StoragemagOnlineFEB2016 Final

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Home

Castagna:

Storage predictions,

real and surreal

Toigo: Defining

software-defined

storage

2015 Products

of the Year

Backup shoppers

back big names

Hyper-converged

systems provemore than hype

Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection

Kato: New

approaches to

scale-out NAS

About us

STORAGE • FEBRUARY 2016 1

SNAPSHOT 1

Backup hardware

shoppers prefer

big name vendors

EDITOR’S NOTE / CASTAGNA

Storage predictions—

ridiculous or sublime?

HYPER-CONVERGENCE

Deep dive into

hyper-converged

systems

STORAGE REVOLUTION / TOIGO

The real meaningof software-defined

storage

STORAGE

FEBRUARY 2016, VOL. 14, NO. 12

SNAPSHOT 2

Backup buyers

get discounts,

concessions

HOT SPOTS / BUFFINGTON

Media mashup

might be best for

data protection

PROTECT

See which primary

data protection tech

is best for your shop

READ-WRITE / KATO

New tools

for scaling NAS

MANAGING THE INFORMATION THAT DRIVES THE ENTERPRISE

Best StorageProducts of 2015

The envelope, please—and the winners are …


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http://www.storagedecisions.com/http://storagedecisions.techtarget.com/2015/


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BY NOW, EVERYONE’S probably well past scratching out

“2015” and writing “2016” on their checks (remember

checks?) and have already forgotten just exactly what New

Year’s resolutions they made.

But, hey, it is a new year, and you’re all probably raring

to go and ready to take on new projects, bolstered by a still

mostly unspent budget and a lot of great expectations. It’s

that traditional recharging of our psyches and souls, andit fills us with all kinds of optimism.

And if we need a little nudge into the future of data stor-

age—even just a subtle shove—we can always count on

the annual prognostications of storage industry pundits,

analysts, vendors and—ahem—maybe a storage editorial

writer.

Having already shared my forward-looking visions in

this space, I soon discovered that there was still a lot of

ground to cover as my email inbox spilled over with doz-

ens—nay, scores!—of predictions on the future of data

storage, pouring in from the aforementioned constitu-

encies. Some were pretty insightful, most were blatantly

self-serving, and still others were good for a chuckle or

two. Without naming names, here are some inbox gems.

“Contrary to popular belief, tape will not die in 2016 …”

Tape is taking longer to die than Generalissimo Franco

did back in 1973 … and 1974 … and 1975. This predic-tion on the future of data storage—boldly suggested by a

backup software vendor, not the LTO Consortium—goes

on to make a very good point by adding that tape is still a

“reliable and cheap” offline medium for cold archive. The

prediction then swerves a bit in the opposite direction and

says that cloud storage will replace tape in some cases. So

maybe tape dies in 2017 … ?

“Orchestration and automation will ensure

smoother operations and shorter scaling time …”

This is another vendor contribution on the future of data

storage—and a curious one at that. My mind might be

stuck in the storage world and maybe I don’t see the big

picture, but isn’t doing things faster and easier the whole

point of orchestration and automation? Maybe they just

didn’t want to go too far out on a limb and make the data

center of the future sound too good.

EDITOR’S LETTER

RICH CASTAGNA

Predictionsto give you aleg up on 2016Vendors and analysts share their

industry insights to help you prepare

for the rest of the year.

Home

Castagna:


real and surreal

Toigo: Defining

software-defined

storage

2015 Products

of the Year

Backup shoppers

back big names

Hyper-converged

systems provemore than hype

Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection

Kato: New

approaches to

scale-out NAS

About us

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Storage-budget-plans-still-coping-with-capacity-and-performancehttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/opinion/Tape-storage-capacity-faces-challenge-of-Z-apocalypsehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/New-LTO-7-tape-specification-is-now-available-for-licensinghttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/New-LTO-7-tape-specification-is-now-available-for-licensinghttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/opinion/Tape-storage-capacity-faces-challenge-of-Z-apocalypsehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Storage-budget-plans-still-coping-with-capacity-and-performance


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“Hardware is the new software, the emergence

of scale-In hardware architecture …”

I’m not even sure I know what this one means. But if we’re

living in the age of software-defined storage and this pre-

diction is correct, does that mean we should look forward

to hardware-defined storage—or hardware-defined soft-

ware? Whatever it means, I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for

it in 2016. I guess what they really mean is that hardware

does actually matter and despite “software-defined” show-

ing up in front of every conceivable data center thing these

days, we still have hardware and it’s still pretty darned

important. I couldn’t agree more—although I might’ve

said it a little differently.

