Data Strategies Int'l, Inc.

Services | Backup Tape Migration

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In many cases, the backup software and tape technology that are used for disaster recovery are also used to ‘preserve’ data with retention periods of seven years or more. From the disaster recovery standpoint, there is a clear incentive to utilize current tape technology with vastly improved capacity and data rate as compared to legacy tape. Whereas there is typically no need to migrate the disaster recovery backup data when changing tape technology or backup software, the opposite is true for archival data with long retention.

Data Strategies utilizes its proprietary MediaGenie Proteus software tool for cataloging, restoring or migration of backup data for a variety of software platforms, hardware platforms and media technologies. We offer the following backup data related services:

Media Catalog

Scenario: Your Department is responsible for a large quantity of backup tapes that are being stored off-site. The content of the tapes is largely unknown.

On the most basic level, Data Strategies will identify, for each tape, the backup software that was used, and the date that the tape was created. The next level of service is to provide the details (e.g. date/time, backup type, backup client name, source selection, etc.) of the backup sessions that are on the tape. The highest level of service will provide a detailed catalog (on the filename level) of the contents of the tape.

On-Demand Restore

Scenario: Your organization needs to restore data from vintage backup tapes whose format or media type are no longer supported by your current infrastructure.

Data Strategies will extract all or a selection of the files from the vintage backup media. The extracted data will be delivered on tape or disk (e.g. CD, DVD, USB hard drive), compatible with the client's current infrastructure.

Media Consolidation

Scenario: Your organization has archival data (i.e. backups with seven years or more retention) on vintage media (e.g. DLT, SDLT, AIT) and wants to utilize higher capacity tape media. It wants to retire the vintage tape libraries, but needs to guarantee transparent access to the archival backup sessions. The backup software remains unchanged, only the tape technology is being refreshed.

Our service consists of copying (cloning) the sessions from the vintage backup media to the new higher capacity media. Session filters on basis of, e.g. client name, backup type and expiration date can be specified. The target for the migration can be a virtual tape system as well.

Cross-Platform Migration

Scenario: Your organization is changing to backup software of a different vendor. Data with long retention that is on the vintage backup media needs to be made accessible under the new backup software environment.

This service will generate new backup media, usually, but not necessarily of a different, higher capacity type. The data format of the new backup media will be compatible with the new backup software. The migration process will preserve the essential attributes of the backup sessions, such as:

  • Client name
  • Absolute path, including drive letter
  • Backup Time/Date
  • Files attributes

Sessions corresponding to application backups using agents (e.g. MS Exchange Server, Oracle, etc.) will be converted to file-system backups in the target environment. The target for the migration can be a virtual tape system as well.

Backup Catalog Update

Ideally, for Media Consolidation and Cross-Platform Migration, the newly generated media should be introduced into the catalog of the backup server so that the migrated backup sessions can be browsed on the session and file level through the Backup Software’s regular user interface. For Netbackup, we have developed a process to do just that: The NetBackup Image Catalog and the SQL EMM database are updated, so as to provide transparent access to the migrated data, with original legacy client names and backup timestamps.

Supported platforms

We support the following Enterprise Backup software platforms:

  • Symantec Backup Exec
  • Symantec Netbackup
  • CA/Brightstor ARCserve
  • EMC Networker
  • IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)
  • HP Data Protector/Omniback
  • CommVault Simpana/Galaxy
For some platforms, only a subset of the services is available.

 

 

 

For additional information on our Backup Data Services, please contact:
Dr. Johan de Haas at 713-782-7183 or by e-mail at johan@go-dsi.com.