Interview - Curtis Preston

[TimBurlowski]

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Curtis Preston aka Mr. Backup. Curtis works at GlassHouse Technologies and is a well known consultant, author, speaker and expert on the topic of enterprise backup and recovery. His books include “Backup and Recovery” and “Using SANs and NAS”. Curtis consults with some of our largest NetBackup customers and has been a great partner over the years.

Tim) Tell us a little about yourself. When did you first start working with NetBackup and what are you up to now?

Curtis) I started doing backups 15 years ago at a large credit card company.

First I was the backup guy. Then I was in charge of the backup guys.The next thing I knew, I was a backup consultant and I was stuck in it forever!

As to NetBackup, I've been working with it since 3.2. I was aware of it before then, but it wasn't until they added support for multistreaming and ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES that I wanted to use it. (Before that we needed to tell NBU what filesystem to back up, and had to create multiple groups if we wanted multiple jobs for a single client. Yuck!)

Tim) Funny, I’ve met a lot of backup administrators with a story like yours. They never meant to do backup in the first place but now they have built a career on it.

I notice a lot of press about de-duplication lately from us and the competition? What do you think about de-dupe in the backup workflow?

Curtis) The ideal would be that dedupe would happen from the very beginning, the way it does with Puredisk. (I call this source dedupe.) That would give the most benefit, as it would reduce LAN usage everywhere. The challenge is that dedupe at that level, regardless of which product we're talking about, currently doesn't scale to the same levels that NetBackup does.

Therefore, today, I still see significant value in dedupe in a target device, such as a VTL or other intelligent disk target. With products generally available today, I can take the largest data centers and back up their data to them, and they'll just figure it out -- without slowing down anything.

Maybe one day source dedupe will scale farther up and my answer will change.

Tim) The trend in the last few years is clearly towards having more backup to disk in the mix, where do you see things going?

Curtis) More and more disk and less and less tape. We already have some tapeless customers, and more are on their way. Dedupe is the thing that's making that happen. Not only does it making storing all your backups onsite affordable, it makes it possible to replicate them offsite without moving tapes around. I still see tape as the ultimate copy at the end, but maybe now it's three tiers away and never gets used unless the world falls apart.

Tim) What do you like best about NetBackup?

Curtis) My favorite features are NetBackup Vault, Inline Tape Copy, Synthetic backups, and how well you integrate with RMAN. In addition, with proper setup, you are able to fully stream today's tape drives, and back up data as fast as I can possibly throw it at you.

Tim) There is always room for improvement, what are some improvements would you like to see us make in the future?

Curtis) Hmmm... Where shall I start? ;) Ripping out bpgp without asking us what we were using it for is the biggest thing that comes to mind right now. (I used it to centrally maintain exclude files for non-Windows machines.)

[Editor’s note: The bpgp controversy continues. It is amazing that a small poorly documented utility can have such a large and loud following. I keep waiting for protesters to show up outside the offices with pitchforks and torches. In all seriousness we are currently working on an alternative for centrally managing include & exclude lists, stay tuned. Bill recently posted the most recent changes in this area see, "Setting and getting exclude/include list without bpgp"]

The former unsupported "how to change the hostname of your master server" procedure no longer works at all.

[Editor’s note: Someone is actually working on making this documentation available as well. This one might take a little longer than the first item, but I’ll let you know when it is available for public consumption.]

I would also like to see much better support of SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange and a way to have one policy include both full and incremental SQL Server backups.

[Editor’s note: We are significantly enhancing support of Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange in the next two follow on releases to 6.5, 6.5.2 & 6.5.3 respectively. It won’t be long until 6.5.2 is generally available, btw. The policy item is of special interest to me since I think that the proliferation of policies is an issue that we can address to make the product easier to administer in large scale environments. I’ll keep you informed as we make progress.]

Tim) As always, thanks for the great feedback, keep it coming. I have heard you are writing a new book, can you give us a preview?

Curtis) My next book will focus on the world of backup and recovery in the large commercial space. It will provide much more coverage of topics for the large datacenter, including details about NetBackup and its competitors.

The book is a little later than I had anticipated, as I spent a lot of time getting the Web 2.0 version of http://www.backupcentral.com up and running. In addition to my blog, we now have forums (one of which is a two-way mirror of the Auburn NetBackup mailing list) and a Wiki (which is used as a directory of products and hosts the NetBackup FAQ.). I hope folks find it useful, as it was a lot of work.

Tim) What is the number one thing that you advise backup administrators to do when you consult with them? Do they listen?

Curtis) Match the speed of the pipe with the speed of the tape. The smart ones do. ;)

Tim) What practice do you see in backup and recovery operations that concerns you the most?

Curtis) No copies.

Tim) There is a trend towards more backup services like the Symantec Protection Network or competitors like Iron Mountain Connected and Mozy. Where do you think that trend is going?

Curtis) It will get bigger and bigger. If pricing is right, outsourcing backup is one of the best investments you can make with your own personal data or your company's data. That's how I back up my data at home. I use a service that backs up my PC automatically offsite every day. LOVE THAT.

Thanks for offering to let me interview you. I’ve always appreciated your industry insight and the great feedback you give us on our products. I look forward to seeing you at Vision.

If you want to see what Curtis is thinking, check out his blog at backupcentral.com.