In-Depth

Video: Replication in Jeopardy? (Interview)

Given the appeal of data protection features storage array vendors have been adding to their equipment, is replicating data for protection using software operating outside the storage array in jeopardy?

CA’s user conference, CA World 2010, afforded us an opportunity to chat on camera with the company’s new senior vice president of engineering (and long-time fixture in the storage world), Don Kleinschnitz. In a multi-segment video interview, he spelled out the CA Technologies vision around ARCserve, the company’s flagship data protection product line.

                  
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Kleinschnitz used the opportunity to tell us about ARCserve Edge, the next-generation architecture that he is helping to advance within CA Technologies. ARCserve Edge will leverage Web Services standards to present data protection services in a modular manner that will enable them to be applied selectively or via policy to different applications based on business requirements.

This is a key change in thinking about data protection that could well be expanded into other aspects of infrastructure and data management, and one that is vitally needed to contain cost and ensure continuity of business IT operations. It reflects a trend in thinking that is being expressed by a growing number of forward-looking hardware and software developers, and may just provide the solution to unified management that has long been missing from distributed computing.

In this segment of the interview, we asked him whether the practice of replicating data for protection using software operating outside of the storage array, rather than as a built-in function of an array controller, was in jeopardy given the appeal of data protection features storage array vendors have been adding to their hardware. His perspective is interesting, especially against the backdrop of the growing allure of cloud technology.

To see the other parts of this interview, or other enterprise IT conversations, visit the C-4 Project at www.c4project.org).

Click this link to play the video.

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