One of our data files is missing. (First in/First out).

MARK: We haven't talked about disaster recovery in a long time.

HAL: Why bring that up? Have you had a disaster lately?

MARK: Nothing that a better travel agent couldn't cure.

HAL: A legacy of 9/11, no doubt. But disaster recovery is certainly at the heart of many storage issues.

MARK: And it's one of the issues actually raised by what happened last year, on 9/11. CEOs and CFOs are now more aware of it than ever.

HAL: They're more aware of IT issues, generally. The chief information officer is no longer the Stranger In a Strange Land.

MARK: I can grok that! The key problem for them is... well, I'm sure you can guess it right off the top of your head.

HAL: Not enough money?

MARK: Correct! Over the past two years, it appears that IT budgets have been slipping 3% to 5% a year.

HAL: Or, so say many analysts, whose contracts may also have shrunk. Yes?

MARK: Perhaps. But it is a fact that insuring against loss of data isn't cheap, neither in money terms, nor in the time lost to recovery operations.

HAL: And, of course, CIOs can get into "political" trouble in their companies if they try to perform triage on the aggregate data, to identify the data most worth saving in case of disaster.

MARK: Sure! Everybody thinks their department's files are mission-critical. Accounting lives by its accounts-receivables. HR has to have its pension and benefits plans. Inventory control needs its just-in-time records just in time. Engineering points to its CAD/CAM files. And marketing has its needs.

MARK: The moral is that the CIO doesn't want to be squeezed by all these demands. He or she has to work with all the departments, on an equal footing, and can't play favorites.

HAL: So, the bottom line is: The CIO needs a clear directive from management to do triage.

MARK: Or else secure a large-enough budget commitment to protect everybody's data.

HAL: Did any of this come up at the Storage Networking World conference in October?

MARK: It sure did. Disaster-recovery is now widely perceived as the killer app. There was even a track at the conference called: "Disaster Recovery, Backup/Restore, and High-Availability Solutions."

HAL: That's a mouthful! Step right up, folks, and get your "buzzword-buzzword-buzzword solution" here! Anything else to report, from the conference?

MARK: The voice of the user was much better heard there than in previous conferences. I met a senior information officer from Sprint who told me exactly what it would take to more effectively manage his storage needs: a feature-rich product that can do everything, starting with "discovery."

HAL: I don't think I've heard that word in this context. Is "discovery" a function like resource-mapping or system-configuration?

MARK: No, it's the search for what one of the software analysts called "orphan data." He said he knew of a company where a discovery tool found 1.2TB of data that nobody knew was stored there.

HAL: How'd they lose track of it? Did some evil wizard stash it in Harry Potter's "Chamber of Secretes"?

MARK: More likely, they ran a backup-and-recovery utility one day, and, afterward, they couldn't find 100% of what they'd backed up.

HAL: So, running a discovery tool found the data. Okay. But that's a lot of data. How does an error that big creep in?

MARK: I don't know. But it does--at least, when you're operating on the multi-terabyte level.

HAL: Sounds like an opportunity for us to hear even more from users. If you've ever lost track of a big chunk of data--and are willing to say so (do it anonymously, if you prefer)--then send an email to me at [e-mail].

MARK: And if you've had hands-on experience with discovery tools, email me at [e-mail].