DCIG Sponsored Analysis

SSD's Hidden Data Integrity Flaw and How Fusion-io Mitigates the Cost and Complexity of Fixing it

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:00:00 -0600

Next generation networked storage systems are adding solid state drives (SSDs) at an accelerated pace as a means to deliver dramatic performance gains for mission-critical, performance sensitive applications. To accomplish this, SSDs are being constructed to look and act like hard disk drives (HDDs) and while this seems sensible, this creates the possibility for data integrity issues to emerge.

To offset this, enterprise SSD providers take a number of steps to account for these issues. Fusion-io is unique in that it has come up with a method that mitigates these problems while lowering the cost and complexity of fixing them.

It Looks Like an HDD But ...

On the surface, the process of making an SSD look like an HDD appears straightforward. As part of accelerating the rate of the adoption of SSDs, SSDs are made to look and act like HDDs so they are easily recognized by existing server operating systems and/or storage system firmware.

In this respect, the emulation of SSDs is going pretty well. Users and/or manufacturers can plug an SSD device into a slot on a PC, server or storage system such that it looks just like an HDD to the OS and is managed as such.

But to make an SSD look and act like an HDD, data translations and re-mappings need to occur that call for the utilization of embedded CPUs and DRAM on the SSD. These additional components increase the cost of SSDs as well as raise the number of failure points in places that could compromise data integrity.

Specifically, these embedded components create the possibility that soft errors can occur without detection and correction. This can result in questions regarding the integrity of data stored or retrieved from the SSD.

Where Soft Errors Occur

Soft errors can occur at one of two times within SSD devices.

First, during writes, data sent to the SSD device is in a format that is suitable for storing on an HDD, not an SSD. To store it, the SSD uses its embedded CPU and DRAM to convert the data to a format that flash recognizes and then maps and stores the data to a location on the SSD device.
On reads, the opposite must occur. Since the application expects the data back in a recognizable format, the SSD device must again leverage its embedded CPU and DRAM to do a lookup of the data on the SSD so that it can be re-mapped back to a format that is recognizable by the application.

This process of remapping the data from FC and/or SCSI format to flash and then back again is where the possibility for soft errors is introduced. Since DRAM is used as part of the process, the SSD's calculations are susceptible to errors. While infrequent, soft errors can and do occur as they are caused by external forces such as cosmic radiation. What is important to note is that there does not need to be a flaw in the hardware or an error in the firmware for these soft errors to occur.

Cost is Why Soft Errors are Left Undetected

The possibility of cosmic radiation impacting data integrity is overlooked because today's computer systems generally have built-in error correction code (ECC) that can detect and correct soft errors caused by this type of anomaly. However, most DRAM used in SSDs do NOT support ECC and most do not even have parity. As such, they can neither check nor correct these soft errors when data is remapped. The danger this presents is that the SSD cannot DETECT when a soft error occurs.

Unfortunately most consumer grade SSDs do not use DRAM that supports ECC or parity for one simple reason: ECC DRAM is more expensive. As a result, most SSD devices that have a FC, SAS or SATA interface do not provide this needed layer of data protection.

This explains why in enterprise environments where data integrity is a necessity that enterprises must deploy SSDs that detect and correct these soft errors. But to do so, they must pay extra.

However this technique is only one way to avoid soft errors. There is another way that costs less, ensures that the SSD appears as an HDD to the operating system and can detect and correct soft errors.

Solid-State Data Integrity with Speed but without Cost

Fusion-io has developed a method to accomplish all three of these objectives: reducing costs, avoiding soft errors and appearing as an HDD. To do this, Fusion-io places its ioDrive directly on a server's PCI-Express bus.

In this configuration, the server's CPU can directly interface with the ioDrive using direct memory access (DMA) via the server's PCI-Express bus. This design eliminates the need for a storage controller in the server as well as embedded CPUs on its ioDrive since the HDD translation does not occur on the ioDrive.

However in order for the ioDrive to appear as an HDD, Fusion-io installs a driver on the host that does the remapping. This driver serves two important purposes.

First, by moving the translation layer to the host, its driver functions much like much like a page table does on today's operating systems: it translates virtual memory addresses to physical memory addresses.

Fusion-io's host software driver works in a similar manner. When the CPU asks for some logical block address, it goes through Fusion-io's software driver. This driver translates it to where it is physically on the NAND. Since it is physically addressed directly as memory, this contributes to Fusion-io's high speeds.

The other important purpose that putting this software driver on the host serves is that the translation is protected since the driver is in the server's memory. This allows it to take advantage of the native ECC and parity protection found on these servers. Then as an added layer of security, Fusion-io validates its results by double checking the data after it is remapped to ensure it is all properly labeled once it is on the media.

The Fusion ioDrive: A Fundamentally Better Approach

Forcing SSDs to look like HDDs is done because it seems like the simplest and easiest way to accelerate the adoption of SSDs. But SSDs are not HDDS! They are flash and trying to make flash cost-effectively and safely look and act like an HDD while still preserving the integrity of the data is not easily done.

To do this, other SSDs take six steps to do the data translation and remapping. This adds costs, slows SSD's speed and introduces risks. Fusion-io's approach of putting its ioDrive directly into the server enables organizations to more safely and cost-effectively harness the many advantages that SSDs provides.

But in the process of placing its ioDrive inside the server, Fusion-io does more than just accelerate application performance, lower SSD's costs or preserve the integrity of data. Fusion-io also puts organizations on a path of re-thinking not just how they should leverage SSDs in their infrastructure but what is the appropriate role and placement of SSDS and networked storage within their data center environment going forward.

Detection of Soft Errors Becoming the True Determinant of an Enterprise SSD Solution

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:00:00 -0600

Enterprise users are facing some tough choices right now as solid state drives (SSDs) begin to proliferate in the datacenter. Not only must they sort through the performance benefits and documented drawbacks of typical SSDs, they must also determine which SSDs are suitable for use in mission critical applications. But as they do, new evidence is emerging that an SSD's classification as "enterprise ready" is not determined by an SSD's use of "MLC" or "SLC" but rather if it possesses the ability to detect and correct soft errors as they occur.

Historical "Consumer" versus "Enterprise" SSD Classification

According to some estimates, there are well over 100 OEMs of SSD storage systems on the market today with SSDs finding its way into more storage systems that typically receive the "enterprise" label. As they do, an aging criteria that differentiated between "consumer" and "enterprise" grade SSDs is based on whether or not the SSD is a multi level cell (MLC) or single level cell (SLC) design.

