  of  
reading  data  from  a  server,  transforming  it  to  an  optimized  
format  for  writing  to  tape  and  keeping  a  catalog  of  data  and  
where  it  was  stored.  Pretty  soon,  the  amount  of  data  being  
backed  up  exceeded  the  capacity  
Time  to  recover  data  largely  
of  a  single  tape  and  tape  libraries  
For  something  as  prevalent  in  IT,  
depended  on  the  time  to  load  the  
were  introduced.  Backup  
Backup  software  is  an  incredibly  
necessary  tape  media  and  extract  
software  added  the  functions  of  
data.  While  a  daily  backup  of  all  
ingenious  
d
esign.
 
library  and  media  management,  
the  data  ensured  quicker  recovery  
managing  the  robotics  to  load  the  
by  requiring  fewer  tapes,  
right  media  into  the  drives,  re-­‐using  media  and  expiring  data.  
performing  these  full  backups  every  night  was  not  only  
Very  quickly,  library  and  media  management  became  a  major  
prohibitively  expensive,  it  also  meant  a  significant  Backup  
part  of  backup  software’s  functionality.  
Window  every  day.    

The  Genius  of  Backup  Software  Design  
For  something  as  prevalent  in  IT,  Backup  software  has  an  
incredibly  ingenious  design.  Backup  software  designers  not  
only  had  to  deal  with  technology  issues,  but  also  had  to  deal  
with  operational  and  business  workflows,  constraints  and  
limitations.  The  assumptions  for  the  design  included  the  
following:    
§
§
§
§
§

Storage  was  an  integral  part  of  the  Operating  System  
(OS)  and  the  only  way  to  access  data  was  to  read  data  
from  the  OS.  So,  backup  “agents”  were  designed.  
Business  applications  could  take  a  down  time  during  
nights  and  weekends,  because  business  activity  was  low  
during  those  periods.  
Tape  media  characteristics  allow  for  rapid  streaming  of  
data  in  and  out  of  tape  as  long  as  the  access  was  
sequential  
Disks  were  prohibitively  expensive  to  store  extra  copies  
of  data  
Data  needed  to  be  restored  in  a  reasonable  amount  of  
time.    

To  balance  the  competing  requirements  of  business  uptime,  
Backup  Window  and  Restore  Window,  IT  organizations  
created  the  “WeeFDI”  schedule:  Weekly  Full,  Daily  
Incremental  backups.  The  assumption  was  that  business  
activity  was  at  a  low  during  weekends  and  at  night;  so  having  
backup  software  run  during  these  periods  would  have  the  
least  impact.  
The  ingenuity  of  “WeeFDI”  schedule  also  addressed  the  
requirement  for  a  reasonable  time  to  recover  data;  Full  
backup  during  the  weekend,  and  incremental  backups  during  
weekdays,  so  that  no  data  would  be  more  than  7  tapes  away.  
The  worse  case  recovery  would  be  one  full  recovery  from  the  
Sunday  tape,  and  overlaying  it  with  data  from  tapes  from  
each  day  of  the  week.  
The  WeeFDI  schedule  was  a  creative  solution,  until  the  very  
assumptions  it  was  built  on,  changed.  Quickly,  it  became  a  
liability,  driving  an  entirely  new  technology  called  “data  
DeDuplication”.  

`
02022011  

Meanwhile,  The  World  became  Flat  

be  the  process  of  “mounting”  appropriate  data  and  binding  
it  to  the  business  application.  No  “restore”  to  the  
production  storage  system  is  required.  This  eliminates  the  
“Restore  Window”.  
§ Data  can  be  maintained  in  multiple  formats  on  disk;  native  
application  format  for  instant  recovery  or  a  format  
optimized  for  efficient,  economical  long-­‐term  retention.    
§ Network  utilization  can  be  optimized  with  a  purpose-­‐built  
protocol  designed  for  efficient  movement  of  data  to  and  
from  remote  sites  for  disaster  recovery  or  business  
continuity.  
§ Data  can  be  seamlessly  moved  across  sites,  transparent  to  
the  backup  process,  across  disk  media  of  any  vendor,  
physical  or  Cloud  storage  based.  
 
Essentially  a  new  data  protection  “controller”  can  be  
delivered  to  address  the  backup  requirements  of  the  
emerging  business  and  IT  requirements.    

