The Planet Blog

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed an interesting trend: “The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year … Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase.”

Moore was initially noting the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit at a relatively constant minimal cost. Because that measure has proven so representative of the progress of our technological manufacturing abilities, “Moore’s Law” has become a cornerstone in discussions of pricing, capacity and speed of almost anything in the computer realm. You’ve probably heard the law used generically to refer to the constant improvements in technology: In two years, you can purchase twice as much capacity, speed, bandwidth or any other easily-measureable and relevant technology metric for the price you would pay today and for the current levels of production.

While I never questioned these assertions, I can’t say that I really investigated to see if Moore’s Law actually held true in the world of storage, especially with regard to the two key storage characteristics: capacity and throughput. Sure, prices for the same technology get lower over time – we all know that – but that’s just because no one wants the old stuff, right? Does Moore’s observation about the doubling of transistor density actually relate to hard drive capacities? What about throughput rates?

Once I started looking into historical storage-related statistics, it became clear that Moore’s Law doesn’t completely explain the evolution of storage technology. The primary driver for hard drive capacity – the disk’s areal density – has been increasing at 60 percent per year (or around 1.6x every two years), so that key metric of storage appears to correlate with Moore’s transistor observation, but drive speeds and seek times have not improved in a similar exponential manner.

This dichotomy may seem a little strange, but I think capacity limitations have been a more significant problem for the industry as a whole than throughput rates, so drive manufacturers have thrown more of their R&D budgets into improving that key characteristic first. The proven, constant increase in storage capacity reflects a focus on meeting user demand for that storage capacity, and if the incremental value of an additional gigabyte of storage decreases, I think we’ll see a similar improvement in throughput rates as manufacturers turn their focus to that other key storage characteristic. Moore’s observation focused on manufacturing with the single goal of more transistors on an integrated circuit, so we can’t really say Moore’s Law “doesn’t apply” to storage since hard drive manufacturers have several key measurements to improve at a given time.

Thanks to the trend Gordon Moore recognized 48 years ago, we were recently able to drop the prices on several of our backup products. EVault Backup is now priced at $1 per GB, down from $2, and Network Backup product is now priced at 50 cents per GB, down from $1, and they are both free for 90 days. If you’re interested in learning more about our data protection and backup options, check out my “What is Data Protection?” blog or leave me your questions in the comments section here.

-Rob

In the past few months, our team worked tirelessly to prepare for the big launch on July 7. A new shopping cart, a new site design, a new managed hosting division, new advanced services … you know, the little things. I joined the team in the midst of this development and promptly made a contribution: We shouldn’t have a product line called Backup.

Bye Bye Backup? Absolutely Not.

Backups are infinitely valuable to all hosting customers, so I would never suggest that we eliminate the solutions enabling the backup of data. However, there is more to protecting data than just backing it up. Our goal, is to provide clarity around these data protection options so that our customers can select the best one for their company, that protects their data the way they need it protected. The data protection landscape can be pretty confusing, so it’s important for us to clarify where our products fit in the midst of all these hardware and software solutions that enable you to create and maintain full backups, partial backups, incremental backups, automated backups, disk images, and just about any other copy of data that you can imagine.

Data Protection

The goal of our data protection product line is simple: to protect customers’ data from accidental deletion or hardware/application failure. Each solution in the product line offers a different means to that end, so we renamed the product portfolio to better reflect the products’ goal. The Data Protection category encompasses traditional backup, continuous data protection, bare metal recovery and some disaster recovery abilities – and you’ll be seeing more products and services added soon.

Why do I need data protection? Doesn’t my storage protect my data?

Storage products generally have some level of data protection built in, such as RAID on disk arrays, and other redundant hardware and software features such as snapshots. These features protect your data from several types of events like component hardware failure in the device or if the data is corrupted by a user or application. So, yes, the storage system will protect your data – but not against every possibility, such as the device itself losing utility power or network connectivity. At that point, a copy of the data on another device — or better yet in another data center — is required. Designing a data protection strategy that solves the wide range of potential problems at an affordable price point can be a challenge.

Planet Alpha’s Data Protection Product Portfolio

Starting on the left side of the graph, you’ll see Network Backup (formerly known as NAS, or Network Attached Storage). Network Backup is purely storage space accessible over the network … we manage the storage hardware for your backups and you can access that space directly, through your own scripts or through third-party self-installed software.

To the right of Network Backup, you’ll see EVault™ Backup (formerly known as DiskSync). EVault™ Backup serves as a traditional backup product with software from a well-known vendor. In addition to the managed storage space provided by our Network Backup solution, the EVault™ software makes scheduling and maintaining regular backups of your data quick and easy.

Our Data Protection Server (formerly known as Dedicated Backup Server) uses R1Soft’s CDPServer software to regularly update and maintain iterative changes of data. Because the Data Protection Server maintains these block-level, up-to-the-minute changes, the software allows you to execute bare metal restores to recover your entire server.

