Seizing Opportunities in Data Management Challenges: Aurreum's Contribution to CDM

Data management has presented distinct characteristics in five dimensions compared to the past. Firstly, there has been a rapid expansion in scale, with even regular relational databases reaching capacities in the terabyte range, and larger ones reaching 100TB or even several hundred terabytes. Secondly, the volume of data access has surged due to the internet-driven application landscape, resulting in larger user bases and more frequent data retrieval and updates. Thirdly, the importance of data security has become more pronounced as data has become a core asset for enterprises, serving as the foundation for their survival and growth. Fourthly, careful planning is required for long-term data preservation, as data holds initial value upon creation, but to fully unlock its potential, it needs to be preserved for the long term while ensuring immediate accessibility. Lastly, the number of data copies has increased significantly, with each data instance having at least ten or more copies within an enterprise, serving various application calls and extracting value from the data.

Through the analysis above, you may have gained a clearer understanding of the current data challenges. However, challenges often coexist with opportunities. Aurreum, focusing on data protection, has discovered an opportunity known as CDM (Copy Data Management).

Application Scenarios for CDM

Previously, many users may not have paid much attention to data copies. Creating a copy seemed like a commonplace practice without much scrutiny. However, when data copies proliferate, storage space becomes constrained, data management becomes exceptionally cumbersome, and additional costs burden the enterprise, managing data copies can no longer be overlooked. This is where CDM comes into play.

Gartner defines CDM as follows: It captures data from the production environment using snapshot technology to ensure application-consistent data and creates “golden copies” on non-production storage. These “golden copies” are in the original disk format and can be virtualized into multiple copies mounted directly on servers for backup recovery, disaster recovery, or development testing purposes.

What can CDM do?

CDM technology offers advantages in addressing the challenges of enterprise data management. Firstly, it enables rapid data offloading by separating online data without interrupting business operations, diverting queries, testing, analysis, and other traffic to non-production systems. Secondly, it provides instant availability by reorganizing the separated data and matching it with application patterns to quickly provide data support for business operations. Thirdly, it streamlines copy data management complexities through automated workflow management. Fourthly, it enhances efficiency by leveraging log processing techniques, ensuring real-time processing of larger and more diverse datasets.

One of Aurreum’s contributions to CDM is refining and contextualizing its applications.

The first application scenario involves rapid recovery of massive databases. It involves an initial full copy followed by incremental synthesis to significantly reduce the backup window. By utilizing instant mounting and recovery technology, databases can be quickly mounted and recovered within 5-30 minutes. Combined with continuous log processing, it further reduces the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) based on virtual full backup.

The second application scenario focuses on efficient development and testing environments. It generates test data from vast data resources within minutes and rapidly deploys it to testing environments. Leveraging virtual snapshot technology, it substantially reduces the storage space occupied by test data. By utilizing linked clones and full clones, it ensures both read and write capabilities for test data while preserving the integrity of the data source.

The third application scenario revolves around a diverse data sharing platform. It generates customized copy data on a scheduled or periodic basis for data querying in other departments. By separating copy data from the production system, it avoids performance and security impacts on the primary storage, further enhancing system reliability. It provides a REST API for copy data management, allowing users to create their own data management cloud platform based on the unique characteristics of their business applications.

Aurreum’s solution design is centered around addressing customer pain points, expanding the application scope of data copies, and providing convenience for users in cloud migration and copy data management within the cloud. Aurreum breaks away from traditional data sharing and management models by establishing a unified data management platform, empowering enterprises in their digital transformation journey.