An enterprise architect for FedEx, Viljay Banga talked in depth with theCube hosts Dave Vellante and David Floyer of Wikibon about the technical aspects of backup at EMC World this week.

In the past, there were certain challenges regarding backup, but things have come a long way. Even though data domains were used around 10 years ago, they were mostly used in a testing and development environment. It was only in the last couple of years that the adoption of 10Gb was successful in data centers, where it is used in databases and operating systems.

Working for the VP of IT, Banga’s role in the company is guiding and supervising the products from the developmnet stage to testing, and then onto production. During the last few years most of Viljay attributions fell in the area where he supervised the migration of legacy data centers. One important aspect was trying to establish a metodology for migrating legacy data centers. Nowadays his role is providing DR as a service.

FedEx is a great example of homegrown applications, distributed across the globe. Major data centers are distributed in the US, and all the infrastructure is found in those data centers. In the past advances in technology were done on a project-by-project basis, nowadays it is done as an infrastructure.

FedEx’s strategy in shifting away from legacy datacenters

From a storage point of view, as Viljay put it, FedEx used to offer “islands of sand” that couldn’t be capitalized, with assets that were dispersed and unable to be fully utilized. But moving from legacy data centers to modern data centers meant a greenfield opportunity.

As for the backup strategy, data domain is used primarily. Vellante wanted to know how backup and data protection is used as a service and how it’s defined in order to be taken to the users. Basically, users are provided with data domain infrastructure and the 10Gb interface. At the moment there are no chargebacks, but on a small scale it is something that the company is considering.

Viljay tackled issues such as quota management and DD boost. The key aspect is the gain from the network bandwith usage, allowing more backups to be scheduled, so that it is not using the network hogs. Snapshot technology is used in the data domain, on the remote site, with replication and with migration.

In the past there were a lot of aspects and resources that were underutilized, tier 1 and tier 2 storage were used primarily for backups, resembling dispersed islands not services, and data domain introduction allowed doing more with less. It was a hardcore TCO savings. Viljay admiths the challenges are not in the backup, but in the restore.

As for advice for the peers who might want to embark on the same journey, the key thing is planning and correct scheduling.