Symantec Enterprise Vault Archiving Framework Overview

Over 5,000 global customers use Enterprise Vault as an archiving framework to reduce risk and increase operational efficiency

Business is drowning in data. As part of the normal daily operation large numbers of emails and documents are generated; buyers may negotiate purchasing contracts over email, financial analysts may share data via Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, and product managers may publish pricing and competitive information via file shares. All of these activities are fundamental to the smooth operation of the business and all generate business records, which, at some point, may be required for regulatory, litigation, or knowledge purposes.

Today’s complex storage and server infrastructures are not designed to cope with the efficient long-term retention of large volumes of data. The backup/recovery process becomes impossible within a reasonable timeframe. Keeping up with and exploiting the latest software capabilities raises the huge challenge of migrating legacy data. With IT budgets and resources stretched to the limit, the temptation to purge historical data is strong. But the increasing legal and regulatory demands mean this is not an option.

 

Flexibility and adaptability
Delivering value today, meeting your future needs

Without a flexible approach to storage the operational risks are overwhelming.  Without an adaptable platform for information exploitation the risk of non-compliance could be catastrophic. Imposing complex document retention solutions on your users will result in overload. Enterprise Vault is designed to deliver long-term, archival storage of multiple types of data. The information and data lifecycles are managed and relevant content can be found on demand.  A complete solution is delivered without disruption to the user, avoiding the need to change business processes and retrain staff.  The heart of this solution is the Enterprise Vault archiving framework.  Designed to offer secure, scalable information retention that is nonintrusive for the user, the framework is a natural evolution of Symantec’s market-leading archiving solution deployed around the world.

The archiving framework

Every organization is different. You need a solution that meets your business and operational needs, taking into account your current and potential future requirements. The archiving framework delivers the exact solution you require today, giving you the platform to meet current and future information retention requirements and exploit advances in storage and server technology. The framework consists of services grouped into a number of modules. By providing such a modular solution Symantec maximizes the value of your investment.

Components of archiving

The solution of the archiving problem can be broken down into a number of areas; each of these is represented by a layer in the archiving framework.

Enterprise Vault Repository

Central to every organization is the creation and ongoing management of the archive and its contents. This capability is delivered by the Enterprise Vault Repository. This is designed to deliver the capability to securely retain archived data in such a way that it can be fully exploited, and disposed of when it is no longer required. The Repository is designed to:

• Store archived content on the most appropriate platform

 • Compress and single-instance for storage reduction

 • Index content for rapid and targeted retrieval

 • Render an HTML copy of all archived content, thereby

   securing future accessibility

 • Utilize user authentication security controls

 • Define and implement retention and deletion policies

  

Content sources

Enterprise Vault is designed to store content from multiple data sources. Movement of content from the application to the Repository is carried out transparently via policy control. This ensures that fundamental records can be retained without affecting normal daily operations.

Open storage layer

The Repository provides for retention of the archive on the initial storage platform. Depending on the size of the organization and the nature of the content, there may be a need to use other types of storage, or indeed consolidate and partition archives for maximum efficiency. Your storage infrastructure may contain SAN and NAS technology and increasingly may embrace newer technologies such as EMC Centera and Network Appliance NearStore. The timescale for retention of content may be a few years, or a few decades. Today’s storage media may be regarded as legacy in the future. Storage lifecycle management

therefore is paramount to the long-term usefulness of archived content. To facilitate true lifecycle management the Open Storage Layer allows policy-based migration of archived data across storage media through time. This allows you to take advantage of the storage media best suited to the content’s age and usage profile, and reduce the total cost of storing the archive.

Performance and scalability infrastructure

The Enterprise Vault Repository is architected to provide the optimal performance for single or distributed server solutions. As the deployment environment becomes more complex, so it becomes important to have the ability to deploy components of Enterprise Vault in a distributed manner. Symantec and its partners have tested Enterprise Vault to beyond 100,000 users. A building block approach allows different servers to be used for archiving, indexing, journaling, and many other activities.