MLC SSDs are most often associated with "consumer" grade. The knock on MLC SSDs is that they lack the performance and reliability of SLC SSDs. SLC SSDs experience wear-out after approximately 100,000 program/erase cycles while MLC SSDs experience wear-out after 10,000 or less cycles. The upside of MLC SSDs is that they can reach higher capacities (over 200 GB) and are available at a lower price point because so many manufacturers are starting to produce them for desktops and laptops.

Conversely, SLC SSDs are the ones finding their way into enterprise storage systems. While the storage capacity of SLC SSDs is lower and they have a higher price than MLC SSDs, they support faster write speeds and have higher cell endurance so they have lower error rates. Since SLC SSDs do a better job of mitigating the possibility of data corruption, they are finding their way into the enterprise space since, at this level, data integrity arguably is more important than performance.

Flash is Unreliable

However at their core both MLC and SLC SSDs are flash drives, not hard disk drives (HDDs). SSD manufacturers have taken steps to make SSDs appear as HDDs to operating systems and applications but this action of making a flash drive look like an HDD is where the potential - and likelihood - for soft errors (an error in a computer's memory system that changes an instruction in a program or data value) to occur.

To make flash look like block storage requires a tremendous amount of processing power. Embedded microprocessors and DRAM are placed on the individual SSD devices that handle the task of making the SSD device appear as an HDD to the operating system and applications by handling the exchange of data between the application and the underlying SSD media.

While manufacturers are taking the appropriate steps to protect data once it is stored on the SSD to ensure that the data is preserved and does not become corrupted over time, this newly created process of handing off the data and retrieving it from the flash media is when soft errors can and do occur.

The "Unexamined" SSD Data Integrity Risk

This new compute process within the SSD devices that makes flash appear as an HDD is creating different data integrity risks that, to date, have gone largely unexamined as to the impact that it can have on data.

In brief, the specific problem that these new processes create is that it is still uncommon for most SSD devices to put enough sophistication into this process to even detect errors should they occur, much less do error correction. Because they are not looking for soft errors much less taking any steps to correct them should they occur, there is a small but distinct possibility that during the metadata handling that occurs with the processor instruction stream, something could go awry and the wrong piece of data could be stored or retrieved from the underlying flash media.

This soft error could later show up in financial applications displaying inaccurate financial information or healthcare software retrieving inaccurate information about a patient. The danger here is that because there is no error checking going on during the conversion process, invalid data could be presented as valid data due to the lack of data integrity checking that is occurring at this point in the process.

The True "Consumer" versus "Enterprise" SSD Differentiator

These anomalies in system behavior - and how they are addressed - are exactly what differentiates consumer from enterprise SSD solutions. In enterprise environments SSDs are more likely to be used for applications with high transaction rates. This increases the likelihood of this soft error anomaly occurring from "improbable" to "highly likely" so these applications demand SSD solutions that deliver performance while also taking these data integrity issues into account.

The increased frequency of these errors was confirmed in a recent study completed by the University of Toronto. The researchers found that DRAM error rates are "orders of magnitude higher than previously reported, with 25,000 to 70,000 errors per billion device hours per Mbit and more than 8% of DIMMs affected by errors per year." While the researchers found that memory errors are dominated by hard rather than soft errors, any system using memory without support for error correction and detection can lead to a memory error resulting in a machine crash or applications using corrupted data.

Because of the possibility that soft errors can occur, enterprises need SSD solutions that account for this behavior by detecting and correcting soft errors. Indeed, this ability to detect and prevent such anomalies from occurring is becoming the true differentiator between consumer and enterprise grade SSD solutions.

Fusion-io Takes the Appropriate Steps to Detect and Correct Soft Errors in SSDs

Enterprise SSD solutions will take the appropriate the steps to protect both the memory and CPU instruction stream from being corrupted prior to the data being stored to the SSD and then when it is retrieved. So any enterprise organization that is looking at SSD and has concerns about the integrity of its data stored on SSD needs a solution that mitigates the possibility of soft errors ever occurring.

Enterprise organizations are right to have a fair amount of skepticism about the appropriate role that SSDs should play in their data centers in light of their high cost and documented problems. This latest issue of how soft errors can occur within the SSD device itself is only one more reason that enterprise users should remain skeptical.

However the emergence of SSD solutions such as the Fusion-io ioDrive is one such product that takes into account the possibility of the occurrence of these soft errors and takes steps to prevent them from occurring. In an upcoming blog, I will take a look at two different techniques that currently exist for addressing this issue and why Fusion-io has selected the approach it has for addressing soft errors.

It's Time for Microsoft Hyper-V to Meet the Future of Storage Virtualization: Virsto One

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:30:00 -0600

Server virtualization is clearly becoming the end game for all size data centers. But as they virtualize their physical servers using Microsoft Windows Server 2008, new challenges emerge that range from managing each virtual machine's storage to effectively scaling up the number of the virtual machines (VMs) on each physical machine. This is where Virsto One, the newly introduced storage virtualization software from Virsto Software, comes into play.

The benefits of virtualizing physical servers are now well-known. Better utilization of physical server resources like CPU and memory; smaller server footprints in data centers; and, lower power consumption are just part of the payback that organizations expect and get when they implement server virtualization.

However as organizations virtualize multiple applications and consolidate them onto a single physical server, the issues associated with managing this configuration are not as well understood. Specifically, organizations are bound to encounter some or all of the following problems:

I/O blending. One of the lesser understood problems of virtualizing physical servers is that just because the server is virtualized does not mean its operating system understands it is virtualized. Operating systems still presume that they have their own dedicated storage resources so they have limited or no ability to prioritize read and write I/Os.

This lack of prioritization creates a problem for the underlying hypervisor. It is forced to mix the read and write I/O of all of its guest operating system together regardless of the nature of the application on the VM. This condition, known as I/O blending, results in the I/O of less critical applications receiving the same priority as more critical applications. This can negatively impact application performance.

I/O performance degradation. This condition of blending I/Os contributes to an overall degradation in the performance of each VM. While virtualizing a single application results in little or no performance degradation, no one virtualizes just one application. The intent is always to consolidate and virtualize as many application servers as possible onto one physical server.

