The History Of The Digital Innovation

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Backup and archiving is a legislative requirement for all Government Departments and the current tape libraries are end-of-life. The ICT Strategic Roadmap (Logan City Council 2010) identified that a new backup solution would be required and the tape libraries decommissioned or reassigned as a dedicated archive system.

An Enterprise Backup Design (Anstis 2012) was commissioned by Council to evaluate the best backup solution that would coexist with the new infrastructure design operate across and multiple data centres. The final solution has been determined to be a direct disk-to-disk solution. This has following main benefits for the Organization:

Inline de-duplication technologies provides significant data reduction;

By transferring only unique data segments, bandwidth requirements can be reduced by as much as 99 percent.

High Throughput and Extended Retention allowing months of online backup image retention and ensuring fast, reliable data restores from disk.

Data Domain de-duplication storage systems function as a network-efficient solution for DR, remote office data protection and multi-site tape consolidation.

Data integrity issues are mitigated with in-built continuous fault detection and healing, and end-to-end verification of data recoverability at time of backup.

Tape libraries can be reallocated as a dedicated archive solution to support State and Federal archive regulations.

The costs for implementing the new backup solution is summarized below and full details can be found in Section 6 Financial Analysis.

Funding Requirements ($M)

Year 0

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Total

Total CapEx

$ 446,400

--

--

--

$ 446,400

Total OpEx

$ 65,200

$ 59,200

$ 59,200

$ 59,200

$ 242,800

Risk & Contingency Allowance

$ 51,160

$ 2,370

$ 2,370

$ 2,370

$ 58,270

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

$ 562,760

$ 61,570

$ 61,570

$ 61,570

$ 747,470

This report outlines how Council can transform the way it currently manages backup and archiving, and will cover process and procedure changes, security risks, and implementation issues that will need to be addressed.

Contents

Introduction

Purpose

This report follows on from the Assignment 1 report which identified various elements of the strategic planning processes and then discussed how the innovative processes or/and innovative technologies would help to influence the strategic planning processes (Morrell 2012).

This purpose of this report is to outline the implementation aspects required to be able implement the innovative solution identified in the Assignment 1 report.

Business Vision

The vision of Logan City Council is for Logan to be a "city of opportunities for families, lifestyle and business" (Logan City Council 2012).

About the Organization

Logan City is located between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and is comprised of 59 surrounding suburbs. It is the fifth largest local government in Queensland.

On 1 July 1979, Logan Shire Council began operations and was proclaimed as Logan City on 1 July 1981. In March 2008, its boundaries were expanded to its current extent.Where is Logan City

The community facilities it maintains are:

Six aquatic centres

Three indoor sports centres and 116 sporting facilities

Seven community venues

Nine libraries

One art gallery

30 community and neighbourhood centres

Six cemeteries

Figure : Logan City

Scope

In Scope

The scope of this report is limited to the following:

What process and procedural considerations should the organization need to understand to implement your solution?

What are the potential security risks in implementation, and how do you plan to mitigate such risks?

What type of cost considerations should the organization need to implement the suggestions made by you in the first assignment?

What are the issues associated with the adoption of the recommended digital innovation for the selected business.

Out of Scope

Anything not listed in the ‘In Scope’ section above is considered out of scope for this document, but may be investigated and delivered in subsequent documents.

Constraints

This report must follow on from Assignment 1 (Morrell 2012).

Due to the required scope of this report and the limitations in allowable size (maximum of 1500 words for the Body of the report), this report will focus on only one of the solutions identified in the Assignment 1 report, being the Backup and Archiving solution.

The ‘Body’ of this report refers to the following sections and is used to calculate the allowable word count:

Section 3.: Background (274 words)

Section 4.: (353 words)

Section 5.: Risk Analysis (Security) (291 words)

Section 6.: Financial Analysis (298 words)

Section 7.: Issues (248 words)

Background

Backup and archiving is a legislative requirement for all Government Departments, but follows a strategy of its own within the overall ICT Strategic Roadmap (Logan City Council 2010).

Council is changing the way it manages backups by moving from tape backup systems to a direct disk-to-disk solution. Council’s defined backup strategy is to migrate from an end of life tape backup system to a modern disk-to-disk backup solution.

