POC on Druvaa InSync

udaybhaskarjalagam — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:50:39 +0000

Today I gave POC to my new client. It was a great time with a long demo to client with new and great desktop backup software Druvaa InSync . I totally believe this Druvaa InSync is the best solution for a Desktop and Laptop backups.

Because Enterprises today significantly rely upon the corporate data stored on the Desktops and laptops, Enterprise data is more dispersed and diverse than ever. And with over 30% corporate data sitting on PCs, administrators can no longer hold the end user responsible for protection of this critical corporate data.

According to the recent study by Ponemon Institute, “Airport Insecurity: The Case of Lost Laptops”, sponsored by Dell, business travelers lose more than 12,000 laptops per week in U.S. airports.

So it is compulsory to protect all PCs data in the company.

Now The Big Question Is Why Druvaa InSync:

Because our PCs mostly contains Prevalence of multimedia content, thousands of emails and attachments, proliferation and preservation of many versions and copies of data contributes to the tremendous data growth most companies are experiencing.

More than 80% of this PC data is common within organizations. For data generated by conventional office applications, where many of the file characteristics are very similar, the potential for reduction is very high.

With inSync you can greatly reduce the risks and costs of data loss and minimize recovery time for distributed PCs and laptops. Druvaa inSync PC backup solution uses advanced distributed data de-duplication technology called – “SendUnique” to reduce the volume of backed-up data up to 90 percent. This decreases the time, bandwidth and storage needed for backup and recovery. This results in significant time and cost savings for the enterprise.

Druvaa inSync Features :

Druvaa inSync is extremely versatile and easy to use. Some of the key product highlights are as follows:

1. Data deduplication – Saves 90% backup time, bandwidth and storage.
2. Continuous Data Protection – Never lose a file. Ever. Timeline based, from the past restores.
3. TrueSecure – Secure, client triggered backups. Network and storage encrypted.
4. NetworkSense – Automatic network prioritization and bandwidth scheduling.
5. Full PC Backup – Backup complete PC with operating system, application, data and settings. Restore using a bootable bare-metal restore disk.
6. Search – Search your files in restore for faster recovery

Here What i like more is Data De-duplication. In the company most of the data will be same in almost all the PCs. Let me give some example, Suppose your manger has sent the greeting mails or project related data to your mail address most of the time some content will be send to everybody in your company. same mail will be in everybody’s mailbox, or every week you are archiving your Outlook mails, so it will create multiple .pst files, but in that only few new mails will be added from last time. So we are having same data in multiple places.

So Data De-Duplication will be very help to reduce your backup window and bandwidth utilization.

One more is Client Initiation backup, now most of the employees are using Laptops, if you are doing server initiation backup, if that laptop is not connected to network the backup will skip or it will fail. If it is a Client Initiation backup when ever it connected to network it will automatically initiate the backup.

These things make me impress about Druvaa InSync.

Thanks For visit. Keep visiting for new Updates..

STORAGE

udaybhaskarjalagam — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:28:55 +0000

Storage..A well known word for every computer people. Let me describe about a storage. ” Storage “, is nothing but where we keep the data. There is little difference between Storage and Memory.!! Memory is she place where data sits temporarily(normally called as RAM), Storage is the place where actually data present permanently. When Computer generation evaluated, data usage was very less. there were computers which are made with MS’s of storage. But now even normal home users storage of computer are reaching the TB’s of the data. Then you can think about the companys.!! it will be huge. As a computer techie you know that company is nothing but an information. It will with company growth. Here we will discourse about Different Types of STORAGE. Generally Storage is differentiated based on the connectivity, they are……

Directly Attached Storage (DAS).
Network Attached Storage (NAS).
Storage Area Network (SAN).

The basic part of Storage is Hard Disk, this will be connected to computer by different protocols. Which are nothing but sequence of instructions which are use to communicate between Computer processor and Hard Disk firmware. let me go detail across all the types of storage.

Directly Attached Storage (DAS)….

Direct Attached Storage, or DAS, is the most basic level of storage. DAS devices either reside as an

integrated part of the host computer (e.g., hard drives, removable storage devices, etc.) or directly

connected to a single server externally (such as RAID arrays or removable media). As the first widely

popular storage model, DAS products still comprise a large share of the installed base of storage

systems in today’s IT infrastructures

Direct Attached Storage, or DAS, is the most basic level of storage. DAS devices either reside as an integrated part of the host computer (e.g., hard drives, removable storage devices, etc.) or directly connected to a single server externally (such as RAID arrays or removable media). As the first widely popular storage model, DAS products still have a large share of the installed base of storage systems in today’s IT infrastructures

DAS Connectivity….

DAS uses block level access protocols. ATA/IDE, SATA, and Parallel SCSI are primarily used in internal DAS. External DAS could use Serial SCSI for Open Systems. Mainframe computers use Buss and Tag, ESCON, and FICON. This bellow image may help you to recognize what am talking about, because this are the connectivity we use in our Desktops and Laptops.

