Tuesday 17 April 2007

Another Great Idea

I've another great idea for a software product (I have these ideas from time to time, but converting them into reality always proves difficult).

So, museum environments for backups. They're going to be a major headache going forward, even more than they are today as there are more demands on the timely keeping and retrieval of backups. What's needed is a product which can understand legacy backup products and do two things; (a) extract a copy of the backup catalog into a single database, based on a standard schema for backup data and (b) read the content of backup media directly without the need to use the old backup product.

This may seem like backup software companies giving away their IP but I don't think it is. I was in a discussion recently where EMC would not give support on (admittedly very) old versions of Legato, especially with respect to merging catalogs from multiple platforms. This leads to costly and risky options requiring the retention of legacy hardware (subject to failure), legacy software (no longer supported) and legacy media (prone to failure). The lack of a single catalog precludes the ability to easily identify and manage backups and backup images when multiple backup systems exist.

I wonder if any of the vendors out there would be happy to let me have copies and information on the defunct versions of their backup products?

Footnote; I am aware of the backup management products out there like Bocada; to my knowledge none of them actually merge the catalogs into a view at the file level or offer direct media restore.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The closest thing I found to this was a product called MMPC from emaglink.com. Its not perfect, and if you allow that a plain text file with google desktop search is almost as good as a backup catalog, then it fills most of your criteria.

I based a business on it for a little while until EMC offered me large sums of money to do Networker implementations (the pain stops after you stop banging your head on the hard brick walls).