Universal access layer

Due to the wide range of data sources that can be archived, and the many ways in which end users work, it is important to provide an adaptable user interface. One of the key premises of Enterprise Vault is that end users should not have to change the way they work as a result of the implementation of archiving. Email clients should still be able to access current and historical email; file system content should still be accessible, and when working offline, archived email should still be available. To this end, Enterprise Vault has available a wide variety of client options:

• Transparent shortcuts in Microsoft Outlook®

• Universal shortcuts for non-Outlook clients

• Full access from Microsoft Outlook Web Access

• Transparent placeholders for archived file system content

• Hierarchical “Explorer” view across all archived sources

• Offline access for mobile and remote users

• Simple and extended full text search capabilities from

Outlook and Web interfaces The implementation of archiving and keeping of business records need not be intrusive for end users. They use familiar tools and continue to work as before.

Archive exploitation

Reducing the overall cost of storage should be only part of the TCO addressed by an archiving solution. Content is being kept because at some point in the future you will need to access it; otherwise, why would you keep it? Typically business records need to be accessed as part of a regulatory action, or as part of a litigation action. In both of these circumstances it is paramount that the information can be found very quickly and that only relevant information is disclosed. The ability to search the archive is only one part of the requirement. Locating the right set of content in response to litigation (perhaps as part of a contractual dispute) will require multiple searches. Search sets will require review by people with different levels of experience. An audit will be required of how decisions were made on what material to disclose. There is a process to this and it requires workflow. Enterprise Vault business accelerators deliver this workflow and drive the discovery or compliance process. Initially there are two business accelerators available within the framework:

• Discovery of content in response to litigation or a similar

   event (Discovery Accelerator)

• Regulatory supervision in line with finance regulations

   (Compliance Accelerator)

Framework benefits

• Built upon proven solutions from the market leader
• Supports many different content sources, not just email
• Nonintrusive for the end user
• Flexible deployment options
• Complete exploitation of archived content
• Addresses operational efficiency and compliance
• Enables information and storage lifecycle management
• Adaptable for future needs
• Reduces cost, reduces risk

Both Accelerators use the inherent search capability of Enterprise Vault to gather records that may be relevant to a case. The records are then assigned to a reviewer who is responsible for deciding whether the records are relevant to the case in hand. If in doubt, the decision can be cascaded to more experienced reviewers. The end result is a set of business records of absolute relevance, which may then be packaged for disclosure. Throughout the process an audit trail is retained.

Archiving for compliance, records management and

operational efficiency

Reducing risk and increasing efficiency

Enterprise Vault provides a framework of solutions that will increase your operational efficiency and decrease your business risk. Compliance is not just about email retention. Reducing cost is not just about storage optimization. Symantec helps you move beyond simply archiving email. We work with you to deliver a solution that allows email and other critical content sources to be archived and exploited on demand. This approach brings operational benefit to the data sources and preserves records for future use. Today your organization is looking for an application to underpin your compliance initiatives and reduce the future TCO of your storage and information infrastructure. Enterprise Vault is the proven solution.

Coretek Services is a Michigan based Systems Integration and IT consulting company that works with virtualization infrastructure, and is also a Symantec Gold Partner specializing in Symantec Enterprise Vault (SEV), Symantec Backup Exec (SBE), and Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP).  Please contact us today for any virtualization requirements, or Symantec Product requirements.

 

Source: Symantec.com

Coming This Fall: Windows Azure Cloud Appliances

Addressing one of the key objectives of cloud computing, Microsoft today said its Windows Azure platform will be available as an appliance that can run on customer and partner premises.

The company revealed plans to offer the Windows Azure Appliance at its Worldwide Partner Conference, which began today in Washington, D.C. The appliance, which Microsoft has talked up conceptually for several months, will be offered later this year by key partners — initially Dell, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard Co. The appliance will enable private clouds based on huge turnkey systems equipped with the Windows Azure platform, server, storage and network infrastructure. eBay said it too will use the appliance.

“The Windows Azure appliance fundamentally takes the Windows Azure service and extends it,” said Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft’s Server and Tools business, speaking in the opening keynote of WPC. “It extends it to our service providers, allowing you to have exactly the same capabilities within your data center, providing that capability to your customers, and it can be extended to our larger customers that want to provide IT services within their own organizations.”