This has following main benefits for the Organization:

Significant Data Reduction: inline de-duplication delivers up to 10-30x data reduction for backup images, enabling cost-efficient, long-term retention.

Network-efficient Replication: By transferring only unique data segments, bandwidth requirements can be reduced by as much as 99 percent.

High Throughput and Extended Retention: allowing months of online backup image retention and ensuring fast, reliable data restores from disk.

Local and Remote Site Data Protection: Data Domain Replicator software enables Data Domain de-duplication storage systems to function as a network-efficient solution for DR, remote office data protection and multi-site tape consolidation.

Advanced Data Integrity: data integrity issues are mitigated with in-built continuous fault detection and healing, and end-to-end verification of data recoverability at time of backup.

Tape libraries can be reallocated as a dedicated archive solution to support State and Federal archive regulations.

The Backup solution will comprise of primary and DR backup/recovery EMC Data Domain 670 disk backup devices with 72Tb of intermediary storage, and a 10Gbps network connection. Council will utilise the existing ArcServe backup software, upgraded to the most current version which is already licensed, but not currently deployed (Anstis 2012).

http://www.ndm.net/emcstore/images/stories/datadomain/Data-Domain-DD670.jpg

Figure : EMC2 Data Domain 670 Appliance (EMC Corporation 2012)

Implementation Considerations – Processes & Procedures

This section provides information on the changes in processes and procedures that must occur to ensure a successful implementation.

Data De-duplication

Council does not currently use any de-duplication on data transfers or storage, but as data storage is constantly growing, it is an essential component for reducing the amount of unnecessary network traffic and storage of duplicate data. To use data de-duplication effectively will require new processes and procedures to be put in place.

Transition of Role of Tape Devices

The tape libraries will need to be retained as part of the backup/recovery solution for the short term until enough backup history has been stored on the Data Domain devices. The existing tape libraries can then be reallocated as a dedicated archive solution.

New Archiving Procedures

Council does not currently have an archiving procedure as they previously only utilised a backup procedure to cover both backup and archiving. As the tape libraries are transitioned from a backup solution to long term archiving solution, new procedures are required for the archiving and retrieval of archived data.

Disaster Recovery

The current disaster recovery (‘DR’) procedure outlined in the Business Continuity Plan (Logan City Council 2012) is to utilise the most recent tape backups and restore the data and configuration to the latest possible point in time. The DR procedure must be rewritten to use the data domain backup solution for data recovery.

Depending on the type of disaster or recovery required, the primary data centre may be used, or if offline, the newly established secondary data centre can be used to restore the data via the redundant data domain backup devices therein. The procedures for restoring data from the primary or secondary data centres are different and both scenarios must be covered.

Change Control

Making changes to the network, firewalls, routing, rack configuration, and infrastructure will be controlled by the standard Council change control procedures.

Testing

A test plan will need to be developed by the Vendor in conjunction with Council staff to provide adequate testing and acceptance of the Infrastructure Backup solution.

Risk Analysis (Security)

The scope of this report includes a risk analysis of the security aspects of the implementation, along with possible risk mitigation strategies.

Security Risks & Possible Risk Mitigation Strategies

Risk #

Risk (Cause and Consequence)

Pre-Strategy Risk Exposure

Risk Mitigation Strategy

Residual

Risk Exposure

1

Unauthorized Access

Unauthorized users should not be able to access or manage the backup devices to ensure the integrity and security of the data

HIgh

The process of least privilege should be effected to ensure only authorized staff can access or manage the backup devices

Low

2

Data classification

Data is not currently classified within Council. This makes it difficult to appropriately secure data that should be classified

High

Follow the Federal Government data classification scheme and start classifying all data. Security controls can then be placed on data that requires it.

Low

3

Data storage encryption

Council does not currently encrypt data at rest.

Medium

Depending on the security classification of the data, encryption should be used to protect data at rest.

Low

4

Off-site storage

Backup image copies should be stored off-site to ensure that the data is protected in the event of a disaster

High

The backup images can be replicated across the primary and secondary data centres, and archive tapes can be sent to the State Archive Department.