The main benefits of DAS are…..

Ideal for local data provisioning
Quick deployment for small environments
Simple to deploy in simple configurations
Reliability
Low capital expense
Low complexity

DAS poses several challenges like……..

Hosts must be directly connected.
Many single points of failure (i.e., bus, host, application, etc.).
There is no redundancy or fault tolerance for the existing system, the host’s hardware.
Limitations restricts the amount of growth that can be accommodated.

Network Attached Storage (NAS)……

At one time, it was common for users within a given office or department to share directories from their own workstation. As this model continued to grow, data security and integrity became difficult to manage. File servers began to be used as a central repository for users’ data. Over time, as the storage and processing requirements of the file server continued to increase, the operational components of the file server itself became a performance and scalability bottleneck. PC operating systems added a significant amount of overhead, and commodity hardware could no longer meet the requirements for availability, scalability, reliability, and performance of a growing enterprise. NAS devices were developed to address these challenges. NAS devices typically include:

High-performance, scalable hardware.
Specialized operating systems and protocol interfaces designed specifically for file serving.

What Is the NAS and Why ?

In the past, floppy drives with capacities in mere KB’s were widely used to share data files. Over time the need for larger capacity has emerged due to growing need for data to be shared across organizations. Removable storage media, such as flash drives, capable of storing gigabytes (GB) of data, have now complimented the traditional removable media drives.

Businesses not only need the capacity to handle huge data storage requirements, the need to share their data has made Network Attached Storage (NAS) an attractive option. NAS systems use external storage for server/hosts, adding flexibility to network storage. NAS works at the file level, rather than the block level. This enables widespread access to the data over the network, based upon the file system client loaded.

NAS is shared storage on a network infrastructure using a unique addressing schema. A NAS server is a storage device that consists of a high performance file server and attached to a LAN. It is a singlepurpose machine serving as a dedicated, high-performance, high-speed communication gateway to file data. NAS device is sometimes called an appliance or filer.

The following are some benefits of NAS…..

Enables greater file sharing, even over a long distance.
Supports many-to-one or one-to-many configurations
Can share data across platforms
Eliminates bottlenecks encountered when accessing files from central file server
Relieves general-purpose servers of many file management operations, improving performance of those servers
works with many types of clients on both UNIX and Microsoft Windows platforms using Industry standard protocols
minimizes duplication on client workstations, reducing management complexity and improving data protection

Fallowing are the NAS Devise component diagram

NAS File Services Protocols: NFS and CIFS :-

Most NAS devices support multi-protocol file services to handle file I/O requests to the remote file system. The more common protocols for file sharing are:

Network File Systems (NFS) – developed by Sun and closely aligned with UNIX-based operating systems.
Common Internet File Systems (CIFS) – developed by Microsoft and closely aligned with Windows-based operating systems.

Note: In NAS, I/O from the client is handled by network file access protocols (NFS/CIFS) at the file level, rather than at the block level. Meaning that the client does not need to be aware of physical disk volumes or disk characteristics.

Storage Area Network (SAN)

What is a SAN?

A Storage Area Network (SAN) is a dedicated network that carries data between computer systems and storage devices, which can include tape and disk resources. A SAN consists of a communication infrastructure, which provides physical connections, and a management layer, which organizes the connections, storage elements, and computer systems so that data transfer is secure and robust.

Note : SAN will operate in the block level rather than the file level.

SANs combine the basic functionality of storage devices and networks, consisting of hardware and software, to obtain a highly reliable, high-performance, networked data system. Services similar to those in any LAN (e.g. name resolution, address assignment etc.) allow data to traverse connections and be provided to end-users.

When looking at an overall IT infrastructure, the SAN and LAN are mutually exclusive but serve similar purposes.

The LAN allows clients, such as desktop work-stations, to request data from servers. This could be considered the front-end network. This is where the average user would connect typically across an Ethernet network.

The SAN, or back-end network also connects to servers, but in this case, the servers are acting as clients. They are requesting data from their servers – the storage arrays. These connections are accomplished via a Fiber Channel network. By combining the two networks together, with the servers as the common thread, the end-user is supplied with any data they may need.

Finally i got some picture from Wikipedia for you to understand the basic over all structure of the DAS, NAS, SAN. Look at the bellow fig.

In the above diagram…

In DAS has the whole thing in the single place, where is storage is directly connected and file system is created over that storage. All application Servers can directly access data.

In NAS Storage is there in remote and centralized place and File System is created there it self. It will be connected to the Network. So all application Servers have to access the data through the network.

In SAN Storage is there in remote centralized location and that will be assign to Server as a block device (Logical Unit Number), through the network. In the Server point of view it is a raw block device ( HARD DISK ). You can format that with any File System. Application servers will access the data from there.