This is where the problem emerges. One recent survey revealed that 61% of respondents run less than 10 VMs on a physical machine while only 5% run more than 25. The reason for the disparity is that as more application servers are virtualized, especially high performance applications, the more performance degrades. This inhibits how many VMs an organization may place on a single physical server and potentially limits the cost benefits that server virtualization may deliver.

Server virtualization sprawl. The two aforementioned issues become especially insidious since many administrators are not aware they exist until after they start to experience them. Due to the ease in which server virtualization makes it possible to create a new VM, even as the number of physical servers drop, the number of VM instances on the physical servers increase. One shop, after implementing server virtualization, reported a drop in the number of physical machines by 20% but a subsequent 150% increase in the number VM instances.

Storage over provisioning. The ease in which VMs can be created can easily result in storage over provisioning. A "golden image" VM clone is typically created to facilitate the rapid creation of new VMs going forward. The only problem with this approach is that a fixed amount of disk is associated with each "golden image" clone even though each new VM may need only a small percentage of the storage capacity associated with that clone. This method results in storage being assigned that goes unused while also depleting the pool of available storage capacity.

These issues are what today's release of Virsto One is designed to address. Virsto One is storage virtualization software that installs in the parent partition of Microsoft Hyper-V.
What makes Virsto One unique is its ability to provide enterprise class storage features at a fraction of the cost of previously existing solutions. To facilitate ease of management, it leverages standard Microsoft management methods such as WMI, MMC and VHD.

Virsto One uses techniques similar to high performance relational databases by journaling I/Os from individual machines and then de-staging them to their permanent storage location. This technique of sequentially writing redundant I/Os addresses many of the performance and storage problems associated with VM environments plus it offers new options for users to grow and better manage their VM environment going forward. For example, it:

Eliminates the performance impact of I/O blending. Using Virsto One, write I/Os occur more quickly. Preliminary results from early adopters indicate that there is almost no drop-off in application performance even as more VMs are added to the physical server.
Facilitates the cost-effective introduction of high performance disk such as FC, SAS or even solid state drives (SSDs) into virtualized environments. Since Virsto One needs only small amount of high performance disk, it facilitates the introduction of higher tiers of disk such as FC, SAS and SSD that will only enhance Virsto One's performance benefits.
Supports VM consolidation and scale-up. Organizations can now confidently add more VMs to a physical server and even potentially support multiple high performance applications on the same physical server as Virsto One can mitigate the I/O bottlenecks that previously prevented them from doing so.
Lowers storage costs. Virsto One lowers storage costs in two ways. First, it thinly provisions an unlimited number of VM-optimized, space-efficient and high performance "golden image" clones that only consume as much storage capacity as the VM actually needs. Second, many of the performance benefits that Virsto One delivers are a result of the I/O journaling discussed above. This permits organizations to use lower performing, more economical disk for permanent data storage since the data can be optimized for future reads by Virsto One as it is stored.

While Virsto One is currently available only for Microsoft Hyper-V environments, Virsto indicates that it intends to extend these benefits to other server virtualization platforms in the near future. In the meantime, Virsto dramatically changes the playing field for Microsoft Hyper-V as it opens the door for organizations to scale the number of VMs on a single physical server to a much higher level than they may have previously considered. Further, because of how it can accelerate write I/O, organizations can more seriously examine putting multiple high performance application servers on a single physical machine.

Virtual server storage and performance management still give many organizations pause when it comes time to deciding which applications to virtualize or if they should grow their existing VM installation. Virsto One starts to take these concerns off the table as it helps to remove these barriers.

Using Virsto One, organizations sitting on the fence can more confidently start down the path to server virtualization. Likewise, those already on this road can use Virsto One to become even more aggressive in taking advantage of the benefits that server virtualization offers with Microsoft Hyper-V. In this regards, Virsto One dramatically improves server virtualization's immediate and long term value proposition while simultaneously improving the manageability of both performance and storage on VMs.

Three Attributes that any Storage Solution for a Mid-sized Organization's Windows Consolidation and Virtualization Project Should Include

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:00:00 -0600

Virtualization, consolidation and servers are becoming inextricably linked in the minds of mid-sized organizations as they look to reduce data center footprints and energy consumption while increasing server hardware utilization. Yet what can get overlooked during the consolidation and virtualization of their Windows applications is the development of a corresponding storage strategy. This is where the specifics on what is needed to deliver on an appropriate storage solution for this environment become a necessity.

Executing on a successful application and server consolidation and virtualization strategy for mid-sized organizations now calls for networked storage. As far back as September 2006, one storage provider found that SAN attach rates for server virtualization environments ran at approximately 70% in enterprise environments. At that time, that provider forecast that as commodity Ethernet infrastructure became more commonplace, network storage attach rates would climb even higher.

Fast forward to today and 1 Gb Ethernet networks are almost ubiquitous among mid-sized organizations. Toss in the fact that analyst groups like Forrester Research anticipate that mid-sized organizations will virtualize another 25% of their server instances by 2010 so it becomes a near certainty that their use of external storage will increase.

However it is also a distinct possibility that these same organizations have not quantified the key attributes that their network storage solutions need to possess in order to support their newly virtualized application servers.

Consolidated networked storage solutions must account for new availability, performance and scalability requirements that server consolidation and virtualization creates. Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and backup servers are just some of the applications that will be virtualized while organizations will also look to consolidate file and print servers onto a centralized, networked attached storage (NAS) device.

Meeting these various needs calls for storage systems that possess the following three characteristics:

High Availability

The consolidation and virtualization of Windows applications onto just a few physical servers - or even onto one server - means mid-sized organizations are putting all of their "eggs in one basket" so they have new needs for high availability for both their servers and their storage.

To compensate for this heightened risk on the physical server, server hardware often includes dual power supplies and network cards. In addition, new software features such as Live Migration found in the release of Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V R2 operating system or VMware vMotion™ enable high availability through the dynamic application failovers from one physical server to another.

These same principles of high availability need to carry over into the storage hardware that is used by these virtualized applications. For example, a storage system such as the NetApp FAS3100 Series possesses all of the redundancy features found in server hardware as well as features such as dual active controllers and hot-swappable components such as controllers, fans and power supplies that can be replaced without requiring system downtime.

