6 Service management

In this chapter

Service Management, reporting, and monitoring help administrators manage their backup environments more effectively. This chapter describes the concepts behind the service management features and benefits available in both a standalone Data Protector installation and through its integration with HP service management products.

It is organized as follows:

“Overview” on page 205

“Native Data Protector functionality” on page 207

“Service management integrations” on page 215

Overview

Enterprise information technology (IT) departments are increasingly using service management tools, techniques, and methods to set service level expectations, measure service delivery against those expectations, and to justify future service expansion.

Because IT groups must manage the risk of data loss, data backup and recovery are critical elements in IT service delivery and management. Threats ranging from user error to viruses or other unauthorized data access and modification, or the occasional failure of the storage device itself put data at risk constantly. Business-critical data loss can cost the enterprise thousands, even millions of dollars per hour of downtime.

Users, however, may perceive data backup as something that can slow down or deny access to services while the backup is being conducted. But without this key activity, the continued availability and timeliness of services can be compromised and placed at significant risk.

While all data is at risk, not all data justifies equal recovery ability. IT departments must protect the business-critical data to a higher level of protection than the less valuable data - and do so cost effectively.

Concepts guide

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