“Dell-EMC chaos will ensue …”

I suppose this prediction hinges on your interpretation of

the word “chaos.” And, to be honest, this prediction came

from a vendor of—yes, you guessed it—storage systems.

So this is more of a prayer than a prediction.

“What excites me about the future of tape

is the new use cases that LTFS is opening up …”

In this case, the prognosticator’s excitement is under-standable as this prediction on the future of data storage

does come from one of the LTO Consortium members. I

was once excited by LTFS, but it’s been many years now

and there are only a handful of products built around that

technology. What really caught my eye, however, was the

use of the acronym “tNAS.” That got me revving up the

Google machine to see who minted that acronym. Frankly,

I was afraid that I wasn’t “in the know” and maybe tNAS

was the storage buzzword du jour. It actually means “tape

as NAS” so feel free to toss that acronym around.

“High-profile security breaches are set to continue

in 2016, and more executives will become the targets

of hackers …”

Those of us who aren’t executives can breathe a sigh of

relief—and try to remember not to stand too close to any

executives in 2016. I’m not sure it takes all that much

insight or expertise to predict that something bad that’s

been virtually unchecked for years will get worse in the

coming year. A hint or two about what we should do about

it would’ve been nice.

“Extinction of the IT specialist …”

That’s a pretty gutsy prediction to make—especially by

a storage product vendor. I think they’re predicting that

their customers will go the way of the dinosaurs. (I have

this picture of IT specialists clinging to their beloved tape

libraries, and together being hauled out of data centers

and dumped into museums.) But there was a serious part

of this prediction that describes a world where everyone

in the data center is a generalist, and everything has to besimple and manageable through a single pane of glass. So

it’s not really about extinction, but rather about IT utopia.

Thanks to all of these vendors, analysts and perceptive

pundits for sharing their visions of the near—and far—fu-

ture of data storage and its place in our data centers. I don’t

know about you, but I’m optimistic about 2016. n

RICH CASTAGNA is TechTarget’s VP of Editorial.

Home

Castagna:


real and surreal

Toigo: Defining

software-defined

storage

2015 Products

of the Year

Backup shoppers

back big names

Hyper-converged

systems prove

more than hype

Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection

Kato: New

approaches to

scale-out NAS

About us

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/essentialguide/Software-defined-storage-Making-sense-of-the-data-storage-technologyhttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Software-defined-storage-vendors-must-learn-from-their-pasthttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Can-LTFS-save-tapehttp://www.computerweekly.com/feature/LTFS-tape-NAS-A-great-idea-stuck-in-a-nichehttp://www.computerweekly.com/feature/LTFS-tape-NAS-A-great-idea-stuck-in-a-nichehttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tip/Buying-the-best-backup-tape-library-Tape-libraries-vs-tape-autoloadershttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tip/Buying-the-best-backup-tape-library-Tape-libraries-vs-tape-autoloadersmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tip/Buying-the-best-backup-tape-library-Tape-libraries-vs-tape-autoloadershttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tip/Buying-the-best-backup-tape-library-Tape-libraries-vs-tape-autoloadershttp://www.computerweekly.com/feature/LTFS-tape-NAS-A-great-idea-stuck-in-a-nichehttp://www.computerweekly.com/feature/LTFS-tape-NAS-A-great-idea-stuck-in-a-nichehttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Can-LTFS-save-tapehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Software-defined-storage-vendors-must-learn-from-their-pasthttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/essentialguide/Software-defined-storage-Making-sense-of-the-data-storage-technology


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FOR A FEW years now, folks have been pushing the idea that

server virtualization—and its correlatives, software-de-

fined networks and software-defined storage—is a pan-

acea for everything that’s been holding back IT service

delivery.

The mantra is easy to grasp: less hardware and cen-

tralized management equals lower cost of operation andreduced total cost of ownership. But reality has not seen

the delivery of this value proposition in very many shops

and many operators, including me, have been losing our

collective religion.

In the storage realm, the software-defined storage

(SDS) market has been hampered by the limited vision

and proprietary objectives of the leading hypervisor

vendors.

On the one hand, the software-defined storage market

has been advanced as a purported fix for the disappoint-

ing performance of virtualized applications—though the

actual performance issue rarely has anything to do with

storage I/O latency .