Details of the new appliance were vague, including cost, configuration and how they will be rolled out to customers. Muglia did say the new appliance is based on Windows Azure and SQL Azure with hardware specified by Microsoft, allowing service providers to either offer their own hosted Azure-based services or provision the appliances initially to large data center customers on-premise. The availability of such private cloud implementations addresses issues of control and compliance that have made cloud computing unfeasible to many corporate and government customers.

“The benefits are associated with control, compliance and keeping the data locally, data sovereignty. These are important benefits that allow for much more extensive solutions being built around this cloud environment,” Muglia said.

For eBay, the appliance will ease deployment without moving its huge auction and PayPal payment processing service off premises. “If I want to deploy an application today for eBay.com within my data centers I need to secure the hardware, provision a network, hook up the load balancer and make it part of the infrastructure,” said James Barrese, eBay’s VP of Technology, speaking at a press conference following the keynote.

Dell, Fujitsu and HP will all offer the appliances later this year, based on pre-defined hardware specifications by Microsoft. The hardware vendors said they see opportunities for both offering hosting services to customers as well as selling systems to very large enterprises such as government agencies and large corporations.

Though the companies are not discussing the configurations, the initial implementations will house just shy of 1,000 servers, Muglia said. One partner that appeared totally surprised by the launch of the appliance was Harry Zarek, CEO of Compugen in Toronto. When confronted on camera by Jon Roskill, the new Corporate VP for Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Group said, “We have been a Microsoft partner for 20 years, having gone through the traditional product resale and service support. We had a fear that this business was going to trickle through our hands and move into the data center. We had a big question what we would be left with. This is the missing link, this is the piece we need to give us the destination over the next few years, in the cloud, and we have an important role to play.”

Muglia said the cloud has forced Microsoft to reinvent itself and will require its partners to do the same. It’s a change that is inevitable, it is a change that allows us all to deliver new value, it’s a change that thankfully is not happening overnight, and it is a change we will embrace together,” he said.

Source: Redmondmag.com, By: Jeffrey Schwartz

Virtual Servers, Real Growth

 

If you follow tech industry trends, you’ve probably heard of cloud computing, an increasingly popular approach of delivering technology resources over the Internet rather than from on-site computer systems.

Chances are, you’re less familiar with virtualization — the obscure software that makes it all possible.

The concept is simple: rather than having computers run a single business application — and sit idle most of the time — virtualization software divides a system into several “virtual” machines, all running software in parallel.

The technology not only squeezes more work out of each computer, but makes large systems much more flexible, letting data-center techies easily deploy computing horsepower where it’s needed at a moment’s notice.

The approach cuts costs, reducing the amount of hardware, space and energy needed to power up large data centers. Maintaining these flexible systems is easier, too, because managing software and hardware centrally requires less tech support.

The benefits of virtualization have made cloud computing an economical alternative to traditional data centers.

“Without virtualization, there is no cloud,” said Charles King, principal analyst of Pund-IT.

That’s transforming the technology industry and boosting the fortunes of virtualization pioneers such as VMware (NYSE:VMW – News), Citrix Systems (NMS:CTXS), two of the best-performing stocks in IBD’s specialty enterprise software group. As of Friday, the group ranked No. 24 among IBD’s 197 Industry Groups, up from No. 121 three months ago.

1. Business

Specialty enterprise software represents a small but fast-growing segment of the overall software enterprise market, which according to market research firm Gartner is set to hit $229 billion this year.

As with most software, the segment is a high-margin business. With high upfront development costs but negligible manufacturing and distribution expenses, specialty software companies strive for mass-market appeal. Once developers recoup their initial development costs, additional sales represent pure profit.

Software developers also make money helping customers install and run their software, another high-margin business.

But competition is fierce. Unlike capital-intensive businesses, software companies require no factory, heavy equipment, storefront or inventory to launch. Low barriers to entry mean a constant stream of new competitors looking to out-innovate incumbents.

