2021, a Lockdown Odyssey

It’s a wrap for posts from the Data Protection blog for 2021, but if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’ll reflect a little on the year — both from a data protection perspective, and personally.

One of the most important events of 2021 from a data protection perspective for me was seeing the release of PowerProtect Data Manager 19.9, and the introduction of transparent snapshots. Data Manager really ramps up the game for VMware data protection – image-based backups without the risk of stun, and without proxies. All at a software level – i.e., no messy reliance on taking snapshots of storage arrays hosting VMDKs or any of that rubbish. But Data Manager wasn’t done with just transparent snapshots, it also introduced dynamic NAS protection, too.

Want a 2022 prediction? PowerProtect Data Manager will just keep growing strength-to-strength.

It wasn’t just Data Manager that got some enhancements, though. Cloud Snapshot Manager got the ability to rollover Cloud snapshots to DDVE – a game changer if you want to keep long-term retention copies of IaaS snapshots.

And let’s not forget, NetWorker, DPA and DPC got substantial updates this year, too.

It was also, unsurprisingly, a big year for cyber crime, which meant Dell’s Cyber Recovery solution was a common discussion point with my customers all through the year. Everyone is focused on providing immutable, air-gapped protection for their backups, and Dell’s Cyber Vault absolutely leads that pack.

Dell’s PowerProtect Backup Service also launched in 2021, and it’s a must if you need to protect Salesforce, GSuite, Microsoft 365, or for that matter, endpoints within your organisation.

Finally, not forgetting hardware, Dell’s released the PowerProtect DD 6400, a new deduplication appliance that includes the hardware accelerated compression card and automatic cloud tier licensing, with a starting size of just 8TB usable, scaling up to 172TB usable, in increments as low as 4TB. I think the automatic inclusion of Cloud Tier licensing with the platform is a fantastic idea, particularly for smaller businesses. And the granular capacity increases will allow those smaller businesses to scale the platform in an extremely cost-effective way.

Personally, it’s been a big year for more. Or perhaps I should say it’s been a smaller year for me. I made 2021 about getting healthier, and so far I’m fitter than I’ve ever been, have more core strength than I’ve ever had, and I’m down 48kg. (Around 106lbs if you use that scale.) Keto was a good start on that. Pivoting from stress eating to stress exercising definitely helped. And so too has having daily access to a PowerPlate.

I probably spent more time in meetings this year than I ever had before; and since I was still working from home the entire time, there wasn’t much travel associated with those meetings – unless you count walking upstairs before the meeting to get another cup of coffee. So starting every day with some work on the PowerPlate has been a huge lifesaver for me for handling all those hours sitting at my desk facing a webcam.

In terms of books, it’s been a huge year for reading for me, but I’ll name one book as the absolute stand-out for me for 2021: Project Hail Mary.

After making the mistake of reading the dreadfully depressing Three Body Problem trilogy last year, Project Hail Mary was a bit of a salvation for me. I don’t read a lot of single-volume science fiction works, but I’m damned glad I grabbed that to read.

I’m now on three weeks of annual leave, and while there are several things on my TODO list for my break, blogging isn’t one of them — so you’ll hear from me next in 2022. But things will be changing a bit in 2022 for me; I’m making a move into product management, and can’t wait to help to shape the future of data protection solutions.

So – wishing everyone a happy and safe holiday season, and hoping 2022 is a kinder year than 2020 and 2021.