On the other hand, hypervisor vendors have advanced

their interpretation of SDS functionality —including some

storage services, excluding others—in an apparent effort

to create and reinforce silos of technology that only work

with data from their virtualized workloads and preferred vendor hardware.

WHAT’S IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE

SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE MARKET?

There are really only two things I’ve seen in the soft-

ware-defined storage market over the past year that have

even remotely impressed:

n The delivery of specialized archival gateway appliances

as virtual machines (for those who want to keep their

hardware footprint on the smallish side while still prac-

ticing the commonsensical and essential practice of data

archiving)

n The introduction of adaptive parallel I/O technology,

which leverages a full SDS stack to optimize raw storage

STORAGE REVOLUTION

JON TOIGO

Definingsoftware-defined storageMost of the software-defined stuff we

see is rehashed or proprietary tech, but

two products stand out in this crowd.

Home

Castagna:


real and surreal

Toigo: Defining

software-defined

storage

2015 Products

of the Year

Backup shoppers

back big names

Hyper-converged

systems prove

more than hype

Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection

Kato: New

approaches to

scale-out NAS

About us

http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/TCOhttp://searchvirtualstorage.techtarget.com/video/Why-the-I-O-blender-causes-storage-latency-in-virtual-environmentshttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Software-defined-storage-Is-hardware-obsoletehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Software-defined-storage-Is-hardware-obsoletehttp://searchvirtualstorage.techtarget.com/video/Why-the-I-O-blender-causes-storage-latency-in-virtual-environmentshttp://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/TCO


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I/O throughput and delivers ridiculously fast I/O pro-

cessing at an extraordinarily low cost per I/O

The archival gateway virtual machine (VM) is an in-

novation from Crossroads Systems, which was formally

announced at the end of 2015. Crossroads has been de-

livering archive gateways for quite some time under the

brand name StrongBox. They were among the first to see

the promise of the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) as a

means to bridge production file system-based storage to

file and object archive, preferably using tape or tape cloud.

The latter, the tape cloud, was pioneered by Crossroads’

partner, Fujifilm, a company that continues to do the hard

work of growing the efficiencies, capacity and resiliencyof magnetic tape.

Crossroads smartly enabled a generic server with a

preinstalled version of LTFS to give it the ability to take

files and objects from production storage and move them

transparently to extremely high-capacity tape in accor-

dance with archival policy. They initially targeted the two

leading repositories of files, NetApp filers and Microsoft

file servers, and made short work of the integration of

production and archive data storage bridging.The relationship with Fujifilm gave them the ability to

extend the bridge across a WAN to an archival cloud ser-

vice called the Dternity Media Cloud. Using tape provides

a means to seed the Dternity cloud when there is too much

data to transfer cost effectively across a wire, and also as

a means to retrieve a substantial amount of data from the

archive when necessary and re-deploy it into production

storage.

HOW TWO VENDORS HELPED

THE SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE MARKET

Both the StrongBox appliance and the Dternity gateway

and media cloud service were a win-win for both soft-

ware-defined storage vendors and users. But there was

still a challenge. Some customers didn’t want to deploy

another server—even a cool archive gateway appliance.

Given their efforts to consolidate and reduce the number

of servers via server virtualization, deploying a specialized

server seemed to be a bit of backsliding. So, Crossroads

innovated again, delivering its StrongBox for Fujifilm

Dternity gateway appliance as a virtual machine capable of

running under your favorite hypervisors, starting initially

with ESXi. That bit of out-of-the-box thinking may wellmake archive much more commonplace in virtual server

settings. You can download a free 90-day trial version of

Strongbox VM from Crossroads Systems to test in your

own shop.

That takes care of what I call “retention storage” which

is the second part of the contemporary storage paradigm.

Retention storage is where we put data that we need to

retain but rarely if ever access or update. As much as 70%

of your current data probably belongs in retention storage,and tape archive is clearly the cost-effective choice.

