‘Holistic’ data protection tools, a marketing meme on the rise

‘Holistic’ data protection tools, a marketing meme on the rise

Vendors are starting to disparage these so-called "point solutions" and offer suites of data protection tools under one brand name and management console. Of course, there is merit to the claims of an Arcserve or an Acronis about the need to have a free-standing instantiation of data protection services set apart from services included in the software-defined stack that is siloed behind each deployed hypervisor and limited to storage systems operated by that stack. Stand-alone data protection suite vendors want to address this issue by providing technology that's blind to hypervisor silos and works with all kits and data, usually at a block level. Throw in a mention or two regarding how comprehensive the data protection services are in a given software suite -- or that they eliminate the need to buy continuous data protection (CDP) tools from one vendor, incremental snapshot tools from another and remote replication tools from a third -- and you get another "holistic" brag to make. That said, depending on the nature of the archival data, it may be a candidate for encryption, another data protection service. Does your data protection strategy include that? While we are on the subject of security, late last year, Jeh Johnson, then Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, identified phishing as the top threat to data. In most shops, and in most data protection tools, security is kept quite separate from disaster recovery (DR). To call their wares "holistic data protection" tools, a vendor needs to cram a lot of functionality into a product. Perhaps one of the first areas that should be targeted for improvement is in the blending of security services with DR services.

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Like many folks, I find myself put off by certain words that pop up often in advertisements for various products and services. Holistic is one of those words. Usually associated with healthcare woo, holistic medicine probably started as a smart idea, instructing patients and providers to look beyond point solutions to consider the broader context for injuries or ailments. But somewhere along the way, it was seized upon by marketing folks to incorporate a lot of unscientific nonsense into claims about certain products or treatment modalities.

A lot of today’s data protection marketing incorporates the “holistic” meme. Vendors are starting to disparage these so-called “point solutions” and offer suites of data protection tools under one brand name and management console. That’s holistic data protection, I guess.

Of course, there is merit to the claims of an Arcserve or an Acronis about the need to have a free-standing instantiation of data protection services set apart from services included in the software-defined stack that is siloed behind each deployed hypervisor and limited to storage systems operated by that stack. You can’t share capacity between software-defined storage delineated by different, and competing, hypervisor stacks, nor can you protect data residing on a “foreign” hypervisor’s storage. That is, unless you convert the workload and data into the native format of the protecting hypervisor.

Sometimes lost in the messaging is the fact that ‘holistic’ data protection requires more than just data replication tools, regardless of how fancy they are.

Stand-alone data protection suite vendors want to address this issue by providing technology that’s blind to hypervisor silos and works with all kits and data, usually at a block level. Working with data at the block level anonymizes data and insulates us admins from infrastructure peculiarities. A block is a block. What makes such an approach “holistic” is this universality and also the ability to manage data protection processes from a single pane of glass. Throw in a mention or two regarding how comprehensive the data protection services are in a given software suite — or that they eliminate the need to buy continuous data protection (CDP) tools from one vendor, incremental snapshot tools from another and…

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