Search results matching tag 'Data Protection'

Daniel Pradelles: HP leads the way on the Accountability path…

jeanne2007 — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:37:00 GMT

I asked my colleague Daniel Pradelles to give you an update on privacy and data protection at HP. Enjoy reading. Jeannette

HP leads the way on the Accountability path…

“Privacy and data protection. These words should provide a sense of safety and trust on the personal data processing and the company responsible for undertaking it. However, these days for many individuals, they give grave cause for concern... How can we be sure that details of transactions cannot be detected? That data is used in line with users’ expectations and that confidences are kept? How confident can we be that companies will willingly be accountable for guarding our privacy?”

It has to be said that the concerns above may well impact the nascent ‘information society’ and its multiple, recent and promising evolutions, such as the internet, ambient intelligence, smart objects, cloud computing, social medias or social networking. Inappropriate handling may seriously reduce or slow down users’ benefits.

In order to address these concerns effectively, HP has been working with the Centre for Information Policy Leadership (CIPL), representatives from major industry partners, consumer protection groups and regulatory agencies to develop a Working Paper that sets out the essential elements of a new concept called ‘Accountability in Privacy Governance’.

The challenge is that all of us – companies, institutions and regulatory agencies - have different policies and practices on privacy, different visions and contexts. Consequently, our solutions for effective data protection management are different. How can anyone be sure that such solutions are adequate and that they are completely accountable for their actions? There is a need to formalise the accountability concept and its meaning and we need to do our best to harmonise the different approaches.

Our main goal is to look at accountability through several specific themes, such as: i) How it links to Privacy Governance issues, ii) What the essential elements of accountability are that link to trust in data management, iii) How to measure accountability, iv) The key linkage with another major concept named ‘privacy by design’, v) What the main incentives are for privacy accountability and finally vi) The challenges of certification and oversight.

Our aim, therefore, is to really work on the definitions and the key elements of accountability so that we can prepare a comprehensive document that contains new trends, practices and opinions on accountability that will be commonly accepted. Once completed, this Working Paper will be submitted for consideration and discussion to a number of major privacy regulators & international organisations, all of whom work to ensure consistent accountability strategy.

The importance of such an approach, which is at the heart of HP’s plans, has already been acknowledged in a recently released ‘Review of Data Protection Directive’ study produced by Rand Europe for Richard Thomas, UK Information Commissioner. Let me finish my blog entry again with a quotation from Richard, who stated in the forward of the study:

“A vital theme is accountability. Primary responsibility must be placed on organisations to get it right and they must be held to account if they get it wrong. Organisations must deploy the right technology and have a privacy-by-design approach at the heart of their plans. »

Thanks for reading.

Daniel PRADELLES EMEA Privacy Officer HP CCF

You can read more on Accountability in a recent article in the HP Global Citizenship Bulletin.

Using the Suspend Method to Protect Virtual Machines - Method #1

Jtisevich — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:01:00 GMT

A month ago I wrote about the 8 ways of protecting VMware that Data Protector 6.1 is offering and I promised to go into detail on each of them. After a month of vacation and travel I finally get to start the series. I want to start with the most basic one - Suspend virtual machine.

There are things to consider when protecting a virtual environment. One is the overall virtual machine setup and the complete virtual machine including the OS. The other one is the applications inside the machine. While you want to protect the complete setup only when you change either OS settings or VMware settings the application data needs to be protected more frequently.

Suspend virtual machine is a solution to protect the entire virtual machine. In order to ensure no I/O is being executed on the machine while the backup is happening the machine is frozen via a command. This is similar to hibernate the physical server and do a raw disk backup of the disks from another machine. This has obviously very high impact on the virtual machine itself and the usability of the machines. One use case could be that you do this kind of "offline backup" after a maintenance of your environment when you anyhow planned for downtime.

For protecting the application data inside the virtual machine this method would only make sense if you have a clear downtime window where you can shutdown the application. We believe other methods DP provide are better suited for that.

Once the virtual machine is frozen the data is accessed on the ESX server and moved to any target supported by Data Protector. This allows you to use the full flexibility of Data Protectors infrastructure and you can use either disk or tape as a target.