In addition to the virtualization firms, notable names in the group include CA Technologies (NMS:CA) and Compuware (NMS:CPWR).

All offer infrastructure software to manage data centers.

“Big-iron” mainframe computers began using virtualization in the 1970s, around the time when CA and Compuware were founded.

In the late 1990s, VMware brought the technology to low-cost systems running ordinary Intel (NMS:INTC) chips. VMware has since emerged as the dominant player in virtualization.

Citrix has added a twist to the concept, virtualizing desktop computers. Rather than installing workers’ operating system and applications on hundreds of PCs spread across the globe, companies can use the technology to run PCs from a bank of central servers. Workers, who access their virtual PCs over the Internet, don’t know the difference.

Microsoft (NMS:MSFT) has jumped in with its own virtualization product, HyperV, which it bundles free into Windows Server software packages. Oracle (NMS:ORCL) and Red Hat (NYSE:RHT – News) have launched virtualization products as well.

Meanwhile, CA and Compuware are racing to move beyond their mainframe roots to support virtualization and cloud-computing-enabled data centers. In February, CA said it would buy 3Tera to build services and deploy applications aimed at the cloud-computing market.

And Compuware bought privately held Gomez, Inc. last fall to manage cloud application performance.

Name Of The Game: Innovate. With a fast-moving market and steady influx of new competitors, keeping customers happy with good service and money-saving breakthroughs is vital.

2. Market

Nearly everyone who runs a corporate computer system is a potential buyer of virtualization software. Companies ramping up their information-technology purchases use the software to manage their sprawling infrastructure; others with limited budgets use it to squeeze more out of their existing systems.

Sales of server-virtualization software are set to grow 14% this year to $1.28 billion, according to a report by Lazard Capital Markets. Sales of software to manage virtual environments will grow 44% in 2010 to $1.88 billion.

Desktop virtualization revenue will rise 184% this year to $847.8 million. Citrix has the edge in this budding market with its XenDesktop product.

VMware is dominant among large enterprises, controlling about 85% of the server virtualization market. Microsoft is favored by small and midsize companies.

Virtualization is seen as “a strategic asset” for enabling cloud computing, and continues to gain momentum, says Lazard analyst Joel Fishbein.

VMware has the early-mover advantage in this market with its vSphere platform and has stayed ahead by adding new features such as data security and disaster recovery, analysts say.

But Citrix is partnering closely with Microsoft to take on VMware in virtualization.

3. Climate

Competition is heating up as companies scramble to adopt virtualization. Before 2009, just 30% of companies used virtualization, says analyst Fishbein. This year, that will double to 60%. Most of the gain is coming from small and midsize customers.

In addition, virtual servers are soon expected to more than double as a percentage of the overall server workload, from 18% today to 48% by 2012.

VMware says it can stay a step ahead of the pack by building new features into its products, says Dan Chu, VMware’s vice president of cloud infrastructure and services.

“We have a large technology lead with what we enable for our customers,” Chu said. “We are several years ahead of what the others are doing.”

Citrix CEO Mark Templeton says his firm’s broadening strategy — offering a variety of products with multiple licensing options and distribution channels — will grow sales.

“What’s going on is a massive shift in how computing gets delivered,” Templeton said. “In an environment that’s changing so dramatically, the highest-risk thing you can do is not act.”

4. Technology

The first virtualization boom stemmed from a shift over the last decade away from big expensive mainframes and minicomputers to massive banks of cheap Intel-powered machines. Virtualization gave these low-cost systems some of the high-end features of their pricier counterparts.

Virtualization software makers are betting on a second wave of growth fueled by the industrywide shift to cloud computing.

Technology managers use virtualization to run cloud computing in their own data centers. And large tech vendors such as Microsoft use the technology for cloud-computing services they sell to customers.

Dividing computers into isolated virtual machines gives cloud service providers the benefits of shared computing resources without the security downsides.

VMware has the early lead in virtualization. But the technology is quickly becoming a commodity as Microsoft and others bundle it into their broader platforms.

