Backup solutions grow to meet expansion

Backup solutions grow to meet expansion

EMC solutions join those from Hi-Comp, Legato to ease operations

HP 3000 customers got extra protection in the path of their storage devices with a set of April announcements, MPE/iX software enhancements that enable users of the EMC Model 10, Model 20 and Symmetrix arrays to boost data availability. HP also announced a Storage Node for the Legato networked backup solution, at just about the same time as Hi-comp America introduced Hiback TX, software that lets a 3000 control networked backups without requiring non-3000 devices to store metadata.

The High Availability Failover (HAFO), available in this summer’s Express 5 release of MPE/iX 5.5 and as a patch sooner than that, protects against failures in the other three parts of the I/O path: cards, cables and disk controllers. Protection with arrays of redundant disks and power supplies was already available from HP RAID products and EMC devices.

The new HAFO software lets MPE/iX look to see if there’s any problem in the card-cable-controller part of the path, and then designates an alternate path to another set of controllers and disks. CSY’s Datacenter Solution Team manager Vicki Symonds said HAFO offers an alternative to Mirrored Disk/iX, the accepted way to protect disk farms attached to HP 3000s.

“Mirrored Disk was never able to use the SystemVolumeSet,” Symonds said, “and it also forced large capacity, high-end customers to completely duplicate every I/O path. There was lots of redundancy, and when you get into 150Gb ranges, those disk drives have to be kept in sync.”

The HAFO alternative provides a more cost-effective solution than Mirrored Disk, especially for 3000 sites protecting a lot of disk. HAFO will be HP’s recommended high- availability solution for sites with more than 70Gb of disk online, according to Symonds. HAFO will work with EMC’s Symmetrix drives as well as the Model 10 and 20 units. These units have an auto-trespass feature, which when enabled within the arrays lets the software find an alternate controller to access data that belongs to the failed path.

CSY is also introducing another software enhancement by supporting EMC’s SRDF shadowing system. This EMC software option in Symmetrix installations shadows data at the raw I/O level to another Symmetrix system, which makes it very efficient for re-synchronizing. Recovery from a system failure using SRDF can take place in minutes, HP said. Symonds added that customers will still want to use Shareplex or NetBase if they need immediate access to shadowed data or require load balancing or sharing among clusters.

HP is also introducing a Networker Storage Node for HP 3000s, expected to roll out this summer. The software lets 3000s on a Legato backup network accept backups from other devices on the network. The metadata that tracks files and backups resides on an NT or Unix box with a GUI interface, but it also exists at the head of tapes cut on the HP 3000. The Storage Node, which works with the 3000’s included Store/iX or extra-cost TurboStore/iX, costs between $6,700 and $16,000 per system.

Hiback networked backup

While the Legato solution needs an NT or Unix server to administer backups, Hi-Comp America (281.288.7438) has released Hiback TX, new MPE/iX software that lets the 3000 be both client and server for enterprise backups. Hiback/iX has been available for 3000s for several years, but the new version is more closely integrated into Hi-Comp’s enterprise solution.

“We have had an MPE component for a long time,” said Hi-Comp CEO Uwe Hinrichs. “We came from the MPE world, but [Hiback/iX] was not closely integrated into our enterprise solution.”

Clients in the system perform their own backups, compress and encrypt the data stream before pushing it to the server. The server accepts data streams and will write to devices without having to decrypt or decompress the data stream.

Hiback TX uses the stock TurboStore API calls to enable backups, yet it is administered through a Windows GUI. This permits the 3000 to have its backups sent to any local devices, or stored on remote devices such as StorageTek silos and DLT libraries attached to other Hiback servers. This makes the solution a way to employ storage devices not directly supported for the HP 3000 without putting a non-3000 system on the critical path for metadata in restores.

“MPE takes its rightful place beside HP-UX, Sun, AIX, Digital’s Unix, IRIX, Windows NT and Novell in the roles of both client and server for enterprise backup,” said Hi-Comp’s Denys Beauchemin.

Hiback TX users operating from a PC can access all Hiback platforms and perform stores and restores using a drill-down, drag-and-drop GUI. “This is very useful for restoring selected files,” Beauchemin said. Hiback TX can also be controlled by Hibars for full enterprise-wide datacenter automation. Current Hiback/iX customers will be offered Hiback TX at no cost. Hiback TX will read current Hiback/iX tapes.