As I was rifling through the mass amounts of information I weed through on a daily basis, I noticed a snapshot article from the May 2009 issue of Storage Magazine that caught my eye. The title of the post was, “CDP picks up a little steam” by Rich Castagna. Here is the meat of the article…

AS SLICK AS IT SOUNDS, continuous data protection (CDP)—the ability to capture and
back up new and changed data immediately—hasn’t made a huge impact in most storage
shops yet. On our most recent survey, only 27% of respondents currently use a
CDP application, a modest increase of approximately four points vs. last year’s survey.
The rap against CDP has been that it’s yet another app that adds complexity and administration
to backup environments. Adoption was expected to increase as more backup application vendors integrated CDP into their products, but that doesn’t seem to account for the slight rise in use, as only 23% of our CDP users tap their backup apps for that capability. CDP has been around for a while, but most of those users are relative newbies, with 59% saying they’ve been using it for less than a year. Don’t expect
a sudden surge in CDP deployments, as just 30% of non-users are considering deployments
in the next two years.

  

Let’s break it down, shall we…

The rap against CDP has been that it’s yet another app that adds complexity and administration
to backup environments

********Warning:Implied Content is in Relation to RecoverPoint************

In my eyes this simplifies backup environments (archiving excluded). Every application inherently is going to add some additional administration and potential complexity, roll with the punches people, it ‘tis what we do. But the benefits of CDP far outweigh those sticking points.

Flipping your RPO from a day or longer (with tape) to seconds is worth it. Having the ability to protect against any logical corruption is worth it. No backup schedules is worth it, let me say again NO BACKUP SCHEDULES is worth it. Out of the data path, non-host-impacting split replication is, you guessed it…worth it!!!

 

Adoption was expected to increase as more backup application vendors integrated CDP into their products, but that doesn’t seem to account for the slight rise in use, as only 23% of our CDP users tap their backup apps for that capability.

I think the general flow here is correct. The information is there, you and I are better informed than we were years ago. Individuals are looking elsewhere for this capability, outside of their traditional backup provider. Trying to scrub that moth engrained, grandpa smell (Traditional backups) from their environment is not so easy. Why would one keep eating from grandpa’s withered hand (yuck!) when a newer, fresher approach is around the bend…

Its no wonder that the storage vendors have taken this technology (or purchased it) and run with it, they are best at manipulating, storing, moving, and securing data in general. Not to mention they tend to roll a little more with the “now”.

And finally I’ll leave you with the eternal question asked within the survey….

 

If your not planning to implement CDP, why not?