AC T I FI O C O P Y DATA V I R T UA L I Z AT I O N

Actifio and the Next

Data Center Era
Copy Data Virtualization and Business Transformation

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 Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Challenges of the Modern Technology Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Answer: Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

But What About the Data? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Actifios Copy Data Virtualization Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The Impact of Copy Data Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

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Introduction
The past fifty years have ushered in staggering advances in economics,
science, medicine, and even geopolitics. The technologies enabling these
changes those employed to build, power, and even lead it - have also
evolved and advanced at an unprecedented pace.
Consider the dawn of the mainframe era of computing, a mere forty or
so years ago. Compute power and data was centralized in a monolithic
system, accessed through dumb terminals which served only basic
input / output functions. These systems-oriented architectures prevailed
for 20 years, until the networking technology became simpler, more
cost-effective, and more powerful. At the same time the clients
personal computersgained more power and functionality. One could
design an application whose load was spread across layers
FIGURE 1:
S CALE AND VELOCITY HAVE INCREASED WITH EACH IT PLATFORM
the backend database and middleware layer whose purpose was
to drive application logic and computing, and a client, now with the
compute power to drive a richer user experience and even local
application logic. Mainframes didnt go away, but more new applications
were being designed and built in this new client/server model. Data was
more distributed in this model, but still contained by the boundaries of
the enterprise.
That era also lasted nearly 20 years, until the Internet unlocked the
notions of scale, distributed computing, and parallel usage. Cloud
application designs break almost completely with the architectural
norms established in the client/server era. In the cloud, applications are
loosely coupled with underlying infrastructure. That infrastructure itself
is virtualized and elastic , with the ability to scale up or down based
on usage patterns. It might be spread across multiple, geographically
diverse data centers, which may be privately owned, public, or some
combination of both. In this new model, data moves in and out of the
traditional enterprise boundaries. Any given user might be a consumer of
data one day, and a supplier the next. And the scale is global, introducing
new pressures regarding data security and governance.

Mid-way through this era, additional complexities have emerged, as

mobile computing promises to eclipse the scale of Internet 1.0, and a
mountain of new data types are emerging for example machine- and/
EMER GI N G or sensor-generated data. In 2013, Gartner published a strategic planning
M AR KET S
CLOUD
BI G DATA/ assumption that within five years, over 50% of enterprise data will be
AN ALY T I C S
generated outside the enterprise.

MOBILE SOC I AL
BUSI N ESS FIGURE 2: EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE IT

3 R D PLAT F O R M SIGNIFICANT CHANGES CONSISTENT THEMES

Importance of infrastructure Importance of data

Need for resiliency,

New data types
security, agility

L AN /I N T ER N ET Scale and scope Applications powering business

C L I EN T /SER V ER

Challenges of the Modern Technology Age

2 N D PLAT F O R M
As application architectures have progressed, so too has the
infrastructure landscape. Over the past thirty years the layers of the
data center have been effectively unbundled: storage and networks
separated from compute, and clients were unbound from desktops. This
M AI N FR AME evolution also creates its own challenges. Infrastructure has, in essence,
T ER M I N AL been developed on a bespoke basis per application. There was little to
no sharing of resource between an ERP system in SAP, for example,
1 S T PLAT F O R M and a global messaging system based on MS Exchange. For a time this
approach served its purpose well enough.

