Centralized backups have simplified hybrid protection and improved ransomware recovery and compliance
What is our primary use case?
I started as a Storage and Backup Administrator and have been working with Data Protector and Dell PowerProtect Data Manager since approximately 2019 or 2020.
I worked on a project where the client was transforming their current heterogeneous solution to a homogeneous solution. They had multiple NetBackup instances and other solutions, and they were looking for something to consolidate and bring everything into one platform. When we worked on it, we introduced and discussed Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. We identified that Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a suite of solutions where you have storage, backup manager, and data manager all integrated into one server and one platform, which gave them a consolidated solution. The suite we introduced to the customer covered database backup, application software, and archive to cloud services.
They came with network-attached storage and an accelerator. We had NetApp in place, and we used NetApp and Unity with NFS and SMBs. The way it majorly works is we used to have metadata that would take a backup without going into a read. We chose this one for NAS backup because it really helped us increase the performance of the backup. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager helped us manage centralized management through a controller called the NAS Proxy, which helped us move the data from handling. It was just a VM. Everything worked in a different way, but we were able to take the backup using NDMP with different vendors, especially NetApp, and then we had some of the SMBs and NFS, which we were able to back up.
What is most valuable?
I worked on DPS, DPA, Avamar, and Data Domain. Those are all part of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.
Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is majorly centralized management software and it really helped in a cloud-friendly way. Many of the solutions which we currently have are not directly integrated with cloud backup services, but these can be. It is the one platform where you can manage your backup, store the backup, and replicate the backup to other on-premises or cloud locations, and have the centralized management of it.
The snapshot which we used was majorly for the VMs and not for the database because we used that same solution for application-aware backup as well. It started taking a full backup and then created incremental backups. Snapshots allow restoration of everything in one shot, and the capacity consumption compared to other backup solutions is more efficient. Based on deduplication, it really affects the capacity consumption when we create snapshots using this backup solution. Taking a snapshot directly offers more efficiency in capacity consumption.
Anomaly detection is majorly important. When backups were going on, unusual backup activity would indicate that it could be a ransomware attack or an operational issue. We got anomalies with respect to operational issues and data corruption because we did not have much visibility to this backup solution to the internet, where ransomware was very difficult to get into. However, we did understand data corruption situations where sometimes the backup was happening and chains were getting disconnected. We would get alerts that data corruption happened and we would try to take care of it. Sometimes the frequency of backups increased without any manual intervention and we identified and stopped that behavior.
When we used this solution, it was integrated with our storages, and it usually creates snapshots at the storage LUNs level, volume level, or file system level. It used to connect with that and go straight to the long-term retention on Data Domain at DPS or the PowerProtect side. The major benefit was that without creating anything in the storage, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager was directly triggering the snapshot directly on the storages. It majorly supports Dell storage compared to heterogeneous storage, but we understand that there are some features that we can use to protect the others as well.
What needs improvement?
The majorly needed improvement is that the product should easily simplify the upgrade and installation process. Sometimes Dell support should be more active. They take time for P1 issues. Sometimes it is not a P1 for Dell, but it is P1 for the customer, and the support needs to be very mature. That is a major drawback I see. Otherwise, the product is quite well.
This is an enterprise solution and a bit costlier, but it is a solution where people should be looking into if they want to go into one single umbrella and have the centralized backup solution, which integrates with the cloud and can manage their cloud workload as well as the on-premises workload, and can be managed with one dashboard. In that way, it makes their backup management easier and they can get detected anomalies as soon as possible. This is one of the solutions I would recommend. However, if it is a very small company, they really need to think about the cost, as it is very costlier for them. But as an enterprise solution and a mid-enterprise solution, this is the solution where companies think their data is very critical, in sectors such as financial, banking, and health. This kind of sector should go with that solution because it always gives the compliances of HIPAA, GDPR, and all those things that are really required for them.
From management perspectives and consolidation solution perspective, the integration is quite easy. With respect to the backup administrator and everything, it is quite straightforward. There are some layers that need to be improved and should have the internal feature instead of creating the additional VMs for the NAS backup. It should be internal and directly have the agent base or something that can communicate easily with Dell storage. If it is third-party, I would understand, but it should be able to communicate. The benefit of it is that it is easily understood and you can do knowledge transfer with a lot of documents available. The drawback of it is that when it comes to the installation, Dell always takes a lot of time for all these things with third-party involvement in between Dell and the customer. Support is the major part of it. People need to understand that when a customer raises their ticket for P1, they should treat it as a P1. Instead of by their book being P3 or P2, sometimes they only treat it as such when the complete backup server is down. However, for the customer, if it is not happening with the critical system of backup, then it is a P1 for them. From Dell support, they do not treat it as a P1, or they treat it as a P3 or P2. That kind of understanding and some agreements need to be done between the customer and Dell.
It is a costlier solution. Comparatively, other backup solutions make this one of the costlier solutions. However, someone who has their enterprise data or needs protection in a good way can go for it. I could say it is a mid-enterprise or enterprise level solution. Otherwise, people do have the same solution but with differentiated features. However, it is costlier compared to the other.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
They have a certain number of limits that you can add this much of disk based on the licenses. If you are okay to purchase the license, they have the feasibility to increase the capacity as well.
How are customer service and support?
When we had the compliances and any of the backups were getting failed or we identified that some of the backups were frequently failing, the system would alert us. There was also a way where it was giving us the alert on the ransomware as well.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Initially when I started this conversation, the customer had multiple solutions, such as NetBackup, Veeam, and others where they had to have the hardware, maintenance, license maintenance, and everything. It was very not easy to maintain. Some of them, the backup storage or tapes were already outdated, and managing it with additional end-of-support and end-of-life support was too costlier for them. When we moved out of all of this and migrated everything to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, it reduced their cost by somewhere around 30 percent. They no longer had to manage and maintain multiple customers, multiple OEMs, or hyperscalers and vendors support. It just came down to the one umbrella, which is Dell. It is a new product with all new features and no need to worry about ransomware. Previously they were spending one million dollars, and now they are spending somewhere around 720,000 to 750,000 dollars.
What was our ROI?
It has the predicted RTO and RPO. It reduced a lot of human errors because it was all automated, and once it is done, then it was working in a very faster way. We had some ransomware scenarios where we achieved faster ransomware recovery. It has DR testing as well. We have the DR setup on one side to another side. We were able to start the DR as well. Compliance was easy to handle with the centralized dashboard because everything is in the centralized location, including how much backup was there and how much backup failed. One of the major things is that the storage had the Data Domain in place. Previously they did not have that much deduplication. After we introduced this solution, previously they had somewhere around 100 TB of capacity for the backup for a few VMs on one side. Now, the overall setup is hardly 80 TB, where they use almost 240 TB of production data into that 80 TB. Still, it is at 60 to 70 percent of utilization.
What other advice do I have?
The RPO that we are looking for and the RTO that we are looking for was working over there. When it came to the capacity and the reporting, we used to have that centralized reporting and the centralized dashboard. Even the validation, regarding what compliance we have at the moment and how much we are secure, we used it in that way. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
