InformationWeek Backup and Business Continuity Weblog

EMC and HP Battle For Laptop Backup

Andrew Conry-Murray — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:04:52 -0500

EMC's Avamar 5.0 and HP's DPNE bring backup with dedupe to laptops and desktops, but they each take a very different approach to backing up PCs.

VMware Feels Growing Pains Of Being A $1 Billion Firm

Charles Babcock — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:53:20 -0500

In a relatively brief period, VMware has gone from a small company to 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion. At VMworld in San Francisco, I got a sense of how that rapid growth leads to growing pains. For one thing, some of your best customers prefer your little competitors to you.

D'oh, I Should Have Made A Backup

Howard Marks — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:56:40 -0500

In yet another chapter in our continuing series bringing further embarrassment to poor souls that were foolish enough to not have a viable backup plan, we have the sad tale of blog hosting firm JournalSpace. It managed to survive six years using RAID as a substitute for backups. But then data corruption struck and business failure soon followed.

White House E-Mail Down

Howard Marks — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:07:53 -0500

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced at a 1:45 p.m. press briefing yesterday that he was unable to send out the customary week-ahead memo as the White House e-mail system was "not working so well." D.C. reporters got their next e-mail from the White House around 8:30 this morning indicating that the outage lasted most of a day.

CES: Startup Ctera's CloudPlug (Literally)

Fritz Nelson — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:28:16 -0500

Sometimes it's the tiniest things that thrill me. In the middle of the gigantic TVs and the booming sound systems and the magic acts and the private suites and the thrumming parties was Ctera, an 18-employee company headquartered in Israel. When they showed me their device, I literally did a double-take (luckily off camera; very awkward). The CloudPlug is a tiny plug with a processor inside, an Ethernet jack, and a USB port, with which you can turn any USB device into a NAS and back up your data to Ctera's cloud-based service. And it's so damned cute.

Elephant Drive Best Bet For Xdrive Users

Howard Marks — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:08:34 -0500

While online backup vendors like SpiderOak are offering discounts for displaced Xdrive users and AOL lists Dropbox, Carbonite and Box.net along with Elephant Drive as replacements for Xdrive users I agree with Matt K Olsen who commented on my last blog post on this issue the Elephant Drive was the best replacement for Xdrive users.

Oh Boy, A Survival Kit For The Holidays

Howard Marks — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:09:04 -0500

Welcome to the silly season, when marketers decide their company's products make great holiday gifts. As InformationWeek's Master of Disaster, I get e-mail from all sorts of folks who think I should say nice things about their products in this here blog. Sometimes they try just a little too hard to make their products topical.

Mozy Sez: Back The F:\ Up!

Howard Marks — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:45:16 -0500

At least the T-shirts they're giving away at backthefup.net do. As the site says, "Screw Klondike� Bars, What Would You Do For A Back The F:\ Up T-Shirt?" Turns out what you have to do is something that promotes EMC's Mozy backup service, like writing a blog entry.

AOL Throws Xdrive On Ash Heap - Users Scramble

Howard Marks — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:17:53 -0500

It's no surprise to readers of this here blog that the online backup market is hot. Even so, AOL has managed to fail at it and will be closing the pioneering Xdrive, founded in 1999 and acquired by AOL in 2005 for a reported $30 million. It will be shut down on Jan. 12, 2009.

Brocade/Foundry Deal On The Rocks?

Howard Marks — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:15:59 -0500

The merger of Brocade, the clear leader in enterprise Fibre Channel switching, with Foundry Networks, one of the group with Extreme and Force10 that keeps Cisco honest at the high end of the Ethernet switching market, seemed like a good match back in August. With Cisco and the HBA vendors (Emulex and QLogic) pushing FCoE as the best thing since Fibre Channel itself (iSCSI's just for kids, you know) Brocade had to team up with an Ethernet switch vendor to try selling FC/FCoE switches that users plugged into Cisco Ethernet gear down the line.

Is Red Hat's Whitehurst Right? Open Source Thrives In Downturn?

Charles Babcock — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:47:29 -0500

CEO Jim Whitehurst says Red Hat will perform robustly through a recession. Is that true or is he engaged in wishful thinking? InformationWeek's cover story this week, "The Open Source Enterprise," concludes that open source code gets taken more seriously in a time of IT budget cutbacks. Will that help Red Hat?

Cemaphore's MailShadowX Links Exchange To Exchange Online

Howard Marks — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:41:26 -0500

Riding the coattails of Microsoft's announcement of its hosted Exchange service Exchange Online, Cemaphore Systems announced that its MailShadowX product will sync Exchange Online mailboxes with mailboxes on an organization's in-house Exchange server.

New Backup And Recovery Software For SharePoint

Andrew Conry-Murray — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:24:02 -0500

As SharePoint nears $1 billion in revenue, third-party software vendors are joining the party with tools and add-ons.

Hard Times In Tape Business

Howard Marks — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:49:25 -0500

Between the shift to disk backup and the economy rolling downhill, times are tough for tape library vendors. While IBM and Sun can shift their sales from tape libraries the size of a small Winnebago to their home-built VTL, the makers of midrange tape libraries are having a tougher time as much of their sales came through OEM deals with EMC, HP, or HDS and those vendors' VTLs don't pay Quantum or Overland's rent. Even media vendor Imation is hurting.

