HP Data Protector (Formerly Omniback II)

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Overview

Someone once said, 'Backup is just a tool. It doesn't matter which one you have; it's just a matter of how you utilize it.' I vehemently disagreed with that person back then: 'Backup isn't just a tool; it is an integral part of your organization's business functions. Being a very critical tool, it does make a difference which tool you eventually decide to use. Your data and sometimes your job or reputation depend on it.' It's interesting to read those words now and have discussions with colleagues throughout the years about backup storage management. We use the word 'tool' quite a bit in reference to backup, something I didn't even realize until the first draft of this chapter had been written.

Backup is a tool, like a hammer-it serves a unique purpose with an anticipated outcome. When you hit a 16-penny nail on the head with a hammer, the force causes the nail to drive down into the wood until, eventually, the nail is firmly implanted into the piece of wood. Given the same scenario but with a slab of concrete instead of the wood, the outcome would be different. The anticipated outcome now is quite variable, because we are not using the right set of tools for the job.

Backup, as a tool, is exactly the same. Very simplistically, backup is designed to carry data from the clients to some end repository, in most cases tape, to provide protection from loss by having the ability to recover this data at some future point in time. If your environment's characteristics or requirements are unique, the very simplistic 'hammer and nail' approach to backup may need to be reviewed to properly select the right tool for the job. A number of vendors in the market offer backup solutions; all store the data on some end repository and all provide a means to recover that data in the event of a loss. However, the methods by which they accomplish these things play a role in the selection process.

In this chapter, we present an overview of the major players, the features, and the functions of the various products to help you identify the best tool for your environment. The selection was quite scientific; we actually used what the technology research bodies listed as the market leaders, then selected the top four: Hewlett-Packard (HP), IBM, Legato, and VERITAS Software. We discuss them in alphabetical order by company name. When we did the research for this chapter, we asked the individual vendors to provide their responses to the chapter outline. The outline was very simple:

• Company/Product Overview. A brief history of the company and how the product was developed over the years into the current product available to the consumer market.

• Backup Methodology. The company's approach to backup, such as full plus incremental, progressive incremental, and synthetic full.

• Principles of Recovery. A philosophical view of recovery based on the specific vendor product, such as tape cloning, duplication, or copy, depending on terms used by the vendor for the purposes of recovery of an entire system, server, data center, or even critical files or directories.

• Storage Support. What if any unique devices or number of devices are supported? If there were none that fit this criteria, this heading was not included in the Vendors section. Suffice it to say that each of these four vendors supports a wide range of backup storage devices. None of them seem to be lacking support for any of the most popular media types.

• High Availability. HA-aware products are more and more important to the 7x24x365 data centers, so we want to know who integrates with what product.

• Key Differentiators. How the vendors would position themselves up against the major players if you had them in a room together. This is the chance you have been waiting for. Here we document what each company views as their key differentiators-what makes them better, faster, easier than the rest.

As far as agent support or backup options, such as database agents, Microsoft product support, and Network-Attached Storage (NAS) support, we found that for the most part all of the vendors had agent support for Oracle, Informix, Sybase, MS SQL Server, MS Exchange, SAP, Lotus Notes, and NDMP, just to name a few. And giving them the benefit of the doubt when there seemed to be some confusion, we added to the outline based on information publicly available on their Web sites.

Finally, in order to make this as even a playing field as possible, we took some editorial license with some of the vendor responses, such as removing blatant slams against the competition and self-promotional marketing speak. We believe the following accurately and equally represents all of these major players.

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