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Today, in a world of cloud-scale design, a model is taking hold that is
at once more unified and more distributed. Infrastructure has been
commoditized and virtualized, creating pools of consistent resources
designed for shared usage on a massive scale, across diverse locations.
The model is an appealing one, though rigid legacy architectures
presents a significant barrier to its full adoption. Tightly coupled
application infrastructure also creates real barriers to flexibility and agility
within the enterprise. Application development and data analytics, for
example, often suffer from infrastructure-driven bottlenecks. A 2013 CIO
magazine survey that found 60% of projects are over budget and/or
behind schedule and, of those, 85% were delayed because of data and
environment provisioning delays.
Consider the challenge of broad-based analytics. To create a common
view of the customer, a business needs to be able to leverage data
across systems, at a moments notice. The importance of this real-time
analysis grows in proportion to the data size with more precise and/
or interesting insights tending to come from a larger data sets. This
notion that as data grows, so too does its attraction of data-oriented
resources is known as data gravity. In todays petabyte-scale world,
data gravity is extremely powerful. IT needs a vehicle that can work
efficiently within this strong gravitational pull, achieve escape velocity for
data when needed. It needs the freedom to break toward the clouds.
Today, in a world of cloud-scale design, a model is taking hold that is at once
more unified and more distributed
Unfortunately, the tools designed over time to comprehend, manage,
protect, share, and analyze data are constrained by the context in which
they were created. These tools were designed in the past. They are relics
of the same infrastructure-bound era, and as a result, similarly limited in
their ability to serve the data management challenges of the future.
The Answer: Virtualization
In the early 2000s, data centers were faced with a significant reality
born of this infrastructure-led application design: underutilized servers.
The majority of servers were running less than ten percent utilized.
Capital budgets ballooned. Power and cooling costs for those servers
were far greater than needed. Operational expenses to manage large
farms of resources were high. And CIOs didnt have a great answer to
the question: how do we improve?
Along came server virtualization, pioneered by VMware. Through the
magic of software, virtualization allowed a single, underutilized physical
server to be logically separated into multiple, virtual servers. The economic
benefits of consolidating excess compute capacity were significant. As
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workloads were virtualized, they became more portable. Suddenly, the
ability to transparently move an application workload from one virtual
partition to another even across great distances became a reality.
Its safe to say that the movement towards cloud computing wouldnt
have been possible without server virtualization, and that the power and
impact of these two innovations combined is still being realized today.
But What About the Data?
Its time to apply the same virtualization approach to the data that
powers our applications, as we have to the servers and networks that
support them.
Every major industry analyst agrees the volume of data is growing
at a staggering pace. In addition to commonly understood business
data, today mobile devices, machines, sensors, social media, and
other data sources are generating exabytes of data at a rapid clip.
For storage companies, this vertical growth has been a significant
driver of shareholder value. But, for most consumers of storage, the
reality is eerily similar to the server phenomenon of the early 2000s.
Most storage sits under-utilized. Too much of what is being utilized is
occupied by excess copies of data, created by siloed data protection
and availability applications (backup, snapshot, disaster recovery,
business continuity, dev & test, compliance, analytics and others,)
each of which creates copies of production data without knowing
what copies already exist. According to IDC, businesses will spend
$46B to store copies of data in 2014, or nearly 48 exabytes. This copy
data glut in the data center is the cause of over-spending, operational
inefficiencies, elevated environmental spending such as power and
cooling, and a challenge savvy CIOs have begun to focus more
resources and attention to answer.
Copy data virtualization is the obvious answer to this problem. With copy
data virtualization, production data is kept intact, yet is captured non-
disruptively in its native form. Only a single physical golden copy one
that can spawn innumerable virtual copies is needed for all use cases.
After an initial capture of production data, only incremental changes need
be moved over the network and stored in the constantly changing golden
copy at the core of the copy data virtualization platform. Management
of this copy data store is conducted in the language of the business:
the SLA. Users are able to define a generic SLA including frequency of
capture, location of captured data, duration of time to retain captured data,
4
FIGURE 3: THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Internet of Things is highlighting the change in the volume

and creation of data

According to IDC, businesses will spend $46B to store copies of data in 2014,
or nearly 48 exabytes

schedule, resources, and more. This generic policy may then be applied to desire to gain greater control of their data, for internal governance, for
any automatically discovered application, system, or data set. external compliance, for greater business resiliency and agility.