MAKE ROOM FOR “CAPTURE STORAGE”

IN YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE

The other part of your infrastructure is “capture stor-

age”—the storage that’s optimized for high-performance

access and fast IOPS. There’s no shortage of kit makers

Home

Castagna:


real and surreal

Toigo: Defining

software-defined

storage

2015 Products

of the Year

Backup shoppers

back big names

Hyper-converged

systems prove

more than hype

Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection

Kato: New

approaches to

scale-out NAS

About us

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Video-storage-takes-its-turn-in-the-spotlighthttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/opinion/Tape-storage-capacity-faces-challenge-of-Z-apocalypsehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Jon-Toigo-on-What-is-software-defined-storagehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Jon-Toigo-on-What-is-software-defined-storagehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Software-defined-infrastructure-or-how-storage-becomes-softwarehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Software-defined-infrastructure-or-how-storage-becomes-softwarehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Jon-Toigo-on-What-is-software-defined-storagehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Jon-Toigo-on-What-is-software-defined-storagehttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/opinion/Tape-storage-capacity-faces-challenge-of-Z-apocalypsehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Video-storage-takes-its-turn-in-the-spotlight


7/46


Home

Castagna:


real and surreal

Toigo: Defining

software-defined

storage

2015 Products

of the Year

Backup shoppers

back big names

Hyper-converged

systems prove

more than hype

Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection

Kato: New

approaches to

scale-out NAS

About us

in the software-defined storage market who want to sell

us the fastest flash arrays or the cleanest and most stove-

piped VMware Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) products to

expedite I/O handling. But the breakthrough that we saw

with the release of the SPC-1 benchmark around DataCore

Software’s Adaptive Parallel I/O in December 2015, and

the delivery this month of software-defined storage en-

abled with that technology, takes the cake.

Go visit the Storage Performance Council report for

yourself and see how DataCore managed to get the lowest

cost per IOPS ($.08 per IOPS) in history using commodity

disk, flash and server equipment along with its own stor-

age virtualization software. That story is poised to improve

over the next few months, as the company has its second

round of SPC-1 benchmark tests certified, showing how

you can squeeze over a million IOPS out of an economical

server/storage kit of your own choice.

While I have been listening to the woo peddlers around

software-defined-everything basically bend the ideas to

serve their proprietary ends, it is rewarding to see some

reasons to keep the faith in the software-defined storage

market. These are two. n

JON WILLIAM TOIGO is a 30-year IT veteran, CEO and managing

principal of Toigo Partners International, and chairman of the Data

Management Institute.

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Why-2015-wont-be-the-year-of-software-defined-everythingmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Why-2015-wont-be-the-year-of-software-defined-everything


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Storage Products

of the YearFind out which 18 products from the past yearare on the cutting edge of technology.

BY PAUL CROCETTI, GARRY KRANZ, SONIA LELII, DAVE RAFFO,

CAROL SLIWA, SARAH WILSON AND ED HANNAN

PRODUCTS OF THE YEAR

EACH YEAR, WE invite technology vendors to submit their

nominations for our annual Storage magazine/Search-

Storage Products of the Year, which recognize the previ-

ous year’s most innovative data storage products. Our sole

focus is on products introduced or significantly upgraded

within the past year. This results in new or lesser-knownproducts faring quite well against more recognizable prod-

ucts if those products have not been vigorously upgraded.

Ultimately, these awards are intended to recognize

innovations in technology. But innovation is not the only

consideration—the product has to work well and make its

users happy. Our judges also consider performance, ease

of integration and ease of use, along with manageability,

functionality and value. Our judging panel consists of us-

ers, analysts and consultants, along with Storage magazineand SearchStorage writers and editors.

Categories included backup and disaster recovery soft-

ware and services,backup hardware, storage management

tools and storage system software. As was the case last

year, we separated the storage systems category into all-

flash systems and disk/hybrid systems.

To the 18 Products of the Year winners profiled on the

following pages, we offer hearty congratulations!

HOME

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Backup-and-disaster-recovery-in-the-age-of-virtualisationhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Todays-data-backup-appliance-is-ready-for-the-enterprisehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/report/Improved-enterprise-storage-management-tools-are-needed-especially-for-data-backuphttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/report/Improved-enterprise-storage-management-tools-are-needed-especially-for-data-backuphttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/tip/How-to-integrate-data-storage-platform-software-hardware-for-DIY-storage-systemshttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/tip/All-flash-storage-systems-Types-and-use-caseshttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/tip/All-flash-storage-systems-Types-and-use-caseshttp://searchsolidstatestorage.techtarget.com/definition/hybrid-flash-arrayhttp://searchsolidstatestorage.techtarget.com/definition/hybrid-flash-arrayhttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/tip/All-flash-storage-systems-Types-and-use-caseshttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/tip/All-flash-storage-systems-Types-and-use-caseshttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/tip/How-to-integrate-data-storage-platform-software-hardware-for-DIY-storage-systemshttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/report/Improved-enterprise-storage-management-tools-are-needed-especially-for-data-backuphttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/report/Improved-enterprise-storage-management-tools-are-needed-especially-for-data-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Todays-data-backup-appliance-is-ready-for-the-enterprisehttp://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Backup-and-disaster-recovery-in-the-age-of-virtualisation