Recovery of such a backup would simply restore the data to the ESX server and start up the virtual machine.

Data Protector Support for VMware vSphere and ESX Server 4.0

Jtisevich — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:55:00 GMT

The Data Protector 6.1 software release in January 2009 provided a number of new features – including the flexibility of eight different methods for protecting and restoring VMware environments. From methods inherent to VMware, such as Suspend VM, ESX snapshot, and VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), to unique Data Protector capabilities like Zero Downtime Backup and Instant Recovery, all of these are supported and can be controlled from within the Data Protector user interface – with no scripting required.

In May 2009, VMware released ESX Server 4.0, part of its new vSphere product suite. As with previous VMware releases, the Data Protector team has placed a high priority on certifying support for this new platform, and we are pleased to announce that all of the eight methods are also now fully supported with Data Protector 6.1.

With full support for ESX Server 4.0, Data Protector continues to deliver a high-performance solution with minimal data loss by combining the power of Zero Downtime Backup and Instant Recovery with the versatility of VCB. This solution provides a unique advantage that no other enterprise backup and recovery solution can offer.

Watch for further enhancements to Data Protector in the months to come, for vSphere and other virtualized platforms.

Can backup software really achieve business results and reduce business risks?

Jtisevich — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:25:00 GMT

Much is written about the intended business benefits of many products on the market with special attention lately to anything that will help businesses lower costs. The real results are when customers can share HOW they accomplish this with real-life examples.

Continental Airlines is a great example of this. Their Finance Group using HP Data Protector software to backup and recover over a petabyte of data points to a 70% reduction in technology costs. They also have been able to reduce the business risks associated with compliance and government regulations.

According to Continental, "Information security, virtualization, compliance and e-discovery are critical areas for us moving into 2009. We expect further benefits with the new virtualization and encryption features in the latest version of HP Data Protector."

But the really interesting real-life use case becomes clear when you talk to the Senior Manager responsible for the deployment of Data Protector, Devin York. Devin takes advantage of the plethora of reports available to him in the product to forecast hardware purchases, capacity plan for storage, determine performance bottlenecks and identify database growth trends. This critical data is not only used by Devin in his day to day job but for the important yearly task of forecasting and budget planning.

To read all the details of how Devin uses these reports to answer almost any question he gets from his boss, an executive or a customer, check out his story at:
http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/imhub/imheroes/bios/devin-york.html

The Continued Adoption of Backup to Disk

Jtisevich — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:34:00 GMT

Economic conditions do not seem to be impacting the continued adoption of backup to disk technologies. In a recent study we commissioned with Forrester Consulting, 90% of enterprises said they were already using backup to disk (56%) or planned to within the next 12 months (34%). With data continuing to grow at double digit rates and backup windows continuing to shrink, new ways to cost effectively increase the speed of backups must be looked at. Businesses are in fact achieving all kinds of benefits by augmenting their backup infrastructure with disk-based methods. Here is the ranking of these adoption drivers by enterprise businesses:

1) Improve the speed of restores

2) Improve the success rates of backup and recovery

3) Improve the speed of backup

4) Eliminate the transport of physical tape

5) To get the benefit of advanced backup capabilities like virtual full for data reduction

6) Supporting the backup of virtual servers

7) Improving disaster recovery

Gaining efficiences as described above by successful companies can only help the botton line that's being squeezed by a difficult economy. When deploying the disk hardware, these same customers rank as their most important concern the integration within the existing backup ecosystem. Encryption, replication, hardware compression, scale and deduplication are among the other important considerations.

We are seeing customers have great success with this approach. KPN, the largest telephone company in the Netherlands, could no longer complete backups in their available 16-hour window and required faster backup and restore of their critical Internet billing data. KPN moved to a system of using HP Data Protector software to backup to disk, HP StorageWorks Virtual Library System. This required no additional training for their staff and they can now complete backups in the available window. The disk to disk system saved them time, money and effort and allowed them to then backup to tape without slowing down the network.

Look for more customer stories in upcoming blogs.