Then  came  the  1990’s  and  2000’s.  Data  exploded.  The  need  
for  larger  storage  and  reliability  led  to  the  creation  of  
external  storage  devices  and  the  need  to  share  large  pools  of  
storage,  along  with  server  virtualization,  led  to  networked  
storage.  Internal  drives  were  primarily  being  used  to  store  
the  Operating  System  images  and  all  the  business  critical  data  
was  moved  to  reliable,  large  external,  networked  storage  
devices.    
Rapid  data  growth  drove  down  disk  media  cost,  while  
different  price/performance/capacity  disk  media  solutions  
were  created.    Ingenious  engineering  resulted  in  
deduplication  technology,  fixing  the  artifact  of  the  WeeFDI  
schedule  and  eliminate  redundant  data  on  disks,  significantly  
reducing  the  disk  footprint  needed.  Disks  were  now  price-­‐
competitive  for  use  as  backup  media,  replacing  tapes.  Ease  of  
handling  and  quicker  access  to  data  further  added  to  the  
benefits  of  using  disks  as  backup  media.    
Businesses  became  global.  Organizations  required  
information  and  IT  to  be  available  round  the  clock.  It  became  
a  7x24X365  business  world  and  who  had  the  time  for  
“Downtime”?    
Basically,  every  assumption  that  the  backup  software  
was  engineered  for,  changed.  So,  why  are  we  still  using  
backup  software?  

Backup  for  the  Flat,  Virtualized,  Cloud  World  
Fortunately,  IT  industry  changes  rapidly  to  meet  dynamic  
business  requirements  and  customer  demand.  Changes  to  
business  environment  and  advances  in  technology  drove  the  
need  to  revisit  data  
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protection  
mechanisms,  starting  
Backup Snapshot
BC/DR
Copy
VMware
Mgmt
Backup
with  a  review  of  the  
design  criteria;  
§ Business  needs  IT  to  
be  available  
7X24x365  
§ Server  virtualization  introduces  unprecedented  agility,  
mobility  and  ease-­‐of-­‐use.  
§ Data  protection  involves  data  moving  from  disk-­‐to-­‐disk  
§ Disk  storage  systems  have  become  commoditized  
§ IT  architectures  are  evolving  from  on-­‐premises  to  hosted,  
to  hybrid  to  SaaS  models.    
§ Backup  Software  based  data  protection  architecture  is  
incapable  of  effectively,  efficiently  and  flexibly  protect  
valuable  digital  assets  
 
These  guidelines  result  in  a  new  data  protection  mechanism  
with  the  following  characteristics;  

So,  where  is  the  Backup  software  in  this  new  
architecture?  Backup  software  is  dead.      

Poof  Backup  Software,  Presto  Data  
Management  
Similar  to  Backup,  disks  are  also  being  used  by  several  other  
data  management  applications  that  require  a  copy  of  data;  
Snapshot  copies,  test  and  development  copies,  analytics,  e-­‐
discovery,  compliance,  etc.  With  disk  becoming  a  common  
media  for  Backup  and  all  the  other  data  management  
applications,  data  within  an  organization  can  now  be  divided  
into  two  types:  Production  Data  and  copies  of  Production  
Data,  which  we  call  “Copy  Data”.    
 
The  unification  of  media  to  
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store  all  Copy  Data  drives  
one  of  the  key  paradigm  
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shifts  in  data  management:  a  
single  unified  way  to  manage  
all  copies  of  data,  with  the  
least  storage  footprint  and  
VirtualData Pipeline (VDP)
  network  bandwidth;  Virtual  
Data  Management.  

Virtualization  comes  to  Data  Management  
Actifio  set  about  designing  a  data  management  solution  for  
disk  based  media  and  pioneered  Virtual  Data  Management  
(VDM).  This  technology  virtualizes  the  management  of  
independent,  duplicate  copies  of  data  into  one  platform,  
eliminating  redundancies  and  re-­‐purposing  unique  data  for  
different  data  management  applications.    
 
The  result  is  a  single,  application-­‐centric,  SLA-­‐driven  solution  
to  efficiently  manage  all  Copy  Data  for  multiple  business  
requirements:  data  protection,  disaster  recovery,  business  
continuity,  e-­‐discovery,  test  &  development,  analysis  or  
compliance,  for  virtual,  physical  or  cloud  IT  infrastructure:  
AnyITTM  
 
 

§ Data  can  now  be  captured  instantly  and  efficiently,  and  
stored  on  the  backup  disk  media,  without  any  format  
transformation  eliminating  the  “Backup  Window”.  
§ Since  protected  data  is  also  on  a  disk,  recovery  can  simply  

©  Actifio,  Inc.  All  rights  reserved.  Actifio™  is  a  registered  trademark  of  
Actifio  Corporation.  All  other  trademarks  and  service  marks  are  
property  of  their  respective  owners.  

