Integrated Backup and Replication: It's as much about Stopping the Bleeding as it is Recovering the Data

I regularly write about the inner workings of current and new technologies and how they can benefit organizations from a technical and financial perspective. But when talking to individuals out in the field who are actually using these products, it provides me with an entirely different perspective as to what specific benefits they glean from using them. In fact, when I recently chatted with InfoReliance's John Chirhart, a consultant to the US Government, he said that after he completed his recent testing of CommVault's Simpana Replication and Backup/Restore, he had to re-examine what data protection strategy that he should recommend to his clients and how they should manage data protection going forward.

At a high level, the benefits of using both Simpana Replication and Backup/Restore are intuitively obvious. Administrators can select the best data protection option for each application and then use a common console to create and put in effect the appropriate management policies for either product. Further, all of the protected data is then stored and indexed by Simpana.
 
But those in the field who are already testing and using Simpana Replication and Backup/Restore are finding this integrated solution is changing their perspective on data protection in other ways. One of the biggest changes that InfoReliance's Chirhart sees coming out of the merger of these two technologies is the creation of a common team that manages both backup and disaster recoveries.

Companies now often use different teams to manage the replication software and the backup software since the replication software is used primarily for off-site disaster recoveries while backup software is used in the day-to-day recoveries of emails, databases and files. But by bringing both of these technologies together, it eliminates the labor associated with managing each one independently and makes it possible for companies to combine the two teams normally required to manage these products into one.

A distinct advantage Chirhart also sees is the elimination of the need to train people on the other product. He has worked with other replication products that required either him or his staff to attend week-long boot camps to learn how to configure and manage the product. Even once the training was complete, he still needed to purchase that vendor's professional services to configure and install the product plus it took a substantial amount of time to manage the product once it was installed.
 
He has not found that true with Simpana Replication and Backup/Restore. Since he is already using Simpana Backup/Restore, he understood Simpana's architecture and could deploy the Replication software without the need to get CommVault Professional Services or support directly involved. Then because the two products are integrated, his existing backup team could manage Replication jobs just like Backup/Restore jobs using the existing Simpana management console.

Chirhart does not view the combined Simpana Replication and Backup/Restore as a package that can solve every replication need that a company may have. Rather he sees Simpana's host-based replication solution as providing a broad range of benefits to companies that can help them "stop the bleeding" associated with their day-to-day backups while giving them a more effective way to recover their data. As this occurs, he sees the day rapidly approaching where the industry comes to view integrated replication and backup/restore not as an option but as the standard way that companies protect their data.