Users want more disk backup -- right now

Computerworld - Fed up with slow tape backup systems and under pressure by regulators and auditors to keep data online and readily available, large and midsize businesses are making disk-to-disk backup technology a top priority in their data centers this year.

More than 75% of 150 large companies recently surveyed by TheInfoPro Inc., a New York-based independent research firm, said disk-to-disk backup technology is being used in their data centers; this compares to 67% who were implementing it a year ago.

Still, in the most recent survey, only about a third said they are using virtual tape libraries (VTL), a form of disk-to-disk backup that essentially uses disk arrays to mimic tape for server backup jobs.

One in four IT managers surveyed said they believe poor archiving practices are a key reason for unchecked data growth. The average company has 250TB of active storage space dedicated to archive-related content. Moreover, the survey found that archive capacity among companies is expected to grow by 52% by the end of this year.

Sean O'Mahoney, manager of client/server computing at Norton Healthcare Inc., Louisville, Ky.'s largest health care system, with more than 2,000 physicians, rolled out three disk-to-disk backup systems over the past year. It helped the organization deal with a 50% year-over-year archival data growth rate that pushed the backup window to 20 hours a day.

Since connecting the health care firm's Picture Archiving and Communications System to an EMC Clariion Disk Library 710 array and Clariion Disk Library 4100 array, Norton's backup window has been more than halved -- to eight hours a day. O'Mahoney also plugged his company's financial systems into an EMC Centera disk array, which is a WORM permanent archive system.

In all, Norton Healthcare has 200TB of capacity dedicated to disk-to-disk backup, the vast majority of which is used for storing radiological images such as X-rays, which do not lend themselves easily to compression.

Besides shrinking its backup window with disk-to-disk technology, the organization also improved data-restore times by as much as 75%. It used to take four days to retrieve data from tape because Norton's AIT-2 tape drives have a maximum throughput of 6MB/sec., compared to the Clariion disk array's 60MB/sec. rate. "The speed of the media is vital," O'Mahoney said.

TheInfoPro's survey, released in May, revealed that IT managers consider backup activities among the most time-consuming, adding that staffing remains flat and budgetary pressure to cut costs is at an all-time high.

A study by Gartner Inc. earlier this year predicted