The Evolving Data Protection Landscape in a Windows World

  • Article

At Storage Networking World 2009, I delivered a session that wasn't specifically about DPM, SCE, Storage, or File Services - or any other "product" from Microsoft.  It was a holistic view of the wide range of data protection options. 

The session started with 3 disclaimers:

  1. I work for a vendor, but I am a storage (data protection) geek
  2. My opinions may not reflect those of my management, Microsoft Corporation or its partners
  3. SNW endeavors to have “vendor neutral” education, with no “sales pitches” and little to no mention of products (this is a good thing).  This session will discuss technologies and representative products from multiple sources, many of which you likely already own and no ‘sales pitch’ is intended

I categorized the myriad of protection and availability technologies into four core buckets, based on goals, with RPO/RTO and cost being axis factors:

  • Mission Criticial
  • High Availability
  • Disk-Protection
  • Tape-Backup

From there, I mapped most of the Micosoft Protection and Availability technologies into the buckets and gave a quick overview of many technologies that the attendees likely already have, including:

  • SQL mirroring
  • Exchange CCR/SCR
  • Clustering
  • DFS replication and namespace
  • Volume Shadowcopy Services
  • Data Protection Manager
  • etc.

.Here is a PDF of the session presentation.

 

 

(c) 1999-2009 "The Landscape of Data Protection" by Jason Buffington