“VMware is known as a virtualization company, and Microsoft is a platform company,” said David Greschler, who heads up Microsoft’s virtualization efforts. “Their strategy is to sell virtualization, but our strategy is to make virtualization available as part of a larger platform at no extra cost.”

At the same time, a shift toward a world of cloud-computing services hosted by the likes of Microsoft, Amazon.com (NMS:AMZN) and Google (NMS:GOOG) could lead to fewer companies purchasing virtualization software themselves.

Source: Investor’s Business Daily

Microsoft Starts Windows Embedded Update Service

Microsoft initiated a free Windows Embedded update service for device developers, which started on Monday.

The new Windows Embedded Developer Update (WEDU) service is currently available and can be accessed by downloading the software here. The software can be installed and run on Windows Vista Service Pack 2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The WEDU service, which reduces the time developers have to spend searching for updates, currently provides updates only for Windows Embedded Standard 7 developers. Microsoft plans to add support for Windows Embedded Compact 7 “within the calendar year,” according to the company’s announcement. Windows Embedded is Microsoft’s family of componentized operating systems used to support thin clients and various devices.

Project managers can use WEDU (pronounced “we do”) to ensure that their teams have the most current development environments. Users of WEDU need to have administrative access privileges to manage the service.

To use WEDU, administrators specify the products that should receive updates by registering them through the service. The next step is to specify the locations of the distribution shares where the updates should be activated, according to an MSDN library article. WEDU will search for daily updates in the background. Administrators can also perform manual scans for new updates.

The service comes with a few caveats. While updates can be automated, the WEDU tool doesn’t let the user remove the updates. Windows Control Panel has to be used in those instances to remove “certain updates for developer tools,” according to the MSDN article. The article adds that “updates to distribution shares and repository databases cannot be removed.”

Microsoft provides advice on maintaining distribution shares and creating distribution shares in its blogs. The former blog recommends importing all Microsoft-released packages and updates and not removing packages from distribution shares. Distribution shares should be backed up before importing any updates.

• Source: Redmondmag.com By Kurt Mackie

VDI Performance Acceleration – Atlantis Computing’s ILIO

VDI platforms use shared storage located centrally for VDI desktop images. However, Windows operating systems were designed to operate with a low latency dedicated local disk for every desktop. The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems is dependent on performing input/output (IO) intensive tasks such as file layout optimization, background defragmentation, antivirus scanning and virtual memory paging. However, in a VDI environment, these tasks result in placing a heavy tax on shared storage infrastructure as each user, application and desktop compete for limited IO capacity (measured in input/output per second-IOPS). Without adequate storage IOPS, applications and virtual machines take longer to boot and applications respond sluggishly, leaving users frustrated.

Atlantis ILIO is a revolutionary approach to deploying VDI that makes the Windows operating system perform well without massive investments in storage infrastructure. Atlantis ILIO boosts VDI desktop performance by transparently offloading IO intensive Windows operations from VDI shared storage. ILIO terminates operating system and application traffic on the same rack as the VDI servers before traffic hits the storage fabric. The result is a 10x performance increase for VDI desktops, which translates into faster VM boot times, logon, and overall application performance. Atlantis ILIO also eliminates VDI IO bottlenecks caused by boot storms, logon storms and antivirus scanning.

Source: Atlantis Computing

Microsoft’s System Center Essentials 2010

Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 will be Microsoft’s second release of an IT systems management product specifically designed for the midsized business. Based heavily on customer feedback, Essentials 2010 will offer integration of physical and virtual server management and monitoring into one product and one console. Essentials 2010:

• Provide a unified solution with a single console for managing a broad range of tasks across your servers (virtual and physical), clients, hardware, software and IT services for a unified experience.
• Enables you to proactively manage your IT environment, helping keep your system up-to-date with a solution that accelerates problem resolution and enables automation of system updates and data collection.
• Is easier to deploy and maintain helping simplify complex management tasks for increased IT efficiency.

The following screen shows the Essentials 2010 console.