HP Data Protector - available any way you want it: Owned, Financed, Outsourced

Jtisevich — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:02:00 GMT

We know that although the economy has slowed, the demands on your business haven’t. Large and small companies alike are finding it harder to make the financial commitments needed to enhance or even maintain their backup infrastructures. While the temptation is to make quick fixes, the fact is, such fixes sacrifice business performance and ultimately increase long-term costs by risking data loss.

To mitigate the risk of data loss due to economic constraints HP financial Services is offering to help in way you may not have considered. They can help you invest in your business while preserving precious capital. For a limited time only, get the technology your business needs and the flexibility you deserve with their 12 month, “0% a same-as-cash “option for ownership.

Why stress over the risk of data loss or lower service level agreements? With Data Protector at 0% you can afford the highest level protection for your virtual server environment while increasing its operational efficiency. Don’t delay adding Advanced Backup to Disk, Zero Downtime Backup or Instant Recovery extensions to increase recovery point and recovery time objectives for your critical business data. Take advantage of this unique offer before it’s over or worse.
http://h20330.www2.hp.com/hpfinancialservices/us/en/programs/hpfs-promotion-same-as-cash.html

Remote and Branch office backup using De-Duplication technologies

Jtisevich — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:26:00 GMT

By Harald Burose

Remote and branch offices provide a challenge for the backup administrator particularly if there are no IT resources in the remote office. Traditionally a small tape library like an MSL would have been placed in the remote office for backup. Tapes would be taken offline from the library for disaster recovery (DR) protection. That process works with IT staff in the remote office but without IT staff it becomes practically unmanageable. With backup to disk, tape handling is no longer required in the remote office. However, the data for DR protection still needs to be moved offsite. The data could be moved offsite using replication technology but if full backups are always replicated, the bandwidth of the replication link must be substantial which is impractical financially. Also the capacity of the disk device must be configured in a way that it can be self sufficient and allow primarily for local restores. Without any advanced technologies this capacity also becomes a cost concern.

Thanks to De-Duplication, these problems can now be addressed. If the device put into the remote office supports de-duplication, the number of versions that can be kept locally for recovery are greatly increased. Due to the fact that the de-duplication device only stores the net change that is created on the systems, the device capacity can be utilized much better.

De-Duplication also helps when it comes to moving data offsite or to a remote data center. Traditionally all data sets would have to be transferred either physically via tape or electronically via replication. If the backup device supports De-Duplication and only stores the delta, the replication can focus on the delta rather than the full data set. This greatly reduces the bandwidth requirements for the replication link.

How is all of that managed with HP's Data Protector? Data Protector's cell concept allows you to have a cell in the remote office and another cell in the central data center. Both cells can be managed from a single user interface by simply connecting the interface to the different cell manager. In the central data center, the replicated virtual tapes need to be imported into the local cell by reading only the catalog information from the virtual tape. Once that is done, the central cell manager has full knowledge of the content on the tape and can use object copy technology to copy it to physical tape media for long term retention. It is important for the virtual tape technology to support access by Data Protector of the target virtual tape system in the replication setup without any implications on the replication process of other tapes. For the backup in the remote office, Data Protector's full application support can be leveraged so that remote Exchange or SQL servers can be protected. Data Protector's built-in bare metal disaster recovery capabilities also allow the use of a feature called Disk Delivery for DR. This basically creates a DR bootable disk in the central data center that only needs to be shipped to the remote data center and placed in the server that needs to be recovered. This is a great mechanism to get full system recovery done in case the data is no longer in the remote office backup to disk device for local recovery.

Data Protector 6.1 Pricing and the Competition

Jtisevich — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:25:00 GMT

By Brad Vincent

As we all know, the pricing of data protection solutions varies widely from one vendor to another. And with so many different licensing schemes and policies, it can be difficult for customers to determine what a solution will cost in the end. Initial quotes are easy to obtain, but what about additional licensing down the road? New tape libraries? Additional disk capacity? Not to mention support contract renewals!