9/46


Home

Castagna:


real and surreal

Toigo: Defining

software-defined

storage

2015 Products

of the Year

Backup shoppers

back big names

Hyper-converged

systems prove

more than hype

Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection

Kato: Newapproaches to

scale-out NAS

About us

BACKUP AND DISASTER RECOVERY SOFTWARE AND SERVICES

Veeam Availability Suite v8

Veeam Availability Suite v8 offers the company’s virtual

server backup software and its Veeam ONE monitoring

software in a single platform and introduces more than

200 new features and enhancements.

Highlights include Veeam Cloud Connect, integration

with NetApp and built-in WAN acceleration for VM rep-

lication. Veeam Availability Suite v8 leverages virtualiza-

tion, storage and cloud technologies to deliver recovery

time objectives of less than 15 minutes.

The software provides 24/7 data center availability.Veeam Cloud Connect gives Veeam partners a platform

that lets them offer backup hosting as a service to Veeam’s

customer base. Backup I/O Control ensures a production

workload’s availability by controlling the impact of backup

and replication jobs on production VMs. Snapshot Hunter

detects and automatically consolidates hidden and stuck

VM snapshots, preventing data stores from overfilling

with snapshot files and stopping production VMs.

Veeam ONE is a monitoring, reporting and capacityplanning tool for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V

and the Veeam backup infrastructure. It provides com-

plete visibility of the IT environment to detect issues

before they impact operations.

Veeam Availability Suite v8 works with whatever pro-

duction and backup storage is in place, providing the free-

dom to change storage providers over time or use a mix,

according to the company. Veeam also integrates with

storage products from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, EMC

and NetApp to provide both advanced snapshot support

functionality and backup storage integration.

One judge called Veeam Availability Suite v8 a “solid

update that solves other VM data protection problems”

and continues to raise the bar with functions such as the

backup hunter, backup throttling, WAN acceleration and

more. Another judge noted that “customers seem to be

very happy.”

The Veeam Availability Suite v8 standard edition costs

$1,100 per socket, and requires a Microsoft Hyper-V or

VMware vSphere environment and a Windows-based

server. Veeam does not charge per terabyte, for application

support, or for any of its product components, which are

unlimited for users. n

HPRODUCTSOF THE YEAR 2015GOLDSTORAGEMAGAZINE

http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tutorial/Virtual-server-backup-tutorial-Dont-learn-these-lessons-the-hard-wayhttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tutorial/Virtual-server-backup-tutorial-Dont-learn-these-lessons-the-hard-wayhttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/Veeam-offers-secure-SSL-connection-for-offsite-backuphttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/definition/WAN-acceleratorhttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/recovery-time-objective-RTOhttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/recovery-time-objective-RTOhttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/feature/Managed-backup-services-Pros-and-cons-of-hosting-approacheshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Data-replication-for-backup-best-practiceshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Data-replication-for-backup-best-practiceshttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Simple-rules-to-avoid-VM-snapshot-problemshttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Simple-rules-to-avoid-VM-snapshot-problemshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/4500269375/Publisher-school-switch-to-Veeam-for-Hyper-V-protectionhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/4500269375/Publisher-school-switch-to-Veeam-for-Hyper-V-protectionhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/4500269375/Publisher-school-switch-to-Veeam-for-Hyper-V-protectionhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/4500269375/Publisher-school-switch-to-Veeam-for-Hyper-V-protectionhttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Simple-rules-to-avoid-VM-snapshot-problemshttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Simple-rules-to-avoid-VM-snapshot-problemshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Data-replication-for-backup-best-practiceshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Data-replication-for-backup-best-practiceshttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/feature/Managed-backup-services-Pros-and-cons-of-hosting-approacheshttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/recovery-time-objective-RTOhttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/recovery-time-objective-RTOhttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/definition/WAN-acceleratorhttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/Veeam-offers-secure-SSL-connection-for-offsite-backuphttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tutorial/Virtual-server-backup-tutorial-Dont-learn-these-lessons-the-hard-wayhttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tutorial/Virtual-server-backup-tutorial-Dont-learn-these-lessons-the-hard-way


10/46



Asigra Cloud Backup Version 13

Asigra Cloud Backup Version 13 offers a range of data

protection capabilities. This update of the enterprise

backup software platform includes a new snapshot man-

ager and support for Docker container backup.

