Production data from VMs, databases and physical servers are the lifeblood of any IT organization. Since this data is so critical, there are a select few people who have access to it. However, many groups in the organization need copies of this production data for a variety of reasons. These groups of people commonly come from two teams: operations and app dev / analytics.
Operations teams need copies of production data to ensure that mission critical data is protected. They use these copies for things like backup, disaster recovery, and archiving / vaulting. However, these teams struggle because they use multiple, disparate tools to generate and protect these copies. This causes complexity and increases costs.
App dev / analytics teams need copies of production data to drive application releases and optimize processes in order to generate revenue for the organization. These copies are critical when building test environments and when analyzing data through tools like Google BigQuery. The issue is that it’s really hard to fully generate and use full copies of production data for these activities in a timely manner!
Therefore, there’s a decision that must be made. Does the organization use subsetting, which leads to faster timing but incomplete or insufficient data, leading to bugs and poor code quality. Or, does the organization use full copies, but lengthen the release timeline (it takes a long time to generate that much data) as well as significantly increase storage consumption? Manual tools and scripting really limit an organization’s ability to get the best of both worlds for these use cases.
So, what’s the answer? A lot of organizations turn to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). By adopting cloud, organizations gain benefits like flexibility, on-demand storage/compute, unlimited scalability (particularly with cloud object storage like Google Nearline & Coldline), ease of access, and reduced on-premises costs – both CAPEX and OPEX. Therefore, whether you are a part of the operations or app dev / analytics team, you can really benefit from using GCP.
BUT… while these benefits are great, there are still some challenges…
The next blog in our series will explore these challenges. If you want to get ahead, check out our webinar which discusses these challenges – and more!
If you really want to jump ahead, check out this video about Actifio GO for GCP, a SaaS offering in GCP that helps both operations and app dev / analytics teams achieve greatness!
Or, visit the Actifio GO for GCP page in the GCP Marketplace!