In the Data Protector business team, we’ve always taken pride in having a product with simple, straightforward licensing, and aggressive pricing both on licensing and support. But the world of data protection has become more complex lately, as environments become more virtualized, new methods of data reduction and deduplication are offered, and storage capacity requirements increase faster than ever. So, we recently went through an exercise to reaffirm that we still offer the lowest cost of ownership in these new data protection environments… and, yes, we’ve even had to make an adjustment or two in the process, just as our competitors have.

We recently put together a set of three “real-world” configuration scenarios that best represented data protection environments today – a small, medium and large one. Each of these configurations was created after a thorough amount of research – including discussions with analysts, and a detailed sizing analysis to make sure that these scenarios are as realistic and representative as possible of the majority of our customer’s environments. Each scenario included a great deal of virtualization (with several thousand VMs in the large scenario), as well as VTL-based deduplication (the most common form being used today). All of the necessary backup servers, media servers, and destination backup devices such as tape libraries were also factored into this cost analysis activity.

Once these scenarios were created, the licensing and support costs were priced out for each of the major vendors in the data protection software market. And this was no easy task, given the complexity of some of these vendors’ licensing policies. In the end, what we found was no surprise: Data Protector continues to offer the lowest cost of any major backup & recovery software product on the market today. But what did surprise us was the following:

· The total cost savings Data Protector provided vs. all of these vendors ranged from 40 to 60%, and in some cases was 70% or more.

· Data Protector required the fewest number of licenses for the same configurations… in some cases less than 10% of the number required by other vendors.

· Data Protector remains the easiest product to quote, with no client licensing, no “processor tiering”, and no extra “options” for basic functionality such as reporting or drive sharing.

These results confirmed that Data Protector not only offers excellent Total Cost of Ownership through its functionality, but also continues to do so through its pricing model. Nonetheless, we’ve made recent adjustments to our licensing policies to further simplify the ownership of the product – one example is the recent change to Data Protector’s Advanced Backup to Disk licensing, which allows users to purchase based on the physical, native capacity of a VTL device… essentially making the cost of deduplicated data free. Another way Data Protector keeps things simple is by maintaining the same licensing in virtual and non-virtual environments. No special licensing to worry about, no special rules – for online backup, the same inexpensive license is required regardless of where it’s used. And best of all, no charge for VM clients.

There’s no doubt that this pricing and licensing world will continue to evolve, as vendors struggle to keep up with new technologies and ever-changing customer requirements. But rest assured, Data Protector will continue to evolve right along with it.

Why you should care about centralized encryption key management

Jtisevich — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:07:00 GMT

By Tim Nolte

IT departments are responsible for the safekeeping of huge amounts of information about their business, their intellectual property and even their customers. Increased criminal sophistication in exploiting this information means protecting it is not only more difficult, it is more important than ever.

Backup tapes are relatively small and easy to move around, meaning they are definitely a potential security issue. All of the tape handling processes therefore need to incorporate strict security guidelines, especially if they are actually transported offsite for long-term storage or disaster tolerance.

If the data on the backup tapes are encrypted, the risks associated with tape handling are dramatically reduced. Highly secure, standardized encryption algorithms are used for this. These algorithms make use of a digital key to encode and decode data. These are a key part (no pun intended) of the entire security strategy for this data. Keys must be managed and they must be managed carefully. They must not be lost, of course. That amounts to the same thing as losing the data because without the correct key, you basically have an unusable random collection of 1s and 0s on your tape. Of course keys must be stored securely to prevent them falling into the wrong hands. If the key is available to someone with criminal intent, all the benefits of encryption go out the door (good analogy, isn’t it?).

HP Data Protector 6.1 has introduced Centralised Encryption Key management to make this process simpler, less prone to mistakes and therefore, more secure. While software based encryption requires a license for any server where it will run the centralized key management, it is a standard feature of Data Protector 6.1 that does not require any additional licensing to use. Without centralized key management, server specific files containing current and past encryption keys need to be stored on each individual server for backup and restore. This can result in a large number of keyfiles which are widely distributed. Keeping them secure and synchronized required careful manual work and could involve many different people just to keep up with the required administration tasks. Not only do these manual tasks make mistakes more likely, security risks are higher simply because the number of people with access to secure data increases.