The FAS3100 also allows data replication as part of its solution. Using this software, users can configure the FAS3100 to replicate data locally in the form of its Snapshot feature or remotely using its SnapMirror feature. Mid-sized organizations can even take advantage of the FAS3100's MetroCluster feature which can continuously replicate data to another remote FAS3100 for continuous offsite application availability.

Data Protection

A growing concern with the virtualization of applications is how to best protect the data of these applications. Virtualized applications must now share their underlying physical server's hardware resources with other virtualized applications.

The sharing of hardware resources is often taken into account before applications are consolidated but the network, memory and performance resources that each application's backup software requires can be overlooked. This can result in server bottlenecks during off-peak hours as the backup software on each virtual machine (VM) contends for these limited server hardware resources.

Off-host backups in the form of snapshots that occur on the storage system are now seen as preferential to running traditional backups on each application's VM. By using features such as the FAS3100 Snapshot, organizations can create near-instantaneous backups of individual VMs and associated data without incurring any performance penalty on the host physical server.

Once created, these snapshots can be then used in a couple of ways. They can serve as a primary source for recovering application data since administrators can directly access and recover date from these snapshots. Alternatively, they can act as a source for the application data that backup software running on another server can access and they copy the data off to disk or tape.

Scalability and Flexibility

It is no secret that data growth continues even in today's continued tough economic environment. However server virtualization makes it even easier for organizations to create new VMs that require more data storage. This can aggravate problems on the storage side since organizations may buy a system that cannot scale, cannot support multiple tiers of storage, or both.

The dynamics of this environment makes it difficult to plan and account for every detail going forward which makes it a necessity to identify a storage system that:

Provides flexible options for growth. Organizations should have options to add more capacity, new software features or even upgrade the entire storage system as the availability, capacity and performance demands of the virtualized server environment change.

NetApp FAS storage systems are notable in that they all use the same underlying operating system (Data ONTAP) so its advanced software features such as FlexVol (thin provisioning) and deduplication, are available on any NetApp model from entry level FAS2000 Series to high end FAS6000 Series. NetApp also gives organizations the flexibility to scale performance or storage capacity so organizations can theoretically start out with a FAS2000 and grow it to a FAS6000 without ever needing to do a data migration.

Minimizes impact to environment during upgrades. Virtualized applications decrease the tolerance for downtime for any reason including storage system upgrades and NetApp provides this type of availability for higher end FAS models. For instance, if organizations start out with a FAS2020 and need to upgrade to a FAS2040, it can do an in place. upgrade of the existing system without incurring any significant application downtime.

Minimizes learning curve. IT staffing levels are remaining flat or even declining so the interface and commands that organizations use to manage the storage system should ideally remain the same as it scales to larger, more robust systems.

In this respect, NetApp is unparalleled among storage system providers as it uses a common management interface across all of its platforms so once users learn its commands, they can use the same commands on any of NetApp platforms without needing to relearn them.

Block and file storage interfaces. Organizations are consolidating multiple types of applications - database servers, Exchange servers as well as file and print servers. As they do so, some applications belong on server virtualization platforms such as VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V while others more appropriately belong on storage systems that support NAS. In this regards, NetApp offers both block (SAN-FC, iSCSI, FCoE) and file (NAS-CIFS, NFS) interfaces so organizations can consolidate onto a single unified storage platform for simplified administration.

The adoption of server virtualization is well under way in mid-sized organizations and forecast to gain momentum in 2010 for a host of reasons. But as its adoption accelerates, mid-sized organizations must consider the entire scope of their virtualized environment which must include storage.

Selecting an appropriate networked storage system that will host the data of virtualized applications is now critical to the overall success of implementing virtualization. It is for these reasons that storage system characteristics such as high availability, data protection and scalability and flexibility play such an important role in determining how successfully applications will perform and are managed after they are virtualized.

So when one finds features like deduplication, high availability, replication, snapshots and thin provisioning on a storage platform, one can have a high degree of confidence that it offers these three characteristics that mid-sized organizations now need for their virtualized Windows environments. This is why platforms such as the NetApp Unified Storage Architecture are so well suited for virtualized environments and have become critical to delivering on all of the requirements that mid-sized organizations are sure to encounter both initially and in the future as they start down the virtualization path.

Solix ExAPPS Brings New Relief to Application Retirement Anxiety

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:00:00 -0600

People may come and go but applications live forever. Well, not exactly, but that mindset leads to the application retirement problems that many organizations face today. Often applications remain intact and running on corporate networks long after their useful life is over but gracefully shutting them down is no simple matter. However the recently released Solix ExAPPS appliance provides organizations a new option for retiring these applications while alleviating the uncertainty normally associated with such decisions.

Application functionality, architecture, or business rules often change over time that can render an application obsolete that leaves an organization's application portfolio less than optimized. In a research paper, Plan Legacy Application Retirements Carefully, Jim Duggan, a Research VP with Gartner, makes the following observation, "On average, 10% of the applications in an un-optimized portfolio are candidates for retirement. An additional one-third can require migration or rationalization."

In an era of economic downturn, where companies want to squeeze costs and do more with less, all sizes of companies, from SMBs to large corporations, are recognizing the value of application retirement. This is done as much to reduce costs and simplify the IT infrastructure as it is done to eliminate the need to migrate or virtualize seldom or minimally used applications.

Considering that many enterprise organizations have numerous applications spread across many server platforms with numerous database servers on the backend, the value of decommissioning these application servers quickly becomes evident. However application retirements go beyond just the hardware and software costs. Maintaining and managing the infrastructures needed to support legacy applications takes expertise, often specialists.

Aggravating the situation, as an organization continues to run old applications on legacy hardware or out-dated software versions, the available amount of expertise in the within an organization or marketplace continually diminishes. This increases the risk of losing all expertise associated with an application; running applications that are unsupported or require high-maintenance; and, having data in-house with no one being able to access or interpret data in a knowledgeable fashion.

So while the cost benefits of retiring applications may be clear, the risks associated with application retirement can be vague. Consider:

Organizations lack expertise in the application retirement process. This results in an inability to zero in on which applications should be retired
Organizations cannot quantify which underlying application data needs to be retained. This creates apprehension and risk when considered against the backdrop of compliance requirements and different federal and state regulations.
Budgets are already tight. Obtaining funding for additional resources can be difficult, especially when those resources are high-paid consultants and the applications scheduled for retirement often are already included as line items in the organization's budget.

