Dell Power Solutions

STORAGEBranch Office Data Consolidation:Helping to Reduce Costs and Increase Data ProtectionProtecting enterprise information in geographically distributed branch locations canbe challenging for IT organizations. This article describes how backup and replicationtools from Dell and LEGATO can be used effectively to consolidate data in a centrallocation—thereby helping to reduce costs, increase data protection, and improveoperational efficiencies.BY JOE POLLOCKThe traditional approach to protecting Microsoft ®Exchange data and file data in geographically distributedbranch locations is to deploy backup software andtape hardware in each location. This requires organizationseither to hire the necessary technical staff or assigninexperienced employees to administer daily backupoperations in remote locations. In the latter case, backupand recovery operations are decentralized, operating withlittle or no assistance from trained technical administratorsin the regional data center.This approach to data protection can be both riskyand costly. It requires an ongoing investment in tapedevices and other hardware, backup software, andsupport services for each remote office. Additional ITstaff may be required to help support those daily backupand recovery operations, but there is no assurance thatrecovery will be possible because an untrained staffoften performs backups inadequately or skips backupsentirely—and all too often crucial backup tapes are nothandled and tracked carefully. Unfortunately, thesecritical issues are typically discovered at the worst possibletime—during an attempted recovery. In someinstances, recovery may require flying an IT expert tothe remote location, which adds time and expense tothe recovery process.A centralized approach to branch office backupsA more reliable way to protect Exchange data and other datain remote locations can be to administer backups centrallyfrom a regional data center rather than delegating the taskto inexperienced branch office staff. Backup software canenable organizations to implement remote backups fromthe branch office to the regional data center. However, thismethod can incur significant performance penalties whenbacking up data from the remote location to the centrallocation because of distance, handshaking, and so forth.An optimal approach to centralized backup of remotebranch office data is to replicate data from remote sites tothe regional data center. For example, LEGATO ® RepliStor ®software is designed to provide real-time, asynchronousmovement of data, including Exchange data, which canbe stored on Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD) or on MicrosoftWindows ®Storage Server 2003–based network attached storage(NAS) such as Delll PowerVaultdevices at the branchoffice, at the regional data center, or at both locations.Another step in the centralized backup and businesscontinuance process is the regular backup of branch officedata at the regional data center from a Windows StorageServer 2003 server to tape devices using backup softwaresuch as LEGATO NetWorker ® software. Replicatingdata from the remote office to the regional data center forwww.dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. POWER SOLUTIONS 75