With Data Protector 6.1 all keys used for software-based or LTO4 drive-based encryption are kept in a centralized, secure location that simplifies administration, reduces exposure and the chances of human error. The encryption keys are themselves encrypted for storage or as part of any transfer to a server for use. The keys are managed by the Data Protector Cell Manager and made available as and where needed to any server in the cell rather than being stored in individual files on each server. Using the Manager of Managers capability of Data Protector allows the key management to be done across multiple cells.

So with Data Protector 6.1 there are no longer individual, server by server key files that must be managed, shared, moved created, and backed up. Encryption key management is virtually automatic and transparent, reducing security exposure as well as the opportunity for mistakes which could result in loss of data.

Deduplication Options in HP Data Protector 6.1

Jtisevich — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:35:00 GMT

We’ve all heard the buzz about deduplication in recent years. But what is deduplication really, and what’s the benefit? An official definition would be the intelligent elimination of redundant data, in order to optimize storage capacity. But the challenging part for users is that it can be implemented and delivered in many different forms. File-level, block-level, inline, post-process, client-side, target-side… it can all get quite confusing.

It’s no surprise that we’ve heard even more about deduplication lately, as organizations experience increased pressure to develop new, low-cost approaches for optimizing their storage environment. As we’ve discussed in previous blogs, Data Protector 6.1 is all about lowering total cost of ownership. So this was a major area of focus for the recent Data Protector 6.1 release… and fortunately, several deduplication options are now offered that allow you to choose the best solution for your needs.

First, we have virtual full backup. For those of you who are familiar with Data Protector – ok, I admit it… this is not really new. Virtual full backup was first introduced with version 6.0. But it is probably the most under-utilized and little-known feature in Data Protector today, so it’s worth mentioning here. In fact, the virtual full concept is something that is completely unique to Data Protector, and can dramatically reduce the size of certain backups on disk-based target media – by up to 95%. How is this possible? Virtual full backups are actually just a series of pointers to data that already exists on the backup media – they contain no backup data themselves. This allows the creation of a new full backup quickly and easily, with no added burden on the clients or the network, and minimal storage capacity requirements. Even better, users have a create an easy restore point, as well as a point from which to consolidate prior backup jobs and move them to tape. And best of all – this feature is completely free of charge.

The second option available with Data Protector is the one that is most popular with today’s users – target-side deduplication. Data Protector supports a wide variety of third-party storage devices using inline (“on the fly”), block-level deduplication features such as Data Domain, NetApp, Quantum, and others. And to make support of these devices more cost-effective, Data Protector’s Advanced Backup to Disk (D2D) licensing was changed last year from being source-based to target-based as well. This allows users to base their licensing cost on the physical capacity of the device, rather than the logical capacity – essentially allowing 40 TB, 50 TB, or more to be backed up with only a 10 TB Advanced Backup to Disk license. Another great way to lower costs.

Finally, of course, there are the deduplication features in HP’s own D2D and VLS products. The D2D series provides inline deduplication, with easy integration into any backup environment, while the VLS series employs a post-process deduplication method (waiting for all data to be written to disk before deduplication begins), for maximum backup performance. Each of these methods has strengths and weaknesses, but HP provides the flexibility of both choices. And in keeping with HP’s “Better Together” theme, using Data Protector with the D2D series provides the added capability of a special Low-Bandwidth Replication feature. This feature leverages the power of deduplication to reduce the amount of bandwidth required for replicating data from one location to another – for example, from a remote/branch office to a central site. By deduplicating the data at the remote office, only the changed data must be transferred again to the central site. Then, the original data set can be “rebuilt” at the central site and offloaded to tape for long-term storage.

In the coming years, analysts expect the importance and usage of deduplication technology to increase. It will be a key element in the buying criteria for data protection solutions. It is seen as significant enough even to accelerate the transition from tape-based backup technology to disk-based, due to its cost-savings potential. As vendors look to enhance their capabilities in this area, Data Protector will be no exception – with multiple options today, and much more to come in the future.