But probably the biggest question that organizations face when deciding to retire an application is, "What will happen to the data?" The data may be needed for compliance and legal reasons but who else uses or accesses the data. Sometimes there are no records as to when the last time the data was accessed, who accessed it and for what purpose. Further, no one wants to say they were the one who deleted the data only to find out later that it is needed by executive management.

Therefore before any solution is introduced that facilitates application retirement, it must satisfy the following criteria:

The application context of legacy data must be preserved. Not only must objects, columns, and attributes be preserved but an understanding of how an application's logic interprets codes and the relationships between data so the application data still makes sense should it need to be retrieved and referenced in the future.
Data is stored in an accessible format. Regardless of data format for an application, data must be stored in a compatible format. If a legacy application uses a backend database that contains binary large objects (BLOBs) then the storage repository for retired applications should be able to accommodate and efficiently store these types of objects as well.
Store all legacy data stored in a single location. This makes it simpler and more efficient to find and retrieve later on should the requirement emerge.
All legacy applications should be considered to have unique data reporting requirements. These requirements should be fully supported by any BI tools that are put in place after the application retirement.
An open or standard access method should be used. While it is difficult to predict data access methods in the future, storing data in formats that are considered open today increase the likelihood that the data can be retrieved at some point in the future.

It is these issues that the new Solix ExAPPS addresses. Recognizing this new corporate need for a solution that automates application retirement while preserving application data integrity, Solix ExAPPS is a pre-built, pre-configured, and pre-tested appliance that can be plugged directly into the corporate network for the single purpose of application retirement.

Organizations only need to use a Web browser to point the Solix ExAPPS at an identified target application's data using a Web browser. Once it sees the application, ExAPPS begins the process of migrating all of the application's data, including its objects, reports, and the context of how the application data is used and referenced, to the Solix ExAPPS secured repository in an immutable form. This process guarantees data can not be modified and remains safe to meet compliance requirements.

Since this is a fully automated process, it a repeatable and eliminates the manual, ad hoc nature of past application retirement attempts that relied heavily upon consultants, system integrators and third parties utilities and migration tools.

Once an application is retired and the data moved over to the Solix ExAPPS appliance, business users or IT can query the ExAPPS appliance and report on the legacy data using standard enterprise reporting tools. While the data is stored in a proprietary database (the Solix Secure Archive), it is accessed using a standard SQL engine so standard database query methods will work.

Depending on how the Solix ExAPPS is utilized, organizations may see even further savings. ExAPPS compresses legacy data by up to 90% and a single Solix ExAPPS Appliance can replace multiple physical servers, applications and storage in the data center thereby significantly reducing operating budgets and increasing operational efficiencies.

The benefits of shutting down aging or unused applications are easy to see but as anyone knows who has ever been asked to turn such an application off - you hate to be the one responsible for pushing the button only to have someone request the application data later on. The Solix ExAPPS takes these concerns about application retirement off the table. Using the Solix ExAPPS appliance, organization can quickly and easily deploy a solution that enables them to achieve their goal of cost-effectively application retirement.

Need to Execute on a Disaster Recovery Plan? Think AmeriVault

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:20:00 -0600

Putting a disaster recovery plan in place is a task that every company pays lip service to but when push comes to shove, how many companies - regardless of their size - actually take the initiative and follow the plan all the way through? The answer is far too few. Whether it is an unspoken belief that a disaster will never really happen or the costs are simply too high, most companies find it nearly impossible to move their DR plan beyond the discussion stage.

In recent blog entries I've discussed the advantages of AmeriVault's new ReStartIT-VDR service and how easily it allows companies to execute on their plans to put a DR plan in place. So the question is why aren't companies moving faster? Most likely because companies have failed to take a hard look at their current tape based backup environment and come to grips that they have no assurance whatsoever that they can recover their business applications using tape.

I am not anti-tape but business recovery requirements have fundamentally changed. Despite this fact, companies persist in using tape when the recovery requirements of today's business applications are not hours, days or weeks but seconds, minutes or at most hours. These requirements completely obliterate whatever rationale companies might have for wanting to stick with tape as their primary means of recovery but still they do so.

This does not even take into account all of the headaches associated with managing the tape media itself. Tape media breaks and wears down, the tape cartridge and tape drive format may be incompatible, tape rotation is difficult to manage and tapes can be lost or difficult to find. Then add in intangibles like documentation, expertise and like systems at a secondary site in order to recover the data. The irony is that the entire premise of using tape as a foundation for disaster recovery is based on a lie and the sooner companies realize this the sooner they can get off the tape merry-go-round and start to focus on making smart decisions about how to backup and recover their corporate data.

The beautiful thing about what AmeriVault is doing is they are making the smart decision easier for businesses to make. In essence, AmeriVault backs up and recovers your data for the same amount of money or less than you are spending now while guaranteeing it will work. From my viewpoint, you have to be crazy, stupid or looking to join the ranks of the unemployed not to listen to this message. So my recommendation is for more companies to take the blinders off and take a harder look at what AmeriVault's online backup and its accompanying ReStartIT-VDR can offer in solving one's backup and DR problems in 2008.

December 21 is a Point of Demarcation for Improved Disaster Recovery

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:39:17 -0600

Today, December 21st, marks the official launch of AmeriVault's new ReStartIT-VDR and ReStartIT-HA services. Though December 21st is primarily marked in the annals of history as the day when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, MA, for AmeriVault in particular and small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in general, it may well serve as a point of demarcation in terms of changing how businesses can expect to restart their IT operations using AmeriVault's services should a disaster occur.

The spectrum of disasters that may impact a company's IT operations is vast. Though the number of natural disasters is fairly finite - blizzards, earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes and tornados, to name a few - there is an almost an infinite number of minor disasters that are just as disruptive to IT operations, such as broken water pipes, defective air conditioners, overloaded electrical circuits or an out of control car crashing into the side of your computer room. Any of these disasters can force a company with minimal or no warning to abruptly move and restart their IT operations at another location just to stay in business.

However anyone involved in corporate operations understands that the trials and tribulations involved with configuring, setting up and then managing an alternative site is no trivial task. Aside from the costs associated with setting up a disaster recovery (DR) site, other intangible factors that come into play include:

· Who takes the lead in a DR scenario?

· Who takes the lead if that person is not available?