Once an applications data is being captured and managed under an
applied SLA, it may be used instantly, in any number of ways. Consider
the current tools designed to make copies of data: backup, snapshot,
clone, replica, mirror, vault, and more. All of these separate tools make
one or more copies of production for a variety of use cases: backup,
disaster recovery, test data management, analytics, offsite data
protection, data continuity, long-term data retention, the list is endless.
And, in a world without copy data virtualization, these methods all
represent separate technologies, separate operational methods, separate
capital and operating expenses, and a continued proliferation of data in
the enterprise. This tool explosion is in direct conflict with an enterprises
Copy data virtualization allows nearly unlimited use of copy data virtual
or physical all enabled through a common, unified platform. Workflows
schedule and automate the delivery of up-to-date copies to users or hosts:
to enable faster development and test environments;
to feed ETL or analytics systems;
to automate failover or recovery tests;
to output to portable media for compliance;
and more.

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Actifios Copy Data Virtualization Platform
Actifios copy data virtualization is built on Actifios patented Virtual
Data Pipeline (VDP). VDP is a 21st century innovation based on a
clean-sheet approach to solving the data management problems
of the modern data center. By studying the server virtualization
phenomenon, then marrying these approaches with extremely deep
storage expertise, VDP was devised. The five foundational tenets
of VDP were simple, in spite of their tremendous sophistication
and power in practice. The first tenet was the need for application-
centricity: the capture of application data in its native form, in the
most non-disruptive method possible, in the most network and
storage efficient manner possible.
The second design tenet of VDP was radical simplicity, as the future
users of data management platforms will include teams from line
of business as well as information technologists. Simplicity is about
ensuring a seamless experience, with the maximum power and
flexibility for those who manage it, while delivering point-and-click
self-service for those who consume it.
The third tenet was that data should be available anywhere, not
necessarily everywhere. By virtualizing copy data, VDP is able to
deliver read/write copies in the data center, in remote offices, in
the cloud, or any combination of locations, without over-burdening
FIGURE 4: THE ACTIFIO VIRTUAL DATA PIPELINE
SNA P SH OT P OOL
D E D UP P OOL
SL A AR C H I T E C T WOR KFLOWS
P H Y SI C AL C O P I E S
DISTRIBUTED OBJECT FILE SYSTEM
RE S T F U L A PI
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storage systems with excess physical instances. And Actifio allows
this federated platform to be managed globally, minimizing the
operational overhead required.
The fourth design tenet of VDP was to build a platform, not a system.
The power of VDP is its ability to leverage a vast array of hardware, as it
becomes increasingly commoditized. In addition, as a platform, VDP can
be programmatically controlled and extended organically as well as by
service providers, third party ISVs, and other OEMs.
Finally, VDPs fifth design tenet was the notion of instant access and use.
By building the worlds most powerful and efficient method of capture
and management, VDP can serve multiple instances of multi-terabyte
databases, in seconds.
VDP is the platform on which both of Actifios product families are
built: CDS, the original enterprise-class data virtualization system,
and Sky, that delivers data virtualization for the distributed enterprise.
VDP is accessed by the Foresight API, which creates a gateway to
programmatic extension. Actifio has built or is currently developing a
broad range of additional business software services that extend the
power and versatility of both CDS and Sky. For example, Resiliency
Director is a powerful orchestration tool that provides a complete
resiliency solution for non-disruptive, automated test and recovery of
virtual machines. Additional Business Services will be delivered over
R E MOTE P OOLS
R E MOTE P OOLS
OR CH E STR ATION
IN S TA N T
SNA P MOUNT
SH OT
V IRTUA L COP IE S
CLONE
LIV E
CLONE
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 FIGURE 5: ACTIFIOS VIRTUAL DATA PIPELINE IS THE FOUNDATION FOR ALL PRODUCTS

GLOBAL MANAGEMENT

BUSINESS SOFT WARE SERVICES

ACTIFIO CDS ACTIFIO SKY

VIRTUAL DATA PIPLINE (VDP)

