This year, Veeam is holding its first annual conference “VeeamON” focused on the evolution of Virtualization, the shift to the cloud, and in particular Data Protection and why now, more than ever data availability should be on the focus list of every single CIO/CDO across the globe. Why is data protection important? Let’s take a look at what workloads there were 20 years ago compared to now.
In the beginning….
Historically, Backup really revolved around tape – usually a single tape backup drive connected to a computer that would back up days and weeks worth of precious company data to a single tape. Backups could naturally take hours to complete, as did restores which were rarely tested and also had the potential to take hours to locate the right tape drive, load it into the tape unit and restore in the event of data loss. Some may argue that the process of backing up and restoring back then was fairly straight forward as there were purpose built devices with one job but the efficiencies in doing were so were absent.
But in hindsight, there were (and still are) pitfalls in traditional backup methods, modern day features such as deduplication, compression, incremental block changes that have become a norm in storage and backup administrator’s vocabulary were not available to the business back then so things took time to complete. Eventually these features came but usually through having to purchase a new set of physical hardware or external device to perform the tasks which at times could prove costly. Virtualization was not the norm back then so servers were not portable containers and bare metals restores were 100% part of daily life for the various IT teams. One thing that has not changed from legacy backup times is the reason why backups had to happen. To protect companies Intellectual property in the form of data and to ensure this data was online and accessible after a disaster – Availability.
The need for data availability
During my tenure at HP, I wrote a two-part article entitled “Woudl you like a side of Disaster Recovery with that” aimed to discuss the sometimes misunderstood (and unappreciated) area of Disaster Recovery – what it meant and why it is important. I touched on points that not having data available and online can be (and is) a very costly exercise depending on what industry vertical your business operates in. You may have a read at the two part post at the following two links:
The important message I wanted to convey through these writings was availability has a cost associated with it when things goes wrong and SLAs are no longer being met due to hardware and/or software failures not to mention other unforeseen incidents such as human error (perhaps someone accidentally pulled the wrong cable out – it happens!) , Most storage and backup advocates know that, a lot of our day jobs revolve around making sure SLAs are met whether you are a company providing a service or a vendor selling technology that helps meet those SLAs. – They all tie back to availability and how quickly this happens.
The landscape is evolving.
Take a look at this forecast released by Cisco entitled ‘Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2012–2017’ and in particular Figure 5. Workload Distribution and its accompanied Table 3, and just observe how massive the shift from traditional workloads to virtual workloads is becoming, of course this varies from country to country but as a general trend you can see the IT landscape is heading more and more into dealing with virtual environments as opposed to physical. In fact, this studies just verified that these days, virtual workloads are the norm and location, location, location also matters – whether it is based on-premise, or off-site perhaps in a cloud provider environment, these workloads still need to be protected at a local (site) basis as well as a off-site (replica) basis. With the newest version of our flagship product – Veeam Backup and Replication, Veaam is positioned perfectly to manage virtual workloads no matter where they reside.
Now, hopefully that set the context of why VeeamOn is important to IT Leaders – CIO’s, CDO’s, CSO, and CTO’s alike. So here are the details:
What is it?
VeeamON is a three day event focused on modern day data centre availability, not just backup, not just DR but all encompassing and will feature some well-known industry speakers and analysts from companies such as Gartner and ESG. It is being held October 6th-8th at the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas. This event will host a series of quality sessions focused on modern day availability solutions and trends in the modern data centre that help form the “Always-On” story – Think back to the briefs I wrote about and why it is so important to remain always on!. Whether you are business focused, or technical – there will be valuable content catering for both business and partner streams so you can choose from a great variety of content.
Where is it?
The Cosmopolitian in Las Vegas, USA
When is it?
The event is happening between October 6th – October 9th 2014
But wait…. theres more!!!!
Veeam is giving away five free regular passes and one free VIP pass to VeeamON, all you have to do is to go here -> http://go.veeam.com/veeamon-free-pass and enter in your details.
Its that easy!
References
Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2012–2017. retrieved 30th July 2014 from http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/global-cloud-index-gci/Cloud_Index_White_Paper.html