· Who is responsible for funding for the DR site?

· What if there is inadequate funding to recover certain applications at the DR site?

· Who tests the recovery of applications and how often?

· How quickly do you need to recover your business?

· Can your DR site support multiple recovery points? If not, do you need and can you afford to change your DR configuration?

· What if it is a partial disaster and you only need to recover some of your applications at your DR site? Do you fail everything over or just the affected applications?

These are just some of the types of questions and scenarios that businesses need to ask and account for when building out and maintaining a separate DR site. However these questions and issues are by no means an exhaustive list. Unfortunately what too often occurs is that for any company who takes the time to thoroughly examine the issue, they will almost inevitably decide that the costs and headaches associated with building out a separate DR facility gives them no more assurance of a safe recovery than doing nothing.

This is why the new ReStartIT-VDR and -HA services from AmeriVault make so much sense for so many businesses. For about $25,000 a year, a business with 300 GB of production data can introduce a level of business continuity and application recovery that previously was available only to companies with DR budgets of millions of dollars and dedicated staff.

Using AmeriVault's new ReStartIT services, companies can restart their corporate applications at AmeriVault's data center while employees work from home and access their applications running at AmeriVault's site through secure Internet links. AmeriVault even offers an option where companies can take advantage of AmeriVault's partnership with Agility Recovery Solutions. Agility Recovery Solutions delivers mobile recovery trailers, replacement hardware and telecom so businesses can recover their IT operations within 48 hours. AmeriVault synchronizes data recovery for a complete data-to-desktops solution.

December 21st, 2007, is a day when most of us are looking forward to a few days off and celebrating Christmas with friends and family. However for those looking forward to the promise of how to better protect one's business, today's launch of AmeriVault's ReStartIT starts to deliver on those promises a few days early.

IBM's Acquisition May Create Big Blues

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:59:18 -0600

Over the last few years, many of the major vendors in traditional backup software and storage solutions have strayed from their well-established roots. Iron Mountain, Seagate, EMC and Symantec have all jumped into the online backup managed service pool mostly via acquisition. IBM even made a splash last week as the latest vendor to announce an acquisition of an online backup managed service provider (MSP).

But what does this mean for end users facing solution decisions going forward? In the past it was just a question of what tape media, tape drive and offsite records management provider to use. Now the choices are tape, disk or managed services. To address these issues, I caught up with AmeriVault's Director of Marketing, Scott Bush, to discuss this industry trend and what challenges that end users face.

First, Scott raised some questions where potential conflicts of interest may arise when a publicly-traded enterprise with a traditional in-house solution acquires an online backup service provider.

· What will happen when you integrate sales efforts?

· Are you going to receive the best solution or whatever will please shareholders the most?

· Will technical support jump through hoops or have to conform to a process that handles tens-of-thousands of customers?

· Will the new regime embrace the superior technology and still provide the number of personal touches that made the service great in the first place?

Second, in this consolidation climate, Scott feels AmeriVault's position is ideal. It maintains a highly-secure and redundant infrastructure and then adopts best-of-breed software to deliver the latest advances available such as continuous backup and deduplication. Being very deep and narrow in online data protection assures AmeriVault stays focused on customer needs and the number of touches needed to optimize service and facilitate disaster recoveries.

Scott adds that competing with these larger, public enterprises doesn't change the rules. You still have to fully fix the problem, be credible and offer a competitive price. Then it all comes down to service, where AmeriVault feels it has the edge.

Overall, though, Scott sees the IBM acquisition as a positive for AmeriVault. Seeing the traditional storage providers add managed, online service to their portfolio raises the visibility and awareness of online backup among customers and gives AmeriVault's business model more credibility. He feels this is the final validation that online backup is a best practice and threat to traditional in-house solutions.

To further differentiate but remain true to data protection, AmeriVault continues to wrap complementary services around its online backup service including RestartIT-VDR, an economical, remote recovery solution and AmeriVault-DV, a lifecycle and archiving service that handles older, less-accessed data. These offerings coupled with its highly available infrastructure and its continued independence should give AmeriVault advantages that allow them to compete with other companies who are buying their way into the business.

Guaranteeing The Right Online Backup Choice

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:35:49 -0600

"Online backup has gone from an educational process to which vendor should I choose."

That's the state of online backup according to AmeriVault's CIO, Kevin Harris. In the 10 years since he and CEO Bud Stoddard founded AmeriVault, he has seen tremendous changes in customer perceptions and understanding about online backup.

Back then the Internet was still in its infancy and the idea of using online backup to send data over the Internet was a "scary thing" in the eyes of prospective AmeriVault clients. Harris says, "We had to prove everything including how we would backup data, how they would recover data and if it was secure and safe."

In 2007 these issues are largely laid to rest as most prospective customers now understand how it works. The larger problem Harris deals with now is how does AmeriVault differentiate itself? Customers can now go out to Google, do a search on online backup and get 30 pages of hits on companies that provide online backup. Since they all look the same based on Google search results, now the first question prospective clients are most likely to ask is, "What vendor should I choose?"

Choosing a vendor based on the lowest price is simply not enough anymore since, as Harris puts it, "online backup prices are all over the map". There are multiple criteria to consider when selecting a managed service provider and many now use the same underlying backup software to provide online backup services. In this competitive environment, Harris says one of AmeriVault's differentiators is to offer a "high touch" approach.

Harris points to AmeriVault's call center as one of the ways they deliver on that promise. Though businesses can contact AmeriVault by email, when they need to recover data they almost always use the phone. To make good on that promise, AmeriVault has its own people answering calls but during periods of high call volumes, AmeriVault contracts with a third party answering service to answer the overflow who immediately contact AmeriVault. 'No one is ever stuck leaving a voice message," promises Harris.

Providing service level agreements is the other primary way that Harris sees as an AmeriVault differentiator. AmeriVault guarantees three 9's of uptime (99.9% system availability) and response times of two hours or less on all customer calls on or off business hours. "As far as I know, we are the only managed service provider in the industry that provides these types of guarantees," says Harris.

As AmeriVault's CIO Harris astutely points out, "high touch" will become, if it is not already, a key to customers to selecting the right provider of online backup services for them. Google makes it easy to find scores of providers whose offerings on the surface may look very similar and provide no easy way to differentiate between providers. By wrapping "high touch" around online backup services and then stamping it with a guarantee, AmeriVault makes the choice of an online backup provider an easier one to make.

