I thought I would wrap up my thoughts on TSM, for now, by talking briefly about two things TSM users are typically concerned about: migrating TSM clients and getting off TSM. The first one of these is something we talked about just recently. And I think I covered off the easiest way to move to ...

VMware vSphere 5 is a major release that brings a wide range of improvements and new capabilities – ideal for virtualizing mission-critical applications. These include up to 32 virtual CPUs with 1 TB of RAM, VM high availability and better security. As you undergo your IT transformation, it’s time to evaluate current storage platforms and ...

It’s no secret that DBAs crave the rapid backup/restore capabilities of disk but often settle for tape for long-term retention requirements. But the question is, why? While Oracle RMAN has significantly improved the efficiency and ease of backup and recovery of Oracle environments, as Oracle databases continue to grow in size, the number of users ...

EMC backup and recovery has had an exciting year of announcements and we’re not done yet. In January, we delivered Data Domain systems that established new performance benchmarks that remain standing today.  In April, IDC released a study that shows the Purpose Built Backup Appliance market is growing at 16.6% CAGR and that EMC is ...

In my last post, we took a look at the results of running Data Domain Boost on an application server versus on a storage node in a 2TB Exchange 2010 mailbox environment. The results painted a very pretty backup picture, showing a significant reduction in the backup window (i.e., the time it took to complete the ...

In my last post, I walked through what VMware’s Changed Block Tracking (CBT) enables from a VM protection standpoint and how – at a high level – EMC Avamar takes advantage of the API. Now, let’s dig a little deeper and look at how backup software integrates with VMware’s vStorage API for Data Protection. Remember, ...

  There’s an interesting phenomenon going on in IT environments today. The same virtualization initiatives that have saved us significant time, money and space across our data centers are now costing us confidence and sweat on the backup side of the house. Ensuring your vital business data is protected and available requires backup processes that ...

The issue isn’t how fast your tape drives are, but how fast you can get to the data when you need it. Tape has always provided the most inexpensive, yet accessible, storage available for batch backups, disaster recovery, and long-term archives, but it has had its limitations (e.g., issues with mechanical components wearing down over ...

In a recent post, EMC product marketing manager Caitlin Moore highlighted the important benefits of Data Domain’s integration with EMC Avamar and EMC NetWorker. But if you’re like me words are great, but demos are even better! You see, I’m a numbers kind of guy. So, with this in mind, I want to share some ...

At VMworld this week, IT got a good glimpse into the future of VMware and the journey that lies before us as we continue to extend virtualization across our data centers to more servers, more applications and more desktops. And there was lots of discussion (too much to share in any one blog) about what ...

In Heidi’s recent post PBBA — A New Twist on a Popular Backup Approach, she highlights IDC’s observation that integration is one of three key factors fueling the backup appliance market.  A great example of this type of end-to-end integration is EMC Data Domain Boost software, which is tightly integrated with Avamar, NetWorker and third-party ...

Mainframe tape is a funny thing. Or at least it can look funny to a person that doesn’t work with mainframes. Funny because mainframe tape does a bunch of things. In the open systems world, life is simple by comparison. Tape does (or did!) basically one thing: backup. Yes, you could argue that it was ...

Today EMC is announcing a new version of EMC Avamar software and hardware. With the latest release come a ton of new features, bigger, better, faster hardware, and support for integrating Avamar with Data Domain. So, without further preamble, let’s jump into what is new in Avamar v6.0: On the hardware side, the new release ...

EMC is hosting a webcast next week on the topic of simplifying long term retention of backups and archives. This webcast is available ondemand.  [Original airdate: Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 8:00 am PT / 11:00 am ET / 16:00 GMT.] Register now  For fast and reliable long-term retention, integrate EMC Data Domain Archiver into ...

Today EMC introduced the industry’s fastest deduplication storage systems. And they are fast. Big and fast. Impressively so, and even more impressively if you have been involved with backup systems for a while—in a “look how far we have come” sort of way.  But to focus on just the speed and scale would be to ...