Low

5

Backup device file system

The data domain devices use local folders for the backup images which require restricted access

High

Implement an Active Directory group account to restrict access to the DD backup folders

Low

Table : Security Risks and Mitigation Strategies

Risk Management Process

Council requires all projects to utilize a defined risk management process, shown in Error: Reference source not found below:

Figure : Risk Management Process

Financial Analysis

Project Implementation Budget

The financial costs required to prepare the environment and implement the backup solution are shown in table 1 below:

Project Budget (ex GST)

Year 0

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Project Life Budget

Capital Expenditure

Environment Preparation

$ 44,800

--

--

--

$ 44,800

Backup Infrastructure Environments

Backup Equipment (2 x EMC DD670)

Vendor assistance to install Backup

$ 360,000

$ 15,600

--

--

--

--

--

--

$ 375,600

Project Management costs

(to manage contract negotiations, installation, testing, commissioning)

$ 26,000

--

--

--

$ 26,000

Total CapEx

$ 446,400

--

--

--

$ 446,400

Operating Expenditure

Internal Labour

2 x FTE @ 5% x 12 months (averaged)

$ 5,200

$ 5,200

$ 5,200

$ 5,200

$ 20,800

Maintenance Support Contracts

$ 54,000

$ 54,000

$ 54,000

$ 54,000

$ 216,000

User and Technical Training (2 x FTE, 5 days)

$ 6,000

--

--

--

$ 6,000

Total OpEx

$ 65,200

$ 59,200

$ 59,200

$ 59,200

$ 242,800

Risk & Contingency Allowance

$ 51,160

$ 2,370

$ 2,370

$ 2,370

$ 58,270

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

$ 562,760

$ 61,570

$ 61,570

$ 61,570

$ 747,470

Table : Financial analysis for backup solution

Capex vs Opex Expenditure

Capital expenditure (Capex) is one-off purchases or expenses. Operational expenditure (Opex) is for costs incurred over time in the normal daily operations.

Training is included in the Opex expenditure as it comes from the training budget which is considered a normal staff operational expense.

Risk & Contingency

The risk and contingency for Year 0 is 10% to allow for changes to the implementation project, while the risk and contingency for the subsequent years is 4% mainly to factor in CPI and the potential additional maintenance support if required.

Issues

The Data Domain backup systems are new technology that has not been used in the Council environment before and some environment preparation must be performed to prevent implementation and ongoing operational issues. Some of the main issues to be aware of are outlined below:

Core Network Design

The current Council backup solution has a bottleneck on the network which limits the available bandwidth for backup jobs, causing extended backup windows and poor tape utilisation (Anstis 2012).

The new core network design will upgrade the current end of life Cisco 6509 switch and provide a new core switch at the DR site. The core switch upgrade will provide a 10Gbps backbone network both internally, and between Sites via the Pipe Networks dark fibre link.

Backup Server & Software Upgrade

The currently deployed backup software is ARCserve r12.5 which must be upgraded to ARCserve r16 to support the Data Domain devices. This also requires an OS upgrade from Windows 2003 32bit to Windows 2008 R2 64bit. The backup servers are physical servers and not virtual machines so they must be taken off-line one at a time and then upgraded with a rollback option if necessary (Anstis 2012).

Microsoft Windows Server OS Tuning

By default, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or 2008 does not support 10Gbps data throughput and must be configured to do so. The Core Network Design Appendix E (Heaton 2012) outlines methods to enable a Microsoft Windows Server OS to effectively support 10Gbps throughput.

Conclusion

Transforming the way Council manages enterprise wide backups requires some significant environment preparation and changes to the existing processes and procedures. Council is not currently staffed with experienced administrators of a disk-to-disk backup solution and will require support from the Vendor for implementation, configuration, training, and ongoing maintenance support.

Until the backup images contain enough history to provide a standalone recovery, the tape libraries must remain in service as part of the backup solution before being reassigned as a dedicated archive solution.

As the existing tape libraries are end-of-life and must be replaced anyway, changing to a faster, smarter backup solution provides a high return on investment. The tape libraries can then be reduced to only a few devices with lower maintenance support contract requirements.