Continuous Data Protection: A Hot Topic that's Getting Hotter

by Mary Lou Roberts

In the hellish wake of Hurricane Katrina, our country is still focused on rescue, relief, and recovery efforts. We've only begun to measure the human toll that is staggering. It will be some time yet before anyone has any kind of serious estimate of the property damage and the cost of rebuilding or re-establishing the physical structures that have been destroyed by wind, water, and fire. It will probably take even longer to establish (if, indeed, we ever can) the ultimate cost to American business and employment.

But one thing is for sure. Just as September 11 sent everyone back to the drawing boards to rethink our individual and collective preparedness and ability to recover after a disaster, Hurricane Katrina has shaken us all into introspection, reminding us that neither Mother Nature nor terrorists have any respect at all for playing fair--especially when we fail to heed their warnings.

And there were plenty of warnings, had we paid sufficient attention to them, prior to both September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina. That is not to say with any kind of certainly that either disaster could have been averted had we heeded the warning of the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, or fortified the levees in New Orleans to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, for example. But it is reasonable to project that in both of these situations, in addition to many more natural and man-made disasters, with a better level of preparedness, both the human and economic costs could have been reduced.

It's a near certainty that the whole subject of disaster recovery and business continuity will pick up steam once again--and that includes continuous data protection. Managers and owners who do not yet recognize that these must be central components of any business plan of a company--no matter how small or large--that is going to survive in the 21st century are doomed. It's an awesome task, especially when resources are limited. But it becomes clearer with each crisis that it's not just big business that needs to pay attention; small businesses as well need to plan for the worst.

On August 26, even as Katrina was planning her assault, IBM announced that it will be releasing on September 16 a new data protection product geared for small businesses. IBM Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files (CDPF), a beta version that has already been made available to developers via IBM's alphaWorks site for emerging technologies, runs under Windows on laptops, desktop PCs and servers. It creates a copy on the local machine within milliseconds, and then sends another copy to a remote server. The software will sell for $35 per laptop or desktop and $995 per server processor, and it will be sold direct from IBM and through IBM business partners.

Targeted especially at companies with mobile workers, IBM explains that, "People on-the-go can protect and restore files that are corrupted or accidentally deleted, back to any point in time, even before they were lost--adding multiple layers of defense against data loss." And we can only imagine how much of this type of laptop-resident data was lost at the World Trade Center or throughout the Gulf Coast states.

The software also addresses corporate data that sits on servers. "The software simplified heterogeneous storage management among enterprise servers and provides integrated data protection across all types of data formats. Working together with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, the software provides complete file protection by automatically making copies of data locally, or across the network."

Well, almost. Although IBM liberally uses the term "servers" to describe the environments that it seeks to protect, for the time being, the iSeries is not included, despite Al Zollar's statement that IBM wishes to provide its customers with "an instant backup and recovery solution to protect information on demand." (Zollar is now general manager of the Tivoli Software unit at IBM, and used to be general manager of the iSeries Division and, before that, its Lotus groupware unit.)

Mike Warkentin, IBM alliance manager for DataMirror, notes that IBM's original product was called SANergy, which accelerated LAN traffic by routing it to a fast SAN fabric, which then led to a general file system filter driver called FilePath. This, in turn, led to a project called VitalFile, he says. "Parts of VitalFile that run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS can still be downloaded, but basically the VitalFile project has become a product--and that is what is being announced."

Warkentin sees the product as "similar to Windows file I/O-based replication products, intercepting the close of a file that has either been changed or newly created, and automatically sending that file to another location on the same server or PC and/or to a remote server. The key here is that the product, while continuous, only replicates after a file has been closed, and is not built to handle the continuous transactions that would be occurring to a database like DB2/UDB on the iSeries or SQL Server or Oracle databases on other platforms. The advantage to this product is that it sounds like the end user interface is very simple. It only requires a PC client and you can set up continuous protection for critical files or scheduled backups for less critical files and keep up to 20 versions of files." Thus, he concludes, this particular product is not a threat to any of the high availability offering for the iSeries.

It is our guess that the new Tivoli product might be useful for PC-style files stored in the OS/400 Integrated File System. The IFS is functionally identical to a Windows file system, after all. We were unable to verify if Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files can be used on IFS files as we went to press, but it might bear some looking into and experimentation.

While the CDPF offering is not a threat to current high availability and backup software providers in the iSeries market, that may change. Rick Ayres, vice president of business development for iTera, believes that this IBM announcement may only be the beginning of IBM's software thrust into the market. "It may only handle Windows now," he says, "but Linux and Unix are coming soon, and there will certainly be more of an emphasis on the iSeries then. This could well be the precursor of other technologies that IBM is working on that will address the iSeries."

Continuous data protection is certainly something that the iSeries base wants and needs, says Marty Leamy, executive vice president and general manager of the MIMIX division of Lakeview Technology. "Key business operations are becoming increasingly automated, and therefore depend on IT systems and operations. As the number of SMBs increasingly utilize multiple platforms such as Linux and Unix, these customers should take into account the need not only to protect their PC and laptop data but their cross-platform environments as well."

Leamy is pleased that IBM will be promoting this product to the small-business marketplace. "This helps to educate the marketplace and raise the awareness of the need for data protection by SMBs and the availability of affordable solutions."

EMC does not seem to be concerned about IBM's entry into a piece of the market in which EMC has been a dominant player. "While newcomers to the CDP space, such as Symantec or IBM, are still in beta with or have just launched products focused on Windows file system protection, but which cannot protect key business applications, our RepliStor product has a proven track record," boasts Rob Callery, a spokesperson for EMC.

Callery adds that CDP should be seen as a key piece of an overall data protection strategy that includes disaster recovery, archiving, business continuance, and backup and recovery solutions by focusing on managing enterprise recovery point objectives (RPO) and challenges. "Therefore, we view CDP as an evolutionary, not revolutionary, technology. The advantages brought by CDP are complementary to these other products such as our Dantz Retrospect and Legato NetWorker."

Tom Pojatina, new accounts manager for LXI, suggests that increased awareness within the SMB market would be a good thing. "We see little signs of the iSeries base wanting continuous data protection. The small system market typically does not invest in this kind of solution. They do their once-a-day system backup and assume that is all they need."

Will IBM, with its professed and newfound interest in the SMB market find a way to move its CDP products into the iSeries base? iTera's Ayres would welcome it. "iTera handles OS/400 partitions and other partitions sitting in the IFS. We partner with other companies to handle the other partitions. Right now, IBM is more interested in keeping its high availability partners around."

And well they should be. Ayres reports that in the second quarter of this year, iTera alone drove more than $9 million in iSeries hardware sales, and he hints that third quarter will be equally impressive. "But the real emphasis is on fail-over and switch-over. That's the bottom line."

Of course, any increase in awareness that IBM can bring to the market can only be a positive for those vendors who market continuous (and near-continuous) data protection, disaster recovery, and high availability products to the iSeries base. But there is a potential downside of IBM pushing a product like this out to small businesses. "Users might adopt a solution that doesn't meet their critical requirements for recovery time objectives or recovery point objectives," says Lakeview's Leamy. "Or, they might not implement the solution within the context of an overall comprehensive data protection and business resilience plan. For some users, the solution will meet the need, but could potentially give them a false sense of security."

If anyone out there still has a false sense of security, just turn on the news.

Mary Lou Roberts, a 35-year veteran of the information systems industry, is a new contributor to IT Jungle. In addition to her work as a reporter in the iSeries space, she has spent her career as a marketing and communications professional working exclusively with information technology publications and companies. She can be reached at WriterNewf@aol.com.