FORESIGHT API

SERVICE PROVIDER ISV M ANAGEMENT

EXTENSIONS EXTENSIONS EXTENSIONS

time that address additional Business Agility and Business Intelligence
use cases.
Given the potential scale and scope of an Actifio deployment across
applications, systems, data centers, remote locations, public and/or private
clouds its vital to manage the virtual environment simply, directly. Actifio
delivers global management of the most distributed architectures.
The Impact of Copy Data Virtualization
In a world where copy data is virtualized, the business impact is felt in
three primary areas: Resiliency, Agility, and Cloud. Together, the impact
to the business is transformational both economically and strategically.
When it comes to business resiliency, many businesses today wrestle
with legacy approaches to ensure recoverability, data protection, data
governance, and compliance. The implications of gaps or delays include
increased exposures to outages or service disruptions. Today, those
issues come with an increased sensitivity to reputational risk, particularly
with the power of social media to spread negative news quickly and
broadly. Ensuring business resiliency means better data protection and
availability. For the business that means continuous operations and
reduced downtime from unplanned events. For the board of directors
and executive team, that also means improved data protection and
governance. Ultimately, resiliency isnt about insurance; rather, its an
investment in the peace of mind for all stakeholders -- from customer
and partners, to the board of directors.
Business agility is a broad concept, yet there are common, specific
elements that span all industries including: faster time to market,
increased innovation, better / more timely customer support, meaningful,
timely business intelligence, and even better / faster product acceptance
in the market. For five years in a row, develop applications faster has
been the number one priority from the Garter Application Development
conference survey respondents. And, considering that in the world
of online and mobile commerce, differentiated applications are fast
becoming an invaluable currency. Business agility is only possible when
a business can access data when and where it is needed.
Though the cloud market is large and growing at a rapid pace, most
businesses are still in the early days of usage. That said, Gartners
surveys of enterprise accounts indicate that nearly 3/4ths expect the
majority of their business to be run in the cloud by 2020. To date, there
have been a number of practical realities in most businesses that
present challenges to achieving that goal. Security of data is and will
remain paramount. An equally challenging phenomenon is the amount

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 FIGURE 6: GETTING STARTED BEGINS WITH A SINGLE PROJECT, YET CAN EXTEND ACROSS MULTIPLE USE CASES

RESILIENCY AGILITY CLOUD

Better data protection Access data when and Enable the transition
and availability where you need it to distributed IT infrastructure

of legacy physical systems, running monolithic applications, that require
a complete rewrite to be cloud-ready. Cloud standards are also still
emerging from competing clouds and standards stacks, to an ever-
evolving landscape of vendor technologies. Similar to VMware with
servers, Actifio views copy data virtualization as a critical enabler to
cloud, enabling the transition to a distributed IT application infrastructure
model. By virtualizing copy data, IT can lower their cost of service
delivery, improve time to market, and move data seamlessly in and
out of clouds, whether public, private, or hybrid. And for Cloud Service
Providers (CSP) incorporating Actifio into their cloud, they can enable
a broader range of differentiated service offerings, faster, and with far
lower operating expense than previously possible.
Next Steps
Getting started with copy data virtualization is straightforward: all
transformational journeys begin with a single project, a single use case.
The power of a scalable and broad platform like Actifio means that
project might be:
A resiliency use case like backup modernization
or proactive disaster recovery;
An agility use case like test data management or analytics;
Or even a cloud use case like data vaulting or DR as a service.
Hundreds of customer deployments have proven that Actifios economic
benefit will be material in a single project. However, when viewed over a
multi-year roadmap of transformational projects, the savings, operational
improvements, and business impact of Actifios copy data virtualization
will be substantial.

Actifio delivers copy data virtualization for many of the

worlds largest brands across all industries, in thirty-three
countries and growing. Contact them at www.actifio.com to
get started to get started on your transformation.

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