2  

 

storage  resources  into  private,  public  or  hybrid  cloud  storage  
pools,  users  are  able  to  further  lower  the  storage  cost  by  over  
75%  using  commodity  storage  or  leverage  existing  storage  
devices.  

 
At  the  heart  of  the  Actifio  technology  is  a  Service  Level  
Agreement  (SLA)  driving  the  lifecycle  of  business  application  
data.  An  agent-­‐less,  AppSnapCopyTM  technology  captures  
only  the  changed  blocks  of  application  data,  resulting  in  near-­‐
zero  Recovery  Point  Objective  (RPO).    This  technology  results  
in  up  to  80%  reduction  in  the  amount  of  data  being  copied,  
due  to  the  pipeline  architecture.  For  a  10TB  data  set  with  2%  
daily  change  rate,  figure  below  shows  the  
impact.

Data  movement  is  performed  by  Heterogeneous  
DedupAsyncTM  technology,  a  purpose-­‐designed  network  
protocol  for  efficient  data  movement,  optimizing  bandwidth  
usage  by  only  transferring  unique  data  to  the  remote  data  
store.    In  addition  to  inherent  global  deduplication  of  data,  
this  protocol  drives  down  network  usage  by  up  to  70%.    

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AppSnapRestoreTM  technology  is  used  to  recover  
information  by  parsing  the  VDPFS  object  file  system  to  
recover  information  in  application  format,  at  the  point-­‐in-­‐
time  of  recovery.  By  directly  mounting  the  recovered  data  to  
a  server,  no  data  movement  is  necessary,  resulting  in  near-­‐
zero  Recovery  Time  Objective  (RTO).    The  figure  below  
compares  the  data  restore  process  using  backup  software  

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Near-Zero Backup Window*
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Virtual  Data  Pipeline  File  System  (VDPFS),  an  Object  file  
system  stores  the  delta-­‐copy  data  objects  in  raw,  
deduplicated  and  compressed  formats,  either  locally  and/or  
on  a  remote  site.  The  result  is  up  to  95%  reduction  in  the  
storage  footprint,  comprising  only  of  unique  blocks  of  Copy  
Data.  Figure  below  represents  the  impact  of  data  stored  by  
VDPFS.  

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Restore Window
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The  result  is  not  only  significantly  reduced  total  data  
footprint  required  to  perform  recovery,  but  also  enable  
business  applications  to  instantly  access  data  from  any  point  
in  time  without  using  the  Production  Storage,  Application  
Server  or  Network  resources.  
Actifio  solution  deployment  has  no  impact  and  requires  no  
change  to  any  existing  data  management  applications  like  
backup,  snapshot  or  replication.  Actifio  has  been  deployed  as  
a  single  solution  for  all  the  data  management  requirements,  
as  well  as  a  solution  for  one  or  more  specific  applications,  
seamlessly  co-­‐existing  with  existing  applications  and  
infrastructure.  

 

self-­‐describing  objects  comprising  of  application  data  with  
temporal,  causal  and  Service  Level  Agreement  (SLA)  
relationship  associations,  enabling  intelligent  data  
management  and  re-­‐use.  Since  data  is  captured  at  block  level,  
the  resources  required  to  deduplicate  on  fixed  block  
boundaries,  are  6X  less  than  the  variable  length  
deduplication  implementations  used  by  the  current  
deduplication  devices.    

10X  Business  Impact  
Virtual  Data  Management  ushers  in  proven  benefits  of  
virtualization:  simplicity,  Service-­‐oriented  management,  
enhanced  utilization  and  flexibility.  Actifio  users  have  been  
able  to  drive  down  the  Total  Cost  of  Ownership  (TCO)  by  up  
to  90%,  while  radically  simplifying  multiple  data  
management  operations.  
 
 

By  virtualizing  vendor-­‐independent  physical  or  cloud-­‐based  
©  Actifio,  Inc.  All  rights  reserved.  Actifio™  is  a  registered  trademark  of  
Actifio  Corporation.  All  other  trademarks  and  service  marks  are  
property  of  their  respective  owners.  

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versus  using  AppSnapRestoreTM.    

