Leveraging the Benefits of OST in an Enterprise Environment
The SEPATONS2100® data protection platform is the optimal solution for enterprise data centers that are adopting Symantec NetBackup™ with OST. It can be implemented in existing tape or disk environments simply and without disruption to ongoing operations. Unique grid scalability, storage pooling, and ContentAware™ technology make the S2100 highly optimized for enterprise data centers. With it, companies with large data volumes can take full advantage of NetBackup with OST to dramatically improve their levels of service; reduce risk of data loss; and cut the cost of data protection, retention, and management.
Nondisruptive Implementation in an Enterprise Data Center
Unlike other solutions that require a complete “rip and replace” conversion from physical tape to disk-based data protection, the SEPATON S2100-ES2 platform can be implemented without disruption or changes to existing backup policies. Tape emulation technology enables the S2100 to appear to NetBackup as a physical tape library or tape drive. This flexibility protects customer investment in existing tape libraries and eliminates the need to create and manage isolated “islands of storage.” In addition, by enabling administrators to configure virtual tape drives as they are needed, the S2100 provides a simple, flexible way to multi-stream backups. The S2100 also enables enterprises to operate smoothly with a mixed physical tape, virtual tape, and OST environment.
Smooth Introduction of 10 Gb Ethernet
Moving the entire data center to 10 Gb Ethernet can be costly. However, with the S2100, data center managers can phase in 10 Gb Ethernet over time. Enterprises can use storage pooling to protect data using both FC/VTL and Ethernet/OST on a single system. They can use switches to aggregate 1 Gb Ethernet to 10 Gb Ethernet performance without upgrading their network.By using 10 Gb Ethernet switches that are backward compatible with their installed 1 Gb Ethernet scripts and management tools, data managers can continue to use their Ethernet NIC platform.The storage pooling feature in the SEPATON S2100 appliance gives data managers the flexibility to separate data into independent pools of storage and to allocate resources such as disk type, performance, and capacity to each pool as needed.
Maintaining Mixed Database Protection Environments
There are several scenarios – including NDMP in an enterprise data center - where a mixed OST and NetBackup/VTL environment is the most efficient and cost-effective configuration. In a VTL environment, multiple virtual devices can be configured quickly and easily to support a multi-streaming environment.
- Automatic load balancing across up to eight high-speed processing nodes for performance of up to 43.2 TB/hr.
- Efficient concurrent processing of backup, restore, replication, and deduplication processes
- Flexible configurations to optimize media server load balancing
- Backup and restore through any port for maximum system utilization and data availability
- Performance-Optimized Deduplication
SEPATON also performs data deduplication outside the backup stream for unimpeded wire speed performance. This concurrent deduplication process moves data to the safety of the backup environment and performs deduplication and replication concurrently, using all available processing resources for maximum sustained performance.
Grid Scalability Controls Capital and Operating Costs
The unique grid scalability design of the SEPATON DeltaScale® architecture enables users to add performance to an S2100 simply by adding SEPATONreplication Engine (SRE®) nodes. It also allows users to increase capacity simply by adding disk arrays to a maximum of 1.6 PB of usable storage (before deduplication). Users can start with one SRE node and add up to seven more nodes for performance of up to 43.2 TB/hour. Unlike OST compatible solutions with limited scalability, the S2100 saves time and improves efficiency.
Minimizing Administration Time
SEPATON’s powerful management console saves time and reduces human error by giving users a single tool to monitor and manage backup, deduplication, and capacity utilization.You can also perform simple archiving with OST Direct Copy to Tape. This capability enables you to connect a physical tape library directly to a tape library over a dedicated 4/8 Gb/second FC port, for fast, efficient archiving and restoring of images under control of NetBackup. All data movement is performed directly by the storage appliance, which off-loads the NBU media server. Eliminates time-consuming need to reload balance with the addition of capacity or performance.
OST Advanced Features
By integrating with NetBackup, the S2100 enables data managers to take full advantage of a variety of powerful OST features, such as Storage Lifecycle Policies (SLP) and advanced capacity management.
SLP is a storage plan that can be reused by many or all backup policies and serves as a new type of storage destinations. Introduced in NBU 6.5, SLP enables users to define a plan for how many backup copies to make, which backup destination to use, and how long the retention period should be (e.g., back up to disk, make one copy to tape, another copy to off-site disk). With SLP, data types and storage plans are no longer attached to the device. The backup is determined by the SLP, and data types with different storage plans can be consolidated onto the same storage devices.
SEPATON S2100 data protection appliances feature advanced management and reporting and support the OST Configurable Intelligence for Capacity Usage. Together, these technologies provide detailed, comprehensive information to enable managers to optimize capacity, plan accurately for capacity requirements, and enforce all retention and data expiration requirements efficiently.For example, administrators can use a wide range of capacity management tools in OST to customize the backup environment for optimal capacity usage.