The Asigra Cloud Backup software protects Docker

containers by eliminating the need for disruptive software

agents, improving management, performance and secu-

rity. Organizations can use Docker to move containers

from one cloud to another, or from a cloud to an on-prem-

ises system and vice versa. Together with Docker, Asigra

provides flexibility as it can be used cloud-to-cloud, cloud

to on-premises, and on-premises to cloud. Users can set

automatic protection to protect data in both a local and

off-site backup vault.

Asigra’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Block

Store (EBS) Snapshot Manager allows Asigra Cloud

Backup users to quickly and easily create a snapshot

schedule through a Web-based graphical user interface

that automates taking snapshots of one or more AWS Elas-

tic Compute Cloud instances. This automation eliminates

the need to write complex scripts, reducing development

time, management requirements and other resources.

Both Docker and AWS are highly popular computing

platforms that are emerging as credible storage platformsfor business information. Asigra says it is the first enter-

prise software vendor to add support for these platforms.

One judge praised Asigra for being early to market with

the new capabilities. Another said that in addition to being

“very inexpensive,” the Asigra Cloud Backup software is

unique in its automatic protection of Docker containers

and its ability to manage AWS EBS snapshots.

Asigra AWS EBS Snapshot Manager is free and can be

downloaded without obligation. The Docker containerbackup is available in Version 13 of Asigra Cloud Backup

and must be acquired through an Asigra partner; esti-

mated starting price is 15 cents to 20 cents per gigabyte,

per month.

The Docker container capability is a new feature in-

cluded in Asigra Cloud Backup Version 13. Asigra AWS

EBS Snapshot Manager is a standalone product that can

be used independently. n

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Backup shoppers

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Primary data

protection primer

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scale-out NAS

About us

HPRODUCTSOF THE YEAR 2015SILVERSTORAGEMAGAZINE

http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tutorial/Secure-data-backup-strategies-for-the-enterprise-A-backup-security-tutorialhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tutorial/Secure-data-backup-strategies-for-the-enterprise-A-backup-security-tutorialhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/How-do-you-perform-Docker-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/How-do-you-perform-Docker-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/2240214351/As-SaaS-grows-so-does-cloud-to-cloud-backuphttp://searchwindevelopment.techtarget.com/definition/GUIhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tip/Storage-snapshot-technologies-in-data-backup-and-recoveryhttp://searchaws.techtarget.com/definition/Amazon-Elastic-Compute-Cloud-Amazon-EC2http://searchaws.techtarget.com/definition/Amazon-Elastic-Compute-Cloud-Amazon-EC2http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240242730/AWS-EBS-volumes-push-the-scalability-envelopehttp://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/definition/Dockerhttp://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/definition/Dockerhttp://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240242730/AWS-EBS-volumes-push-the-scalability-envelopehttp://searchaws.techtarget.com/definition/Amazon-Elastic-Compute-Cloud-Amazon-EC2http://searchaws.techtarget.com/definition/Amazon-Elastic-Compute-Cloud-Amazon-EC2http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tip/Storage-snapshot-technologies-in-data-backup-and-recoveryhttp://searchwindevelopment.techtarget.com/definition/GUIhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/2240214351/As-SaaS-grows-so-does-cloud-to-cloud-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/How-do-you-perform-Docker-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/How-do-you-perform-Docker-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tutorial/Secure-data-backup-strategies-for-the-enterprise-A-backup-security-tutorialhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/tutorial/Secure-data-backup-strategies-for-the-enterprise-A-backup-security-tutorial


11/46



Druva inSync 5.5

Druva inSync 5.5 endpoint backup software helps com-panies address the security and compliance risks created

by workforce mobility, adoption of cloud applications, the

BYOD trend and consumer file-sharing tools.

The Druva inSync 5.5 software monitors and notifies

the user of compliance risks for sensitive data at rest,

using preconfigured and customiz-

able templates. The collection and

backup of cloud application data

provides a single access point to view and manage user data across

separate data sources. A full-text

search feature for e-discovery identi-

fies the location of litigation-related

files across all data sources, includ-

ing file versions, deleted files and

former employees’ files.

The Druva inSync 5.5 cloud privacy framework provides

organizations with granular data privacy management, while envelope encryption, data/metadata separation and

block-level storage prevent Druva from accessing data that

it stores in cloud storage services.

