How CommVault Simpana can complement CYA SmartRecovery for Documentum
created by Michiel von der Crone
Oktober 2008
Who’s who
CommVault Simpana :
CommVault's groundbreaking Simpana® software is a single product with application modules for Data Protection, Archive, Replication, Resource Management and Search—all built from the ground up, on a single code base and platform. This efficient, scalable design quite literally changes the way information is protected, archived, managed, and accessed. The Result? Singular efficiency, flexibility, and scalability other products can only dream about.
Simpana® software's Singular Information Management® approach refers to the use of one efficient, scalable data management product to perform a complete range of data management functions. Simpana software uses an expandable range of application modules, sharing a single set of back-end services, to deliver leading-edge functionality that truly unifies and simplifies enterprise data management and maximizes cost effectiveness. See the CommVault® Singular Information Management® brochure to learn more.
Singular Information Management efficiencies:
- Control the growth and cost of storage
- Avoid and reduce capital expenditures
- Speed backup and recovery
- Enable easy data archive
- Maximize the use of your storage devices and networks
- Gain time and cost-savings efficiencies
- Avoid the need for additional purchases of devices
- Maximize tape and disk use
- Plan ahead for storage
CYA SmartRecovery :
CYA SmartRecoveryTM is an application-aware, near-CDP solution providing hot, synchronous backups of ECM Documentum repository information. It safeguards the EMC Documentum repository against chronic, revenue-draining partial information loss incidents, which cause more than 80% of all data loss within ECM systems. These incidents result in the loss or corruption of granular pieces of information, and are caused by common occurrences such as programmatic, operational, and logical errors, malfeasance, and metadata corruption.
CYA SmartRecoveryensures that lost or corrupt objects with complex content and metadata (audit trails, digital signatures, renditions, etc.) withinDocumentum can be easily identified and recovered back to their original state with noDocumentum downtime. Organizations can recover one, several, or thousands of objects along with their chain of custody, enabling compliance with regulatory mandates related to Sarbanes-Oxley, the SEC, EPA, FDA, HIPAA and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
EMC Documentum :
Documentum provides management capabilities for all types of content including business documents, photos, video, medical images, e-mail, Web pages, fixed content, XML-tagged documents, etc. The core of Documentum is a repository in which the content is stored securely under compliance rules. This repository appears as a unified environment, although content may reside on multiple servers and physical storage devices within a distributed environment.
Documentum functionality is available through a variety of user interfaces and through application programming interfaces (API) including web services, WebDAV, FTP, and file share services. End users and applications can access content in any stage of its lifecycle – during creation, review, approval, published stage, or retirement.
Documentum provides a suite of services which include document management, collaboration, search, content classification, input management, business process management (BPM), customer communication management, Web content management, digital asset management, forms processing, information rights management, compliance, computer output on laser disks (COLD) and archiving.
What a customer needs
Just like with Exchange and SharePoint, Documentum can be protected on two levels : database level and item level. The database level protection gives you the ability to recover from a system failure. The item level protection makes it possible to restore one single item.
What can CommVault Simpana and CYA SmartRecovery offer
CommVault Simpana can back up the entire Documentum environment using a two agent approach. A backup agent for the database and a file system backup agent backup for the documents are used. For example, an Oracle backup agent and a File system backup agent is used in conjunction. Using this scenario it is possible to recover from a system failure just upon the most recent (daily) backup.
Pros:
- The databases and documents are backed up on-line (hot).
- Use of database agents allows hot and granular backup/restore of the database.
- Individual document files can be restored.
Cons:
- No direct integration with Documentum. A document file itself can be recovered but not directly into Documentum.
CYA SmartRecovery protects the EMC Documentum repository. It ensures that lost or corrupt objects with complex content and metadata (audit trails, digital signatures, renditions, etc.) withinDocumentum can be easily identified and recovered back to their original state with noDocumentum downtime.
Pros:
- CYA SmartRecovery can be used for hot, granular recovery of information in response to partial information loss incidents.
- Recovery operations are fully integrated with Documentum; objects are restored directly back into the Documentum repository in their original state.
Cons:
- CYA SmartRecovery cannot perform a full recovery in response to a system failure (although it can, in conjunction with CommVault Simpana, reduce the data loss window to 15 minutes).
- Needs CommVault to write backup-data to other media.
How CommVault Simpana can complement CYA SmartRecovery
CYA SmartRecovery uses NAS or SAN as a storage location. The files created in that storage location are needed by CYA SmartRecovery for performing restores. CYA SmartRecovery cannot protect these files in a secondary medium (tape-library, disk-library,…). As the Documentum environment grows, more disk-space is needed by CYA SmartRecovery.
CommVault Simpana can protect and/or archive the disk-space used by CYA SmartRecovery. By using a iDataAgent for Windows on the system, CommVault Simpana can back up the files created by CYA SmartRecovery to any storage medium (cheaper disks, tape library, disk-library,…) to ensure long term protection. By using an iDataAgent for File Archiving for Windows,CommVault Simpana can limit the disk-space used by CYA SmartRecovery by moving the data to less expensive storage without losing the long-term recovery capability .