SysDM is introducing software designed to help systems administrators identify network back-up problems, which one expert estimates occur in almost half of all operations.is introducing software designed to help systems administrators identify network back-up problems, which one expert estimates occur in almost half of all operations.

The start-up, founded in 2001 by storage veterans from EMC, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Micromuse, recently rolled out WysDM for Backups, software that analyzes information it collects from network interconnects, storage, systems and applications, and diagnoses problems.

WysDM for Backups, which is installed on a Linux, Solaris or Windows server, obtains information from network devices and reports the potential and actual problems that occurred during a back-up process.

"We have found that up to 40% of backups fail because of a mixture of issues, including configuration issues, full disks and file systems, and path and network problems," says Jamie Gruener, senior analyst with The Yankee Group.

SysDM CEO Alan Atkinson says companies are complicating the problem by centralizing backup of as many as 1,000 servers. The problem with centralization, he says, is that if something happens to one server it can affect other servers being backed up, and performance could suffer. SysDM aims to solve some of the problem by helping system adminsitrators pinpoint network bottlenecks and performance issues.

"SysDM not only reports on back-up problems, but does proactive analysis on performance within the back-up environment - including at the file system, host and disk array levels," Gruener says.

SysDM says WysDM for Backups can tell when a file system is full, when a tape drive is faulty, when the system CPU is busy, when a back-up process failed or when a back-up server is busy.

Douglas Bovie, manager for infrastructure management for telecom firm Equant in Frankfurt, Germany, uses WysDM for Backups. "It helps us identify where our throughput is and where our problems are so I can divert money to the correct spot," he says.

SysDM is not the first to introduce reporting software. Bocada has BackupReport, which reports on the failure of back-up jobs.

"What sets SysDM apart [from competitors] is the analyzer portion of the product, which examines trending and gives storage administrators the ability to avoid back-up problems," Gruener says. "Larger vendors such as Veritas and Legato are just starting to add the back-up reporting component."