New Use Cases Give CDP a Second Chance

In the last few years no technology has experienced more of its shares of ups and downs than continuous data protection (CDP). Initially hailed by some as a likely successor to backup software, CDP has yet to come close to fulfilling on that original promise. However recent changes in IT data center environments coupled with ongoing improvements in CDP are giving this technology a second chance.

Some may wonder why CDP did not do better out of the gate. While the reasons vary, there are three main reasons why CDP never took off as some initially forecast it might.

• It never integrated with backup software. Users tend to have a love-hate relationship with their backup software but replacing backup software with CDP was never really an option in most organizations. So when CDP vendors suggested that they replace their existing backup software with CDP software and offered no options for backup software integration, application support or tape management, the arguments for switching to CDP fell on deaf ears.
• It solved too few problems in organizations. No backup windows, near zero data loss on recoveries and roll forward and rollback recovery capabilities sound really cool to application owners and backup administrators. But how many applications really, really needed that level of functionality a few years ago and then were willing to pay extra for it? It turned out, not enough. Organizations found that they could make do with existing and more affordable backup and snapshot technologies.
• Organizations still had the time and resources to do backups and recoveries. 3 - 5 years ago server virtualization was still on the horizon not in the data center. As a result, organizations still had time to backup and recover the majority of applications using backup software agents on LAN-attached servers and various forms of snapshot technologies for mission critical applications.

What has changed over the past few years is that the arguments for not using CDP are less applicable. Many data center infrastructures either have or are deploying server virtualization. This has brought new requirements for less intrusive backup techniques with faster, more comprehensive recovery options. Also, as CDP software has matured, some of the original objections to its adoption are no longer valid. Consider the following new use cases:

• Better integration with backup software. CDP providers now rightly recognize that users are not about to abandon their backup software anytime soon. While they want better options to protect and recover their data, they want to continue to use their backup software to set and administer these policies. In light of this CDP providers are adapting.

For example, Symantec is now leveraging its NetBackup 6.5 software to set backup policies for either NetBackup or its NetBackup RealTime CDP software. Organizations can also leverage the NetBackup backup software agent to create application consistent recovery checkpoints within the NetBackup RealTime CDP solution.  These application checkpoints can then be used to create snapshots which NetBackup can use as the source for long term backups to disk or tape.

• No backup windows. Question: When is a good time to backup a physical server that hosts multiple virtual machines, even those not deemed mission critical? Answer: Never. When organizations consolidate multiple physical servers onto one, using traditional backups on each virtual machine puts additional overhead on the underlying physical server that can tax its memory, networking and processing resources. Using CDP to protect these servers eliminates this overhead associated with nightly backups and, in the case of products like NetBackup RealTime, actually offloads the backup workload to an appliance on the Fibre Channel network.

• Standardized, shorter recovery periods for all application servers. As organizations consolidate servers while seeking to maintain or even reduce IT staffing levels, it can become harder to determine which applications are mission critical and which ones are not. CDP eliminates the need for organizations to try to make these sometimes arbitrary determinations by providing a consistently high level of recovery for all protected applications.

In the case of NetBackup RealTime, it virtualizes existing storage systems so that the application servers can run off of the NetBackup RealTime backup without needing to copy data back to the original or another location. This takes backup to a new level as it becomes more akin to a clustering solution since the application server can use the disk image behind the NetBackup RealTime solution to run instead of waiting for a recovery to occur.

• New applications for testing and development. Production applications are not the only applications that can run on images created by CDP platforms such as NetBackup RealTime. These same copies of production application data can easily be presented to test and development servers. Since CDP can be used in these new roles, it gives organizations new flexibility in how they budget for CDP initiatives.

CDP will likely never replace backup software but its role in organizations and the business case for it are becoming much more clearly compelling. As these four new use cases illustrate, CDP is no longer a technology that can be or should be summarily dismissed. Rather, it has matured and evolved to become a way for organizations to reduce the cost and effort associated with data protection while simultaneously creating entirely new possibilities for application development, testing and disaster recovery.