To round out our current data protection product line, we introduced the ability to license and install R1Soft’s CDPServer software on your other servers in the event you don’t need a full dedicated server-worth of space.

Which Delivers the Most Value?

The beauty of this product portfolio is its flexibility to meet your needs, so the answer to the question for you depends on how much data you have to protect and how you want to do that. Network Backup is $1/GB, and EVault™ Backup is a little more expensive at $2/GB, as it includes backup software from EVault. Both these offerings are ideal for customers with less than 300GB of data to protect. Our Data Protection Servers are available in 4 capacities and start at $279 for the 500GB version, and the price per GB can be as low as $0.20/GB.

I’m a firm believer that everyone should have some kind of data protection. You might not need the backups all the time, but when you DO, the preparation pays off exponentially.

Limited Time: Backup Bonanza

With the new lineup of Data Protection products, we recently launched a great new promotion to enable all of our customers to try Network Backup and EVault™ Backup FREE for 90 days, and if you’re interested in the Data Protection Servers, you can cut the price significantly by ordering with promo code pa-dbs.

-Rob

Hi there, everyone. It’s been awhile, and in fact, this is only my second blog post. A great customer experience over the past few weeks prompted me to post, so I wanted to take a little time to relay it to you.

At The Planet, we’re not just a service provider — we’re also a customer of a several hardware, software and service vendors. Many of my recent projects have centered around our KVM offering, the Lantronix Spider KVM-over-IP unit. We’ve been searching for the best way to highlight the unique features and benefits of the Spider KVM that distinguish it from a standard KVM option.

We had a number of ideas — a demo unit, a demo video, etc. Lantronix really stepped up to the plate with an offer to produce a demo video that was custom-tailored to The Planet’s deployment of their hardware. I also deployed a demo unit that lets you see, first hand, how the Spider KVM unit functions in a real-world scenario.

Please take a moment to view the Lantronix Spider video. The Lantronix team did a really great job on short notice (it was probably seven days from concept to online publication), and it gives you a good feel for what the Spider KVM is all about.

While you’re at it, you can try out my demo KVM unit. By the way, Kevin told me that a few people have already checked out the KVM demo and requested a Windows demo box. I’m working on it. Thanks for the suggestion!

Back to my central thesis … It’s not just the work on the video: We just met with our account team and Lantronix executive management. Their openness to working with us, both to better promote their product and to build some of our user requirements back into their roadmap for future versions, was truly refreshing. More importantly, it reinforced in me the fact that we’re an important partner to all of our customers. We want to do what we can to make your business successful, so that we can grow along with you.

This is especially true within the Product Management team, since we are responsible for taking your needs and building them into our future releases. I look forward to hearing from you how we can improve our portfolio. Comment on the blog and let me know what you think.

-Aaron

At The Planet, we’re excited about the holiday season. We’ve had a great year, so this is a perfect time to look back on 2007 and store away the memories much like one would store server backups in our data centers. How’s that that for a convenient segue into a discussion about The Planet’s backup solutions?

We currently offer NAS, DiskSync, Dedicated SAN and Dedicated Backup Server options, and as the resident backup and storage guru on the Product Management team, I love sharing backup knowledge with our customers. What question do I get most often? Easy: What is the difference between

What is the difference between NAS, DiskSync and the Dedicated Backup Server?

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is storage space allows you access over FTP. You write or provide the software to create and send backups to your NAS, and it functions as a reliable external disk to protect your data and store information separate from your server. Think of it as a target disc, albeit a pretty small one. You can buy NAS space from The Planet in increments ranging from 20GB to 200GB, and our typical NAS setup accommodates many users on each of our available NAS devices.

Our DiskSync product offers a much more complete SAN (Storage Area Network) infrastructure backup solution with the ability to schedule full backups and perform restores in our managed environment. Rather than having to create the backup software, our DiskSync solution enables you to quickly and easily monitor and track your data backups. On the infrastructure side, we host the large storage network and maintain the integrity of all DiskSync user data. The SAN structure is significantly larger than a NAS device and is much more scalable. It’s able to accommodate a considerably higher number of DiskSync users and any additional space you may want or need. DiskSync backups are available in 10GB increments with unlimited capacity.

With our new Dedicated Backup Server (DBS) solution, you become the admin for the entire system. You get a dedicated server with the R1Soft CDP Server software/license installed, and full root access. You have the ability to manage backups and delegate authority to users and sub-users, and you manage the OS, which allows for true customization for any of your more complex backup needs. We’ve found that many customers want this complete control and the peace of mind that each DBS is individually encrypted for data security since no other users access your DBS. Our most popular Dedicated Backup Servers come equipped with 500GB, 1TB and 1.5TB of data, but we’re always open to a challenge if you need more.

While that’s a quick rundown of our three main backup solutions, it succinctly explains a few of the key differences I like to communicate when asked to run through the options. We feel this array of products can meet the needs of almost any user, so if you have additional questions about backup solution implementation or if you would just like a little more information, visit our Backup page or post a quick comment to let me know.

-Brett