Indiana Backup & Archiving User Group

Minutes from December 13, 2011

The eleventh meeting of the Indiana Backup & Archiving User Group was held on Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at the offices of Sallie Mae in Fishers, IN.  Nine individuals attended in person, representing four distinct customer organizations, as well as Symantec.

Those in attendance:

Brian Doyle

Mark Garringer

Josh Opper

Janie Emerson

Stan Kohut

Scott Berkel

Rick Sherman

Scott Warmbier

Dave Paulson

The meeting began at 12:00 noon with lunch, catered by Panera.  At 12:30, we got down to business, with group president Brian Doyle welcoming the group, providing the usual overview of the benefits of membership and the Connect Points program, and then highlighting the agenda for the session.  Each attendee briefly introduced himself.

Announcement Highlights include a brief discussion of discount opportunities available to those who are considering attending the Symantec “Vision” conference.

The meeting agenda focused on three main items:

1. A brief discussion of the timeline for 2012 meetings
2. A presentation by Rick Sherman of Symantec on how to separate the “archive” function from the “backup” function.
3. A presentation by Scott Warmbier of Symantec on using SLP (Storage Lifecycle Policies) and AIR (Auto Image Replication) to facilitate Disaster Recovery

Highlights from the first portion of the meeting:

·         Consensus is to maintain the current schedule of four meetings per year

·         Topics for future meetings might include “using Symantec RealTime” or “Mobile Device Management”

·         The consensus of the group was that narrowing the focus of this user group to just Backup/Archive has been a positive change.

·         Some members feel that having meetings later in the day might work better for those who cannot get away from the office for the noon to 3:00 timeframe.

·         We need to continue to get input from other customers about the problems that they have faced and solved.

·         Peer discussion is a vital component of these meetings and will remain on the agenda

·         We’ll explore the possibility of having a virtual connection to the meeting for those who either are too far away or cannot commit the travel/out-of-office time.  Symantec will take the lead on gathering the resources necessary for a connection to the virtual meeting.  Lunch will even be delivered to any remote attendees.

Next, Rick Sherman discussed “How to avoid using Backup as an Archive System”

Key points:

·         It’s important to account for all costs associated with using Backup as an Archive, since it’s easy to slip into the trap of “we already have backup, just use that for archive”

o   Costs of doing restores needed for discovery

o   Costs of extra capacity to hold restored information during discovery

o   Admin Time involved in restores

·         Backup != Archive != E-discovery

·         Look to leverage cloud for archive

·         Make sure you have solid policies in place to drive retention

·         You can outsource your E-discovery restores

·         You can leverage these same outsourcing vendors to help develop an accurate picture of the cost savings you might achieve by separating Backup and Archive.

·         Backup is for Disaster Recovery (DR)  and corruption recovery only

Next, Scott Warmbier gave a brief tutorial on using AIR and SLP as a means for replicating images over to your DR site.  These components are included out-of-the-box in NBU 7.1, and allow you to replicate images to separate NBU domains – i.e., controlled by two different master servers.  The key to this functionality is the automatic importation of images into the catalog of the remote master server.

The meeting concluded with the drawing of Connect points. 

The meeting officially adjourned at 4:00, but several members continued informal discussions after adjournment.

Respectfully submitted,

Dave Paulson, Secretary