Through Druva inSync 5.5, an IT department has full

visibility into corporate data stored on any endpoint, such

as laptops and mobile devices, or a cloud app like Office

365, which facilitates collection, data protection and pol-

icy enforcement.

The Druva inSync software creates a master record ofall endpoint and cloud app data, so any file can be easily

recovered in the event of device loss. Data required for

compliance audits, leak investigations and litigation

requests can be supplied without physically searching

devices or multiple cloud apps.

Druva says its design approach

ensures data privacy, global scal-

ability and rapid transfer speeds

that overcome the usual limitations of cloud-based data protection. The

software takes advantage of Druva’s

patented global source-side dedu-

plication technology to reduce the

storage and bandwidth required for

backups and file sharing.

One judge called Druva inSync 5.5

a solid update from an endpoint data protection leader,

praising its innovative proactive compliance and a morecomplete search. Druva continues to excel in endpoint

backup, compliance, security, and sync and share, the

judge said.

Another judge noted that the Druva inSync 5.5 soft-

ware is a “very scalable endpoint solution” with “strong

governance.”

The base price begins at $6 per month, per user for

cloud business and does not require hardware. n

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HPRODUCTSOF THE YEAR 2015BRONZESTORAGEMAGAZINE

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/data-at-resthttp://searchcloudstorage.techtarget.com/answer/Whats-most-important-to-know-about-my-cloud-privacy-policyhttp://searchcloudstorage.techtarget.com/answer/Whats-most-important-to-know-about-my-cloud-privacy-policyhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/Why-is-cloud-based-data-protection-not-always-a-good-thinghttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/Why-is-cloud-based-data-protection-not-always-a-good-thinghttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/source-deduplicationhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/source-deduplicationhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/What-are-the-differences-between-file-sync-and-share-and-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/What-are-the-differences-between-file-sync-and-share-and-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/source-deduplicationhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/source-deduplicationhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/Why-is-cloud-based-data-protection-not-always-a-good-thinghttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/answer/Why-is-cloud-based-data-protection-not-always-a-good-thinghttp://searchcloudstorage.techtarget.com/answer/Whats-most-important-to-know-about-my-cloud-privacy-policyhttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/data-at-rest


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BACKUP HARDWARE

ExaGrid EX32000E

The ExaGrid EX32000E backup deduplication applianceis a scale-out disk system built on ExaGrid’s GRID archi-

tecture, with the latest 4.9 version upgraded to support

RMAN for Oracle databases. The two previous upgrades

increased capacity from 14 to 25 appliances in a GRID and

increased the number of data centers supported to 16 for

cross-site disaster recovery.

The company targets small to midrange customers with

10 appliance models of various sizes that can be installed

in a configuration that does deduplication and replication without interfering with the backup process. The ExaGrid

EX32000E uses “adaptive deduplication” where the dedu-

plication and replication are done in parallel with backup

while system resources are provided to the backups to

reduce the backup window.

The backups are written directly to the landing zone

with the most recent backups maintained in their full

original state ready for requests. The ExaGrid EX32000E

system does instant recovery of virtual machines from thelanding zone. If the primary virtual machine is not avail-

able, the administrator can recover and run a virtual ma-

chine from the ExaGrid system within minutes. The local

restores, instant virtual machine recoveries, audit copies

and tape copies do not require rehydration. Instant virtual

machine recovery occurs in seconds to minutes —much

faster than inline deduplication, which requires data re-

hydration. ExaGrid EX32000E backups occur in parallel

with deduplication and off-site replication. The companycalls this adaptive deduplication because the replication

and deduplication do not affect the backup process.

ExaGrid’s EX32000E can ingest 7.56 TB an hour with up

to 25 appliances in a single, scale-out GRID architecture.

Storage and ingest capacity are increased as data volumes

increase so there is no effect to the length of the backup

window. The systems are plug-and-play, with each added

appliance automatically discovered in the GRID. ExaGrid

EX32000E appliance models can support from 1 TB to 32TB and can be added as needed to the GRID. n


http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/2240214865/ExaGrid-CEO-Cloud-backups-virtually-disappeared-from-our-markethttp://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/feature/Impact-Awards-Vote-for-the-best-data-protection-solutionhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/instant-recovery-recovery-in-placehttp://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240035313/Oil-group-gets-80-to-1-data-deduplication-with-ExaGrid-and-more-newshttp://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240035313/Oil-group-gets-80-to-1-data-deduplication-with-ExaGrid-and-more-newshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/instant-recovery-recovery-in-placehttp://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/feature/Impact-Awards-Vote-for-the-best-data-protection-solutionhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/2240214865/ExaGrid-CEO-Cloud-backups-virtually-disappeared-from-our-market


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About us

BACKUP HARDWARE

NEC Corporation HYDRAStor v4.4

NEC’s HYDRAstor v4.4 garnered second place in the2015 product of the year awards for backup hardware as

judges lauded it as the most scalable target dedupe appli-

ance. The scale-out, Linux-based system can scale linearly

up to 165 hybrid storage nodes.