This Darwin is Proven

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0600

Businesses have come to terms that their data growth rates are climbing ever higher and generally deal with them by consistently bringing in more storage to house it. However what companies may fail to do is account for how they intend to protect this data and evolve their data protection schemes to manage this data growth. Since backup is generally not a strategic initiative for most companies, the question more companies should ask themselves is, "Is it wiser for us to outsource my backups than try to manage this function ourselves?"

That's the question Jeannine Gaudreau, the Manager of Network Engineering and Security at Darwin Partners, a Wakefield, MA, based IT Services firm asked over eight years ago. When she first assumed her role at Darwin Partners, she initially could backup all of Darwin Partner's data to a single tape. At that time her biggest concerns were simply remembering to take the backup tape offsite and buy new tapes when they expired. However as Darwin Partners grew, so did the amount of data she needed to manage and backup.

As she watched her company's data growth rate explode, she saw that it was outstripping her ability to manage the backups and recover the data. This situation drove her to examine not only how to better backup and recover her company's data but do so in a more cost-effective means while creating an offsite option for disaster recovery. This situation was amplified as Darwin Partners grew and added offices in San Francisco and China as these offices needed to remain operational should a disaster strike Darwin Partner's Wakefield, MA, data center.

She initially examined more traditional options of setting up a secondary data center or doing a collocation with another company but both of them came with a huge price tag. This prompted her to take a look at AmeriVault's online backup service in 1999. While maintaining full control over her backup requirements, she wouldn't have to worry about scaling issues and could quickly add servers or remote sites on demand. Data sets, retentions and frequency were all easily customizable while AmeriVault would seamlessly manage the back end storage.

Jeannine's decision to switch to online backup in 1999 definitely represented a "thinking outside of the box" mentality at that time since only now, in 2007, is online backup maturing among SMBs. But as Jeannine can attest, she now spends far less time thinking about whether or not last night's backups happened plus she now has a number of viable and affordable options to recover her company's data should a disaster strike.

As Darwin Partners discovered, companies can not afford not to examine AmeriVault's online backup service as a viable offering. In addition to the benefits of eliminating tape management and monitoring daily backups, AmeriVault gives them more options to recover their data and, with new service offerings like RestartIT-VDR and AmeriVault-DV, new possibilities for disaster recovery and data archiving that they normally could not deliver in-house.

IT's Not-So-Sinister Dirty Little Secret

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:17:45 -0600

The October 2007 issue of InfoStor magazine ran an article entitled "IT's New Dirty Little Secret" which includes an estimate from the Enterprise Strategy Group where they believe that 60 - 80% of data on primary storage today is static or persistent data. Static or persistent data is not accessed at all for 90 days or more after its initial creation which then consumes valuable storage capacity and data center power. This is "IT's new dirty little secret," says analyst Heidi Biggar.

While I do agree that IT may hide this information from business managers (or minimally does not draw their attention to it), this cover-up is probably not as sinister as it sounds. The deeper problem is that IT has no practical, economical and easy-to-implement-and-manage solutions for this problem. Archiving, virtualization and HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management) software are just some of the possible ways to tackle and address this issue that has been around for years. But even the InfoStor article brings out that only a limited number of companies have implemented this software and most have taken no action at all on the problem.

So why aren't more companies taking action? The answer is two-fold. First, taking action is not simple. All of the aforementioned tools usually require corporate buy-in, lengthy purchasing cycles and time to implement the software. Meanwhile the cost of disk continues to drop so they know, to a certain degree, buying more disk is always an option. Second, who will manage the software and new hardware once they acquire it? Buying cheaper disk storage systems or storing more data to tape saves money now but instead of managing just one or two expensive storage devices, they now have more hardware to manage. This introduces other risks and complexity into an organization and partially defeats the purpose for better managing the data in the first place.

AmeriVault, known for remote online data backup services, also delivers online file archiving for lifecycle management of this static data. This is a natural fit for a common problem that many businesses face - backup windows. AmeriVault uses backup software that takes block-level changes and compresses data sets with traditional algorithms and deduplication. Combine that with their new archiving software that archives static, less critical data and all-night backup may now take less than a few hours so the backup window issue disappears.

Managed archiving solves the hardware burden as well by eliminating the corporate need to manage the storage devices on which the static data resides. Instead this task falls to the MSP who maintain the backend hardware. Administrators set policies that establish what data is archived and end users access the data as usual with the file name doubling as a stub pointer to the offsite archive.

IT is just like everyone else, who wants to talk about and publicize problems when they have no answer for them? The combination of online backup and archiving offered by AmeriVault as part of its AmeriVault-DV data archiving service gives SMBs a new option to consider which they may find more palatable than many of the other solutions currently on the market.

Your Emerging Data Management Provider

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:34:45 -0600

Scott Bush, AmeriVault's Director of Marketing, and I regularly discuss over the phone current trends that are shaping the future of online backup. It was during one of these conversations that Scott just happened to mention that AmeriVault relies heavily on Internet search engines for lead generation.

Now I usually view Internet search engines as means for consumers to find information to make decisions and buy products. But the fact that AmeriVault generates many of its new business leads through the Internet indicates that companies, not just individuals, are also using the Internet as a source for making buying decisions. Where it gets difficult is how do individuals in businesses substantiate the quality of the information they are reading to make critical buying decisions?

I find this topic particularly intriguing because with most consumer products, you can research them to the nth degree and what makes them different. Whether it is Zest soap, Chef Boyardee ravioli or Jiff peanut butter, you can find nutrition information, where it was made, who uses it, how long it lasts under ultraviolet light before it starts to glow and, with some digging, how it compares and contrasts to other like products. But try to find current information about products and services that businesses buy, that information suddenly becomes difficult to come by.

Current information on online backup providers is especially difficult to find. On the surface, it might be easy to think that online backup providers are exactly alike, especially if one is not familiar with the space. However it quickly becomes evident that online backup providers refer to themselves as Managed Service Providers, or MSPs, because they do more than just backup data. Email and file archiving, hosted replication, data classification and disaster recovery are services that they either offer now or are considering for the future.

