InformationWeek

July 24, 2000

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Serverless Storage Idea Takes Hold

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Legato, for example, has been shipping its own Celestra Power solution for more than a year, says Scott McIntyre, Legato's business line manager for storage networking. But Celestra releases 1.1.2 and 1.5 still require an outboard server--a Solaris or HP-UX system--dedicated to backup duty. Version 2.0, due this summer, will eliminate that by adding full support for the extended copy command, McIntyre says.

Storage-management vendor Veritas Software plans to ship by year's end a serverless solution called Media Server, based on the extended copy command. But John Maxwell, Veritas' senior director of product management, points to the lack of mature third-party copy command SAN components available when he says that Veritas' outboard-server approach is the way to go, for now.

Maxwell also touts the greater speed and enhanced error correction that an outboard server implementation can provide. It will be faster to move the data through a third-party copy command server than with the switch-and router-based solutions, he says, partly because of the greater parallelism a server might provide.

Steven Whitner, marketing director for tape library vendor Advanced Digital Information, agrees that outboard-server solutions will likely predominate in the short term. But, he says, "I think everybody is saying they would like to see it get to the place where you don't need that."

The place you want to have the active agency, Whitner says, is the tape library. "No matter what else you're doing, if you're going to move data to a tape library--whether you're over a switched fabric or an arbitrated loop or something similar--you're always going to have a tape device that can receive it," he says.

The idea of serverless backup seems simple enough when you think of it purely in terms of moving data from one device to another without the intervention of a host CPU. In reality, however, backing up information such as that found in relational databases while the application continues to run can be a tricky business, particularly when it comes to restoring the database to working order.

"You need an agent on the application host that understands the state of the database--whether the files are open or closed, for instance," Nicolett says. "Or you need a database package that includes API commands in support of hot backup." He points out that Oracle added a third-party copy function in support of serverless backup with Oracle8i, but other database vendors have yet to do the same.

The various serverless-backup solutions available now or in the near future differ in the level of support they offer for backing up databases on the fly. Legato's Celestra Power 1.1.2 release doesn't support hot backup of databases; version 1.5, which just began shipping, adds support for Oracle on Solaris and on HP-UX. CA claims its solution can back up a variety of live databases without problems.

EMC has integrated its TimeFinder software with a number of databases to provide hot-backup support. Those databases include Informix Software, Lotus Notes, Microsoft's SQL Server and Exchange, Oracle, and Sybase, according to Malcolm Krongelb, product marketing manager for EMC backup products.

The bottom line for companies exploring serverless backup is to put serious energy into making sure that the system of choice will provide reliable hot backup of the appropriate applications. "I would recommend that if an IT company wants to exploit serverless backup," Nicolett says, "they test carefully in their own environment, ask the vendor for reference accounts, and also communicate with the vendor before they make changes to their system."

Nicolett's recommendation drives home the point that implementing a serverless backup solution will require research, engineering, and possibly a good bit of patience. "This is still something that needs to be engineered," Nicolett says.

For companies with large stores of data that need to be available around the clock, however, the investment of time and energy required to get into serverless backup may very well pay off. Chris Corp, IT director at Houlihan's Restaurant Group in Kansas City, Mo., is using ARCserve 2000 on a SAN. "We're 24-by-7 and that's why we like serverless backup," says Corp, noting that there's always a restaurant manager somewhere in the country trying to tap into critical data. "With the decreased load on the servers, we can do more timely backups."

Serverless backup is obviously taking a number of different forms, says EMC's Krongelb. "But as more and more companies are involved in the Internet and therefore require constant uptime and minimal impact on the other resources," Krongelb says, "the more companies will need the benefits that serverless backup provides."

Photo by Edward Santalone Princeton eCom Corp. in Princeton, N.J., is one such company. Though not using serverless backup, it's considering the capability to get more value out of its SAN. "We're evaluating [EMC's] product to see if it does everything that we expect it to," says Chip Christian, the company's system architect. Princeton eCom, which provides electronic bill payment and presentment services for other companies, has its backup demands under control with its LAN-free approach.

But to remain ready to take on new clients, the company needs to stay at least a few steps ahead of its backup needs. "We want to make sure we can support anyone that comes through the door," Christian says, "and we need to have the architecture in place that will lets us rapidly adapt when we take on new clients."