Barracuda Swims Into The Cloud

Andrew Conry-Murray — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:42:38 -0500

The anti-spam vendor buys into the cloud with acquisition of an online backup company.

Dell Announces Dedupe Strategy - No Product Yet

Howard Marks — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:21:56 -0500

Dell's backup portfolio is still a bit thin at the high end, lacking both a virtual tape library and deduplication (no, the CommVault-provided single instance storage on the DL2000 doesn't count). Currently, Dell customers looking for deduplication can buy The Data Storage Group's ArchiveIQ source deduping backup software for Windows or an ExaGrid gateway to an EqualLogic array through Dell's reseller arrangements with those vendors.

Overland�s REO Compass Adds Replication Dedupe

Howard Marks — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:52:14 -0500

Overland Storage's new REO Compass appliances take a unique approach to the ROBO (remote office, branch office) backup problem using data deduplication, encryption and compression to replicate backup data to a central site. Unlike Quantum's DXi or Data Domain's appliances, the REO Compass doesn't actually serve as a backup target storing your data but instead replicates data, through a partner, Compass, from one real or virtual tape library to another.

IBM Fined $900,000 For Failing To Backup

Howard Marks — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:06:35 -0500

The Dallas Morning News reported that the state of Texas is fining IBM $900,000 for failing to make timely backups as part of an $863 million outsourcing contract. Gov. Rick Perry also suspended the transfer of additional state records into the IBM system, claiming the new system puts state agency data at risk.

Imation Finds Scary Data On "Recertified" Tapes

Howard Marks — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:39:11 -0500

Last month I wrote about my general misgivings about selling used data tapes for reuse. My New Yorker's general skepticism left me dubious that the few dollars I got for sending a box of tapes via UPS or FedEx to Joe the used tape salesman was worth the risk that some of my data might make it to Christopher the identity thief. Today I got a press release from Imation reporting that they purchased around 100 "recertified" tapes from "leading recertifyers as found on Google" and found recoverable data on 30% of them.

Storwize Boosts Compression Appliances

Howard Marks — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:08:12 -0500

All the attention that storage punditry, including this humble reporter, has given data deduplication in the past few years has pushed that old, reliable data-reduction technology compression toward the dust bin of used up technology in the minds of many storage users. That's too bad, as loss-less compression is still an important data-reduction tool. One vendor, Storwize, has made a nice little business for itself making NAS compression appliances and now it's claiming each appliance can handle 600 MB/s of traffic and archive 15:1 compression.

Disasters Strike Sports Broadcasts - Fans Frantic

Howard Marks — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:04:59 -0500

In a coincidence so large I'm sure Richard Belzer is starting a conspiracy theory about it, both the San Diego Chargers at Buffalo Bills game this Sunday and game 6 of the American League Championship Series on Saturday were knocked out by technology failures. What is the world coming to? If the proletariat isn't feed a constant stream of sports entertainment to take their minds off the events of the day, the workers will rise up to seize the means of production, or vote. That, and PR folks have experts to tell me how they would have prevented these events.

Nevada Law Requires Encryption - Vendor Press Release Exaggerates When

Howard Marks — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:04:02 -0500

A new Nevada law (NRS 597.970) effective Oct. 1 requires that businesses in Nevada encrypt personal information whenever it is electronically transmitted outside the business by any means other than fax. Predictably, I got a press release from an encryption software vendor that said "Even if a business never sends customer information via e-mail, the business will be at risk if a server, desktop, laptop, or electronic storage device is lost, stolen, or compromised." The real problem is the law is incredibly vague.

Plasmon Falls Into Administration � Is Enterprise Optical Storage Dead?

Howard Marks — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:37:53 -0500

Not so many years ago, optical storage looked like the future. While hard drives held 200MB, magneto-optical disks stored 650 MB and that could be WORM (Write Once Read Many), making optical jukeboxes the only storage medium that could meet the not deletable, not modifiable requirements of the regulations Wall Street broker dealers and other assorted deep-pocket customers had to comply with. Now it looks like optical disks may join head-per-track disks on the scrapheap of storage.

Dell Enters Backup Appliance Market

Howard Marks — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:57:38 -0500

Dell's new DL2000 backup appliances represent the company's first backup appliances aimed at the midmarket, providing those SMBs that view Dell as their primary technology vendor with a turnkey backup-to-disk solution. Dell is bundling a 2U server (that looks a lot like a PowerEdge 2900 to me) with its MD1000 SAS attached SAS/SATA JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) external cabinets and enhanced versions of either Symantec's Backup Exec or CommVault's Simpana backup.

NOAA's Tracking Site Shows Historical Storm Activity

Howard Marks — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:09:05 -0500

While, as the mutual fund ads always say, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, knowing your area's hurricane history can help you with your Disaster Recovery plan. NOAA's new historical hurricane tracking site displays hurricane and other major storm tracks for past 150 years