Data Storage Moves From Tapes To Electronic Vaults

Today, data in every enterprise is growing at an exponential rate, thus, every CIO is grappling with concerns related to managing and securing data. To address these data issues, Netmagic has announced an electronic data vault service named PetaVault. C Kajwadkar, chief architect and VP-Availability Services, Netmagic Solutions, and Sharad Sanghi, CEO and MD, Netmagic Solutions, give in-depth information on the service in a chat with Biztech2.com.

What exactly is an electronic data vault service?

Kajwadkar: Electronic data vaulting or EDV, as it is popularly known, is a highly effective and efficient offsite data back-up service. The sole purpose of this service is to ensure complete data protection. CIOs today face the challenge of increase in data size commonly referred to as data explosion, which results in serious issues with data back-up. The current back-up methodologies and technologies revolve around tape media, which are then physically shipped to an offsite location. In the event of data restoration, tape being an unreliable media, fails about 30-40 percent of the time. Therefore, to address these issues, we have announced PetaVault, an electronic data vault service. Here, the data is moved electronically from the primary location to the offsite location and stored on discs instead of tapes. This concept is hugely popular in the west with most of the Fortune 500 companies opting for the benefits it provides.

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How does PetaVault work?

Sanghi: PetaVault is a completely automated electronic data vaulting service that compresses, de-duplicates, encrypts, and backs-up mission-critical data into a high-availability storage environment and makes it immediately recoverable when needed. The service works by deploying agents on the hosts. The agents encrypt and compress data as much as possible (up to 90 percent) at the primary location and then transmit it over wire to the vault, where the data is de-duplicated and stored on a disc instead of tape.

Kajwadkar: As the compression is done at the primary location, the need to back-up a whole lot of data is completely eliminated and while the data is moving on the wire, it is in the encrypted form, thus offering end-to-end security. The de-duplication is done using proprietary software that allows the user to write in a de-duplicated manner, eliminating the need to write the same data multiple times. The software is intelligent enough to understand that it has to serve multiple copies as well as an exact number of copies. In addition, the storage of data on discs makes the recovery and restoration process speedy as compared to tapes.

What are the key features of PetaVault service?

Sanghi: Some of the key features of PetaVault service include compliance with SEC, NYSE, HIPAA, NASD, Sarbanes-Oxley, GLBA; broad platform support including support for Windows, Novell Netware, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, IBM, AIX IBM System I and VMWare; centralised, Web-based management; reduced storage footprint; automatic system restore; and replication of back-up data to another vault assuring disaster recovery.

What kind of benefits will a CIO realise by using this service?

Kajwadkar: India is ahead of several nations in terms of IT adoption. People here are in the third generation of IT deployments. CIOs have understood that IT goes beyond buying hardware and operating systems. It involves various challenges including security, data protection, disaster recovery and so on. PetaVault services are futuristic in nature. As the entire process is electronic, CIOs get a completely reliable and high-performance data back-up and restoration service for their mission-critical data while eliminating the risks and burdens of outdated and inefficient storage solutions such as tapes. It also saves the effort required in physically moving the tapes from the primary location to the offsite location, thus relieving the CIO from the fear of data loss due to physical handling.

Sanghi: In addition, this new service will allow CIOs to define their own retention period, enabling complete peace of mind from a regulation/ compliance standpoint, ‘Push Button’ restoration and easy ‘selective restoration’ during audits.

What steps have been taken to ensure complete data security?

Sanghi: Customers have complete control over access and data back-up policies. The central control interface enables customers to configure, monitor, retain and manage back-ups without any intervention of Netmagic. Further, data encryption is end-to-end. That means data is encrypted while in transit (i.e. data on wire) and also while at rest (i.e. data in storage). These steps ensure complete security of data.

Which verticals do you think will be early adopters?

Sanghi: Data is the most important asset for any company and hence, we believe that these services are vertical agnostic. Every company, irrespective of its size or category, can benefit from this technology. The solution makes sense for large enterprises, mid-sized Internet service companies, and SMEs, as well as traditional enterprises in verticals such as BFSI, legal and telecom. Of course, based on the nature of their operations and size, companies will have different EDV requirements.

Please share the pricing model.

Kajwadkar: For our services, there is a one time set-up fee and the agent licence fee. Subsequently, the rates are applicable on per GB (compressed data)/ per month basis. The implementation does not involve any hardware at the customer’s end. Based on the size of data, provision of data communication link may be needed. Slab-based prices are available to meet varying customer requirements.