Tag Archives: TSM

01.23.14
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Can the Data Remain Within the Customer’s Control While Data Backup and Recovery is Moved to the Cloud?

Nine out of ten global CEOs view the cloud as critical to their business plans according to IBM.

Junior technician learning Data backupIt is no surprise that IBM Pulse 2014 is shaping up to be another very successful conference. Pulse is IBM’s premier cloud conference. It is being held in Las Vegas on February 23rd through the 26th.

The conference will be covering the power of cloud computing. Included in this discussion are Managed Service Providers (MSP), from cloud and storage to traditional data center, managed network services, and mobile device management. Eighty-five percent of new software this year will be built for cloud delivery.

When the term “cloud” is mentioned, most of us visualize a specific service  that we are familiar. We also visualize that service to be all-inclusive. An example would be data backup and recovery where all the data and the processes are expected to be deployed in the cloud. But, this is not the only model that is possible. A hybrid model may be the preferred in certain cases.

In the case of data backup and recovery, for instance, the data can remain within the customer’s network and deployed off site at the customer’s choice location, while the processes are managed in the cloud. The benefit gained by deploying the data backup processes in the cloud is having the management of the data backup and recovery performed and scheduled remotely by data consultants that specialize in this field. An additional benefit is to remove the burden from the already stretched IT staff.

As we have discussed in previous posts, the alternative of moving the process of data backup and recovery to the cloud is all too often to pick the most junior IT professional on staff and assign that person the task of data backup processes. Picking a junior person for this task  ‘ticks the box’ for upper management and all is well. That is until disaster strikes and that data needs to be recovered. This is to say nothing of the daily and weekly inefficiencies that can be caused by data backup processes developed by an inexperienced individual.

There are Data Backup/Recovery Managed Service Providers (DB/R MSP) that provide remote management of the Backup process, along with professional Disaster Backup and Recovery consultation. Contracting a DB/R MSP with the model of remote DB/R management allows the SMB to maintain their data locally without the need to hire new staff or train existing staff in sophisticated data backup and recovery processes.

01.01.14
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Data Backup and Recovery Considerations for Hadoop and Big Data

IBM says that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. IBM  also says that 80% of data captured today is unstructured. Sources of unstructured data are, among others, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, point-of-sale systems. All of this unstructured data can be termed as Big Data.

Salvus Data ConsultantsBecause of the wide-ranging benefits that small and medium size businesses can gain from Big Data in today’s competitive world, many are implementing a local Big Data strategy. To help businesses of all sizes manage Big Data, there is Hadoop. The Hadoop software library is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using a simple programming model. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage.

The Hadoop project has various elements. Below are a few of the more pertinent :

  • Hadoop Common – libraries and utilities
  • Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) – a distributed file-system that stores data on commodity servers while providing high aggregate bandwidth across the cluster.
  • Hadoop MapReduce – The “Map” step takes the input, divides it into smaller sub-problems, and distributes them to worker nodes.  The worker node processes the smaller problem, and passes it to its master node. The “Reduce” step then collects the answers to all the sub-problems and combines them to form the output.

As stated by Nathan Coutinho in his CDW Blog article  5 Ways to Future-Proof Your Data Center for Big Data “The whole point of Hadoop is to keep the data local on commodity servers and economical local storage…”

Small and Medium size businesses find Hadoop attractive because of it ability to provide high availability to data on local commodity servers.

A data strategy is never complete without a Data Backup and Recovery strategy. A Big Data implementation using Hadoop presents a need for even more focus on the ability to recover from a catastrophic event quickly. However, the SMB is not often staffed or tooled to design and execute a backup strategy of this level of complexity.  The other consideration is that since the attractiveness of Hadoop is to use local servers, there is a further need to implement a data backup and recover strategy that can be managed remotely but not have a requirement that the live data be transferred to or running in a cloud environment.

There are Data Backup/Recovery Managed Service Providers (DB/R MSP) that provide remote management of the Backup process, along with professional Disaster Backup and Recovery consultation. Contracting an DB/R MSP with the model of remote DB/R management allows the SMB to maintain their data locally without the need to hire new staff or train existing staff in sophisticated data backup and recovery processes. Additionally, the SMB can have a comprehensive Data Backup and Recovery strategy while housing their Big Data locally.

11.27.13
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Salvus Data Consultants Provides Tivoli Storage Manager Through a Managed Service

Salvus Data uses IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) to help you meet your disaster recovery and regulatory requirements. Salvus Data performs all data backup and recovery management functions remotely as a Managed Service (MSP). This allow the experts in Data Backup at Salvus Data to be on your team, freeing up your IT staff to focus on their mission-critical activities.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

As we stated in a previous blog post called Considerations In The Analysis of a Data Backup and Recovery Process, “The design of the Data Backup process has multiple dimensions. These multiple dimensions must all be considered when designing the process, handling of exceptions and the physical network to support the backup and restore process. ”

To effectively accommodate these multiple dimensions, Salvus Data uses Tivoli Storage Manager because of its;

  • Backup and recovery management – A single administrator interface allows configuration, monitoring, reporting and backup/recovery execution across the entire complex IT environment.
  • Hierarchical storage management – Enables policy-based management of file backup and archiving, with automatic migration of data between tiers of storage. This feature reduces storage media requirements and administrative costs associated with managing data.
  • Scalability – Manage as many as four billion data objects in a single Tivoli Storage Manager server.
  • Advanced data reduction – Combines progressive incremental backup, source and target data deduplication, compression and tape management. This advanced technology cuts data storage costs, decreases environmental requirements and simplifies administration.

Salvus Data Consultants is a proven leader in TSM Managed Services. They assist your business in controlling costs and eliminate inefficiencies by aligning business unit priorities with IT capabilities, helping your business achieve the objectives that are essential for your growth.

Salvus Data Consultants centrally monitors and manages your backup environments more cost-effectively and with increased service levels. Contact them to better understand the advantage of having your Data Backup and Recovery plans managed remotely by a leading TSM integrator offering a range of backup solutions and services. Call 903-201-7233