Fine Grains Of Backup

It may be the most heavily marketed acronym in the storage and backup market since ILM. But unlike information life-cycle management, continuous data protection (CDP) is here and now, with real products that don't require the forklift upgrades, major rethinking of how storage resources are deployed, or what policies will guide long-term archiving practices.

"Customers understand data protection and are much more sold on its importance than some of the things you've seen the storage industry try to promote over the past two years," says George Crump, vice president of technology for Sanz, an Englewood, Colo.-based VAR. "[CDP] puts data protection back in fashion."

CDP varies from conventional backup and snapshot technology in a few important ways. First, it's highly granular and can capture all the information to disk in a server environment or application as often as every second, for off-site storage. In the event of database corruption or virus infection, customers can turn back the dial to a second or two before the disruption and pick up where they left off.

"CDP is really looking at disk-based backup and disk-based storage as the media for backups," says John Lallier, vice president of technology for FalconStor Software, Melville, N.Y. "It also takes advantage of versioning and the types of storage networks available from the high end all the way down."

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CDP offers near-instantaneous recovery because it doesn't require the testing of an Oracle or any other SQL database to make sure it's still intact before putting it back online, says Rich Baldwin, CEO of Nth Generation Computing, a San Diego-based VAR. "We tell customers, 'We can take you back to any point in time and not have to go through a verification process.'"

Smaller VARs shouldn't be put off by CDP's traditional role in the high end of the market. When CDP products first came to market 18 months ago with price tags in excess of $200,000, those were appliance-based products, like the CPS 1200 sold by Lexington, Mass.-based Revivio. However, Revivio recently unveiled the 1200i, priced at around $50,000 for smaller budgets.

In the meantime, software-only CDP products have hit the market from FalconStor, IBM's Tivoli unit and Computer Associates, among others, that vary in price and cost as little as $10,000. Unlike a lot of application software or backup products, CDP pricing is a flat fee and not contingent on the number of servers, applications or user seats it covers.

"There are specific CDP solutions for applications like Exchange or Office that will be big for the [SMB] space, and that's a perfect opportunity for the channel to distribute," says Dianne McAdam, senior analyst and partner with Data Mobility Group in Nashua, N.H.

The software-only approach, for example, can help VARs that lean toward specific vendors, permitting them to specialize in CDP for Hitachi or Hewlett-Packard arrays. "The software approach is also going to be good for customers who are budget-constrained," she adds.

Conversely, larger enterprises will likely require more tailoring of their CDP solution, because they have to decide which applications to protect and what within those applications is important, McAdam says. That, of course, is bread-and-butter stuff for high-end VARs.

Who's Buying?

Clearly, it's not practical to back up every server, application or desktop across an enterprise. For many organizations, snapshots set for one-hour or 15-minute intervals are about as much granularity as they need. Thus, for solution providers, it comes down to a clear understanding of a business' requirements.

And, despite recent headline grabbers about data theft and disasters that have wiped out data centers, many customers still aren't proactive when it comes to backup or replication.

"Usually, by the time they get to us, they've had some sort of internal failure, and it's a critical issue that needs to be resolved yesterday," says Greg Knieriemen vice president of Chi, a Cleveland-based reseller of FalconStor, EqualLogic and Hitachi storage solutions. That, in turn, leads to questions about whether they have a storage-area network (SAN) in place from which to launch CDP, optimal SAN architectures and how much redundancy to buy, he says.

Whether solution providers offer CDP, snapshots or stick with overnight tape backups will also hinge on the cost of downtime. If a transaction-intensive application server locks up and a $10,000 trade goes down the drain, you can cost-justify CDP based on that one event, Nth Generation Computing's Baldwin notes.

Regardless of requirements, many VARs and their vendors agree that CDP will require a longer sales cycle than most storage products. That's partly due to the relative novelty of CDP and the level of customization it may need.

"We're sensitive to the fact there's a lot of hand-holding required," says Kirby Wadsworth, senior vice president of marketing and business development for Revivio. "So we're bringing partners into the opportunities--not just throwing it over the wall and saying, 'Put it on your line card.'"

Most customers, he adds, are now trying to get a handle on which components of their data are best-suited to CDP. "They need help with classification, prioritization and implementation," Wadsworth says.

Chi's Knieriemen says he's "cautiously optimistic" about his company's prospects for CDP sales.

"CDP is another tool in [the storage] continuum that gives you replication capabilities, but also moves that data off-site and still enables customers to journal that data," he says. "CDP's another way we're trying to improve speed and reduce costs. It has a lot of value."

Terry Sweeney ([email protected]) is site editor of CMP Media's Storage Pipeline.