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Unlike  the  current  deduplication  devices,  VDPFS  implements  
a  unique,  context-­‐sensitive  deduplication  technology  with  

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Solutions  for  Service  Providers  

Virtual  Data  Management  reduces  costs  by:  
§ Reducing  Copy  Data  footprint  
§ Reducing  unit  cost  of  Copy  Data  storage  
§ Reducing  Network  bandwidth  for  replication  
§ Eliminating  multiple  point  tool  software  licenses  
§ Freeing  up  Production  Data  storage  device  from  storing  and  
managing  copies  of  data  
§ Eliminating  the  overhead  typically  imposed  by  backup  
software  on  Application  Server  CPU’s,  Network  and  
Production  Data  storage  devices.  

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In  addition  to  optimizing  Copy  Data  management  for  
internal  IT  operations,  Service  Providers  deploy  Actifio  
solutions  to:  
§ Deliver  Disaster  Recovery  and  Business  Continuity  
as  a  service.  Optimized  networked  bandwidth,  reduced  
storage  footprint,  service-­‐oriented  management  and  
ease  of  use  have  driven  Actifio  solutions  to  be  the  choice  
of  service  providers  to  delivers  DR  and  BC  services  at  
value  pricing.  
§ Deliver  Easy-­‐On-­‐Ramp  to  Cloud  service  enabling  
users  to  seamlessly  migrate  select  applications  to  and  
from  a  Service  Provider  cloud.  

A  paradigm  Shift  in  Data  Management  

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By  virtualizing  the  core  primitives  of  data  management  
and  leveraging  the  characteristics  of  Disk-­‐to-­‐Disk  data  
movement,  Actifio  not  only  delivers  a  single  solution  to  
address  multiple  Copy  Data  management  applications,  but  
changes  a  core  IT  function:  Backup.  The  new  architecture  
eliminates  backup  software  and  all  the  complexity,  
limitations  and  inflexibility  associated  with  it.    The  figure  
below  summarizes  the  impact  of  Virtual  Data  Management  
on  backup,  compared  to  other  techniques.  
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Solutions  for  IT  organizations  
§ Eliminate  Backup  and  Restore  Windows.  With  the  rapid  
growth  in  Production  Data  size,  backup  software  tools  are  
unable  to  protect  critical  business  information  or  recover  
information  in  time,  leaving  businesses  vulnerable  to  data  
loss  and  low  availability.  Actifio  AppSnapCopyTM  and  
AppSnapRestoreTM  technologies  are  purpose-­‐built  to  
instantly  protect  and  recover  large  amounts  of  data,  
eliminating  the  windows  of  vulnerability.  Actifio  eliminates  
“backup  agents”,  freeing  business  application  servers  from  
backup  and  restore  operations.  Integrated  data  
deduplication,  compression  and  encrypted  replication,  drive  
down  the  storage  footprint,  network  utilization  and  eliminate  
the  software  license  costs  for  point  tools.  
 
§ Optimize  Replication  for  Disaster  Recovery  and  Business  
Continuity.  DeDup  AsyncTM  technology  eliminates  
movement  of  all  duplicate  data,  driving  down  network  
bandwidth  utilization  by  70%.  In  addition,  the  integrated  
Storage  Virtualization  technology  enables  heterogeneous  
data  replication  further  driving  down  unit  costs  of  storage  by  
75%.  
§ Instant  copies  of  data  for  test  and  development  or  
analytics  applications.  Actifio’s  AppSnapRestoreTM  
technology  allows  copies  of  data  to  be  instantly  available  for  
any  application,  with  no  additional  storage  requirement.  
Clones  of  data  can  be  made  for  I/O  intensive  applications.  
AppSnapCopyTM  technology  allows  users  to  efficiently  
capture  application-­‐consistent  data  multiple  times  a  day  with  
no  impact  on  Hosts  or  storage  systems.  

 

©  Actifio,  Inc.  All  rights  reserved.  Actifio™  is  a  registered  trademark  of  
Actifio  Corporation.  All  other  trademarks  and  service  marks  are  
property  of  their  respective  owners.  

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Actifio  delivers  an  application-­‐centric,  SLA-­‐driven  solution  
that  decouples  the  management  of  data  from  storage,  
network  and  server  infrastructure.  The  result  is  a  single,  
radically  simple  solution  at  up  to  90%  lower  TCO,  to  
efficiently  manage  all  Copy  Data  for  multiple  business  
requirements:  data  protection,  disaster  recovery,  business  
continuity,  test  &  development,  analysis  or  compliance,  for  
virtual,  physical  or  cloud  IT  infrastructure:  AnyITTM    
 
 
For  more  information  on  how  to  manage  data  simply,  
please  visit  http://www.actifio.com