New Investments for Essentials 2010

Unified Experience

• Integration of virtualization management, including live migration
• Automated computer grouping
• Server management limit increased to 50

Proactive Management

• Automated management of updates and installation deadlines
• Improved software distribution targeting
• Dynamic importation of monitoring management packs

Increased Efficiency

• Quick provisioning of new virtual machines
• Easy server conversions from physical to virtual
• Intelligent placement of virtual workloads

Microsoft’s CIO Tony Scott on Technology Trends for 2010

Windows 7 Migration – Using Dell’s KACE Appliance

Helping Provide Comprehensive Capabilities for Rapid and Reliable Migration

Source: Dell

Microsoft’s – Remote Desktop Services

E-Medical Records: 10 Steps To Take Now

Don’t wait for the government to finalize meaningful use requirements. Here’s how to jump-start your health IT efforts.

The federal government’s $20 billion-plus healthcare IT stimulus program has more hospitals and doctors than ever planning to implement e-medical record and other health IT systems. But many healthcare providers have put plans on hold as they wait for the government’s final “meaningful use” rules that will determine which types of systems are eligible for reimbursements.

“I’ve been in this industry for 25 years, and I’ve never seen as much anxiety and confusion,” said Dr. Mark Leavitt, chairman of the Certification Commission for Health IT. Leavitt spoke with Informationweek at the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS ) conference in Atlanta Tuesday.

Despite all the uncertainty, there are steps providers can take now that will help them jump-start system deployments once the final rules are issued later this spring. Here are 10 top ones:

1) Get buy-in and sponsorship from your organization’s top leadership, including influential clinicians and the CEO. “Solicit your leadership team and actively communicate with upper management,” said Curt Kwak, CIO of the western region of Providence Health & Services, a provider that serves Washington, Oregon, Montana, California, and Alaska.

Support from the top is critical, especially when convincing users to give up old work habit and processes. Make sure everyone understands your goals, such as how the new systems will improve quality of care.

2) Decide how you’ll fund the project–remember stimulus dollars don’t start flowing until 2011. Some EMR vendors are offering interest-free loans for the upfront costs related to the purchase of these systems. Also consider applying for federal, state, and private grants. And some hospitals are offering free EMR software to doctors under the relaxed federal Stark rules.

3) Start evaluating your workflow and processes. Figure out what steps you’re doing now waste time and money, and can be eliminated with the new system. “Health IT is truly a magnifying glass, you’ll see all your flaws,” said Florence Chang, senior VP and CIO at MultiCare, a Tacoma, Wash., hospital network. “Decide what steps don’t add value.”

4) Find out where key information resides in your organization. For instance, is information on patients’ allergies in paper charts or computerized files? Start collecting information on how many prescription drug orders your doctors put through, and how they do those orders–paper, fax, or phone-in. You’ll need this data later to measure your organization’s meaningful use of electronic ordering, said Mike Wilson, senior IT director of clinical systems at Compuware.

5) Look at EMR and other health IT products for the ones that fit your organization’s needs. Consider products that have a good shot at attaining meaningful use certification, like those already approved by the Certification Commission for Health IT, or software from vendors that are offering meaningful use compliance guarantees.

6) If you’re not ready for a big bang approach to EMRs, consider modular software and components that let you add functionality in increments. “Look at the entire puzzle for what pieces fit now, and what can fit later,” Providence Health & Services’ CIO Kwak said.

7) Determine whether you have the resources and staff to handle an on-site system–both to implement it and keep it running. If not, then maybe a hosted model makes more sense. If you need to recruit talent, figure out the skills you’ll need and get going.

8. Get your infrastructure ready to deal with new systems. For instance, can it handle computerized physician order entry? If not, what foundation can you start laying, said Avery Cloud, VP and CIO of New Hanover Health Network, a health care organization in Wilmington, N.C.

9) If you were already planning or implementing health IT systems prior to the HITECH legislation passing in February 2009, don’t change things now. Don’t divert your original plans because meaningful use deadlines are compressing the timeframe, said Kwak.

10) Finally, don’t jump into poorly thought out health IT plans just to try getting the stimulus rewards. “Don’t do it just for the money,” said Wilson. “It’s like having a baby just for the tax break.”

Source: By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee,  InformationWeek