With Richard Jacobick
Cisco and CommVault have teamed up on a solution aimed squarely at contemporary data protection challenges. Data is the lifeblood of the enterprise, yet the playbook for how you preserve, protect and provide access to data may have been assembled years ago... and a lot has changed in those years.   Consider the transformations around compute, networking, storage virtualization and cloud that have occurred over the last decade.

A data protection policy is similar to auto, home and life insurance because the ultimate goal is to mitigate risk by investing in an instrument that keeps the things you value most protected and safe. What would happen to the business if an unplanned event triggered a loss of data access today because of an outdated plan? There is a very good reason why we review our insurance policies on an annual basis and your data protection policy should go through the same periodic review.

A recent survey conducted by market research firm Vanson Bourne outlines how data loss and downtime has cost enterprises nearly$1.7 trillion over the past 12 months. The lack of a well-defined data protection process and comprehensive Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is most often the root cause in cases where data loss or downtime had a significant financial cost to the business.

The Vanson Bourne study also indicates that 51% of companies do NOT have a backup and DR plan for Big Data, mobile or cloud workloads, and 71% of organizations are not confident in their ability to recoverfrombusiness disruptions. Here are some facts that should prompt your organization to reassess your current data protection plan and consider an alternative solution:

• 30% of primary data is now located in the cloud
• 64% of companies have experienced some form of data loss or downtime within the past year
• Organizations experience downtime an average of 13 times per year
• Backup recovery failures are observed twice annually
• An average unplanned downtime outage can last up to 25 hours

Backup as a Service (BaaS) with Cisco UCS and CommVault Simpana

Cisco and Commvault have partnered to deliver a comprehensive data protection solution that can be delivered as a Backup as a Service (BaaS) solution for enterprises and cloud service providers with the Cisco UCS C3000 series servers and CommVault Simpana. The solution is focused on protecting mission-critical applications, optimizing the VM lifecycle and powering backup as a service in the cloud: be it private, public, or a fully integrated combination of on- and off-prem.

There are several key benefits delivered with this solution:

• The ability to manage explosive unstructured data growth with global de-duplication
• Data protection for mission-critical applications and databases
• Harnessing of virtualization through advanced VM provisioning, management and recovery tools
• Facilitates a comprehensive DR plan that accelerates time to recovery and reduces operational risk
• For Service Providers: efficient technology that accelerates adoption of cloud-based data protection backup and recovery

The Cisco UCS C3160 Rack Server is loaded for bear when it comes to storage capacity, and has several features that make it the ideal candidate to support BaaS:

• Over 1/3 PB storage contained within 4RU of rack space
• Mixed storage capacity (HDD & SSD) with raw capacity up to 360 TB for UCS 3160
• Dual multi-core processor per controller
• Dual controller with up to 512GB memory per controller
• Flexible networking interfaces using VIC technology
• Multiple deployment scenarios including private cloud/datacenter and hybrid cloud

Learn more about this solution here, including a complete reference architecture, design and implementation guide.