Taylor's Take on Sun Storage

Web 2.0 Needs Good Backup Too

To backup or not to backup, that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous downtimes, Or to protect data against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them...

Five years ago I was managing StorageTek's Advanced Technology Research department in RD&E (we were the "R").  One of our research probes was "Grid Storage."  At the time we used Grid Storage to describe an emerging storage architecture.  We also researched "Utility Storage" - or paying for only the storage you use as a type of service.   Even at StorageTek, where tape was king, we were talking about how "Grid Storage" could get rid of backups forever!  Imagine, multiple cheap nodes on the network, data striped across all of them - a whole section of the "Grid" goes down and you have redundancy across other sections. 

No more need for data backup and all the admin/management pains that go with it...

Today we have new innovations on the service and infrastructure side.   When talking about SaaS, I have used Amazon S3 as a prime example.  EMC just entered this space with their announcement of an online backup service available through EMC Fortress - their storage service infrastructure/platform.  On the infrastructure side, companies (and, more importantly, end users) are building grid-like enterprise storage nodes with volume components and clustered/parallel/virtualized file systems.  Sun is one vendor leading the charge here.  And Web 2.0 companies have emerged as the primary consumers and developers of these systems. 

But for some Web 2.0 companies good backup (and backup practices) is an afterthought.   Afterall, start ups can't afford enterprise protection practices like hot replication.  Oftentimes they have to restore data from backups during a crash or outage - but if their processes are not up to snuff, or their backup/restore system is faulty - they succumb to longer outages and lost data.  Bottom line - the utopia of "Grid Storage" is not here yet so having a good backup and recovery plan in place should be a necessity for Web 2.0 companies too...

NOTE:  While I am using some public examples below, I do need to note a couple of important items:

• First, these companies should be commended for being open w/ their users.  There is something to be said for flat out honesty, and I couldn't link to these examples if these companies weren't honest and open.
• Second, these companies most likely implemented very high quality storage systems with advanced RAID protection - even the best systems fail.  (The odds are against 3 drives failing simultaneously, but unfortunately, it happens) 
  
• The point it that these were GOOD systems that failed - so even advanced systems need some sort of backup...
  

There have been several outages in some social networking/photo sharing sites of late.  PBase as a great example.   Read about their outage here.  Below is an excerpt from their IT dept to their end users on PBase's discussion forum: 

"On Saturday, we lost 3 disks simultaneously in our main storage system which runs on NetApp hardware. This caused an 8 Terabyte volume to have some inconsistencies which have to be analyed and repaired before we can put the volume back online. ... I wish the recovery process could have gone faster, but after a problem with the filesystem, it's important to analyze it carefully so we can be sure everything is healthy."

Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) posts an update about its recent outage:

"On January 18th 2008 we had a multiple disk RAID failure...The forums are now back up and running again. There are three caveats: firstly that messages posted before 1st January 2008 are still restoring, secondly that it appears that messages posted in the last five days have been lost and that search is disabled..."

Now, let's say as a Web 2.0 company you choose to go with a storage service (SaaS) rather than an internal system.  Most notably, SmugMug uses Amazon S3 for this.  This is a viable option, and while I am a fan of Amazon S3, users need to read Amazon's Terms & Conditions first.  Here is an excerpt from Amazon S3's T&C (bold sections mine for emphasis): 

"7.1. Downtime and Service Suspensions.  In addition to our rights to terminate or suspend Services to you as described in Section 3 above, you acknowledge that: (i) your access to and use of the Services may be suspended for the duration of any unanticipated or unscheduled downtime or unavailability of any portion or all of the Services for any reason, including as a result of power outages, system failures or other interruptions; and (ii) we shall also be entitled, without any liability to you, to suspend access to any portion or all of the Services at any time, on a Service-wide basis: (a) for scheduled downtime to permit us to conduct maintenance or make modifications to any Service; (b) in the event of a denial of service attack or other attack on the Service or other event that we determine, in our sole discretion, may create a risk to the applicable Service, to you or to any of our other customers if the Service were not suspended; or (c) in the event that we determine that any Service is prohibited by law or we otherwise determine that it is necessary or prudent to do so for legal or regulatory reasons (collectively, "Service Suspensions"). Without limitation to Section 11.5, we shall have no liability whatsoever for any damage, liabilities, losses (including any loss of data or profits) or any other consequences that you may incur as a result of any Service Suspension."

So outsourcing storage may be a great option for a lot of companies - but there is also risk here...

Ay, there's the rub...

To backup is clearly the answer - it was years ago, it still is today.  But the rub is this: the time investment and cost between a poor backup process/system and a good one is probably minimal. 

Let me repeat that:  the time investment and cost between a poor backup process/system and a good one is probably minimal.      

I've been doing stuff in storage and IT for 14 years now, and I know that a basic, thought-out data protection plan will give you one of the best returns on investment in IT.  Odds are that every Web 2.0 company has some type of data protection practice in place - but it may be ill defined or largely neglected in lieu of the million other things going on there.   But a little time investment will go a long way in keeping customers confident that they can rely on you safeguarding their data. 

And, if you need to know how to pull together a good backup or data protection plan, Sun StorageTek Service Plans are a good place to start...

Posted at 02:58PM Jan 29, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]