The possibility of SMBs obtaining these types of services from an MSP like AmeriVault is not so far-fetched. SMBs rarely have the time, money or staff to develop these data management disciplines themselves. Since MSPs are already managing their backup data and have become backup experts, they have easy access to SMB data and can can look to offer services like archiving, classification and disaster recovery. Since MSPs can support multiple clients, SMBs are better off leveraging the seasoned MSP expertise rather than bringing technologies in house that they have to learn, maintain, and dedicate valuable resources to. After all, don't most SMBs out-source their payroll? So the leap to out-sourcing their data management is not a big one to make.

Virtualization and Online Backup: A New Win-Win Scenario

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:12:17 -0600

VMWare has captured the attention of the storage space unlike any other technology in quite some time. VMWare's primary value proposition is virtualizing multiple physical Linux, NetWare, Windows and Solaris servers on a single physical server. While companies may first look at VMWare from a cost-saving perspective to minimize the number of production servers they need to manage, companies may hesitate in adopting it.

IT managers are, by their very nature, risk-averse so while they may see the value proposition of VMWare, they know that beneath the surface of every new technology, even one such as VMWare, lies unknown issues. IT managers do not want to be the first to uncover and have to work through those issues. So while the idea of virtualizing 5, 10 or even 20 physical servers onto one physical server may sound appealing from a financial and technical perspective, it also creates the harsh reality that a single server hosting multiple virtual servers creates a single point of failure. Historically, when an IT Manager lost a single physical server, only application services on that server were negatively impacted. Forward looking, if the hardware supporting a VMWare server fails, all of the application services on that VMWare server also fail.

The other concern with VMWare is that it requires different skill sets than most entry-level and mid-level system administrators typically possess. Managing a VMWare instance may require understanding and supporting technologies such as N-Port ID virtualization (NPIV), memory ballooning, iSCSI SAN support and storage I/O traffic prioritization. These are not trivial tasks and certainly not skills that the average Linux, Solaris or Windows administrator are likely to have acquired in their current roles. IT managers are then faced with helping their staff acquire new skills and transition from their existing environment to an emerging virtual datacenter.

This is where using online backup in conjunction with a company's real servers or the virtualized servers can take some of the risk out of this transition. An online backup service provider should be able to support the following restore capabilities:

• Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) - Backup data from a physical server is restored to a virtual server
• Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) - Backup data from a guest system is restored to another guest or virtual machine
• Virtual-to-Physical (V2P) - Backup data from a guest is restored to a physical server

Of these three, companies considering virtual datacenters should evaluate the physical-to-virtual (P2V) option first. Since companies often have multiple physical servers in multiple locations, the idea that one should replace all of one's existing physical assets with one new virtual server is perceived as too risky for most. Using online backup with existing servers and then using virtualized servers to recover data gives companies a viable and safer means to start the transition to a virtualized environment since it gives them a justifiable means to understand how virtualization works.

To execute P2V recoveries, companies can use online backup services from AmeriVault to first backup their current servers. They then can experiment with VMWare in a disaster recovery scenario to simulate recoveries of data from any of their servers to virtual servers. What makes this combination practical is that companies can solve their immediate backup problems using online backup; they can provide a viable option to recover any of their servers in any site using VMWare; and they can use this as an opportunity to expose their existing administrators to VMWare in a relatively risk-free manner. This creates a win-win-win scenario for everyone involved and one which companies would be advised to explore.

Lastly, if virtualization is being considered, one must ask if the legacy backup method will adapt to the new virtualized environment. With online backup, you're going to use the Internet and not physical hardware, therefore eliminating any roadblocks and paving the way for future backup and recovery flexibility.

It's Time to Wakeup to Online Backup

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 07:00:00 -0600

In this first blog entry for AmeriVault, DCIG Inc wishes to thank AmeriVault for agreeing to be a beta client for DCIG Inc's new blogging service. As part of this beta, DCIG Inc will provide AmeriVault with three blog entries a month written by a DCIG Inc analyst. In these blog entries, DCIG Inc will discuss and examine topics germane to AmeriVault's business model - online backup - and is directed to customers who already use it or are considering its adoption. So without further ado, welcome and read on!

In case no one has noticed, it is October 2007 and companies are still struggling with backup. Whether it is troubleshooting a failed tape drive, trying to find a tape lost in a snow bank or wondering who stuck what label on which tape, it is ridiculous to think that high paid systems administrators are spending endless hours managing tapes.

Problems like these are part of the reason that DCIG Inc views online backup as one of the critical technologies that small and midsize businesses (SMBs) need to evaluate. In just the last few years, online backup has grown from a nascent industry to a viable option for backup for SMBs. Online backup managed service providers (MSPs) offer cutting edge data protection technologies such as agent-less backup software, deduplication, redundant data centers and technical staff whose job is doing backup - features and expertise most SMBs only wish they had the time to understand and develop in-house.

Recently I had a conversation with Scott Bush, AmeriVault's Director of Marketing, about this very topic. Bush agreed that a number of online backup MSPs offer these services but he brought out that backup MSPs are starting to mature and differentiate themselves. For instance, like other backup MSPs, AmeriVault licenses Asigra's TeleVaulting software for backing up data at its client sites. Where AmeriVault seeks to differentiate itself is by taking advantage of some of the inherent features found in Asigra's TeleVaulting to help keep its clients' backup costs under control.

One such feature is Asigra TeleVaulting's backup lifecycle management (BLM) feature. Using BLM, AmeriVault can set policies that manage which tier of storage backup data is kept on. AmeriVault currently uses three tiers of storage and, by default, keeps all of a clients' data on its most highly available storage and then replicates the data to a second data center. However, for clients who backup older data and are willing to take advantage of this feature, AmeriVault can classify backed up data by age and move it to other tiers of storage using Asigra TeleVaulting's BLM feature.

Bush cautions that users will assume a little more risk in this scenario since the data on the lower tier storage is not replicated to a second data center. However since the data is older and rarely or never accessed anyway, users can still keep their data online, lower their backup costs and have some assurance that only in a truly catastrophic situation which impacts AmeriVault's data center is their data somewhat at risk.

As this example with AmeriVault illustrates, services provided by online backup MSPs for SMBs are evolving beyond just backup. Though online backup helps to takes the sleepless nights and daily struggles out of backup, online backup MSPs like AmeriVault are also taking SMBs to levels of backup management that most have never considered. In so doing, AmeriVault solves immediate SMB pain points while providing them a roadmap for their future backup needs.