“It’s amazingly engineered but often ignored,” said one

of our judges of NEC HYDRAstor v4.4.

“It’s very feature-rich and it has great

OST.”

The latest 4.4 version of the NECHYDRAstor introduced the Universal

Deduped Transfer feature that elimi-

nates the need to transfer duplicated

data blocks from applications to HY-

DRAstor. The capability is a source-

side deduplication that leverages

server resources to reduce bandwidth

usage. It does not require any applica-

tion-specific integration so multipleapplications are serviced once it is

deployed via a standard file-system

interface.

With the Universal Deduped Trans-

fer, a single-controller hybrid node has

a maximum throughput for general

application that increased from 4.9

TB per hour to 40 TB per hour, per

controller. It can scale out up to 165 hybrid storage nodesand has a performance capability of from 1 PB per hour up

to 4 PB per hour with inline global deduplication.

The NEC HYDRAstor system’s distributed architecture

can meet the needs for the low end and then can scale to

handle larger datasets. The system can expand and be re-

freshed online with no data migration

necessary.

The new version of the NEC HY-

DRAstor also introduced a new OST Accelerator support for Veritas Net-

Backup to automate and speed the

backup process. This accelerator re-

duces the backup window because it

offloads synthetic full-backup process-

ing from the media server to HYDRAs-

tor and automates the synthesis of the

next full backup as soon as the new

incremental backup is received. Theaccelerator allows the user to elimi-

nate the weekly full backup from the

job schedule and maintain an up-to-

date full backup image with only daily

incrementals.

NEC HYDRAstor is a scale-out sys-

tem, built on an object store with ad-

vance erasure coding instead of RAID. n


http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/target-deduplicationhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/target-deduplicationhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Using-data-deduplication-with-backup-applications-Source-vs-target-dedupehttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Using-data-deduplication-with-backup-applications-Source-vs-target-dedupehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Big-data-storage-architecture-Categories-strengths-and-use-caseshttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Big-data-storage-architecture-Categories-strengths-and-use-caseshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/4500249534/Veritas-launches-NetBackup-77-with-emphasis-on-cloud-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/4500249534/Veritas-launches-NetBackup-77-with-emphasis-on-cloud-backuphttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/1247219/NEC-reveals-HydraStor-grid-storagehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/1247219/NEC-reveals-HydraStor-grid-storagehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/1247219/NEC-reveals-HydraStor-grid-storagehttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/1247219/NEC-reveals-HydraStor-grid-storagehttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/4500249534/Veritas-launches-NetBackup-77-with-emphasis-on-cloud-backuphttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/4500249534/Veritas-launches-NetBackup-77-with-emphasis-on-cloud-backuphttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Big-data-storage-architecture-Categories-strengths-and-use-caseshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Using-data-deduplication-with-backup-applications-Source-vs-target-dedupehttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Using-data-deduplication-with-backup-applications-Source-vs-target-dedupehttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/target-deduplicationhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/definition/target-deduplication


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BACKUP HARDWARE

Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance

The Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance is ascale-out device that functions as a relational database

management system (RDBMS) data protection target,

with the ability to do linear backup and restores scaling

from 580 TB to more than 10 PB of usable capacity that it

can move at 216 TB per hour.

Introduced last year, the appliance is built only for

Oracle database protection, doing continuous protection

for critical databases while offloading

backup processes from production serv-ers to reduce overhead. The Oracle

Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance is

integrated with RMAN and Oracle En-

terprise Manager.

The Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery

Appliance is designed to drastically re-

duce data-loss exposure, reducing it to

sub-seconds. Its architecture uses a del-

ta-push and delta-store method in whichit only sends and stores changed blocks

from the database to the appliance.

The system creates virtual full copies

during the restores from the blocks and

delta store to help cut down on the need

for lengthy backups. When taking into

account virtual full backups, Oracle says

the system performs at 2 PB per hour.

The continuous, incremental backup process capturesreal-time database changes without impacting production

performance.

The Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance also can

directly archive database backups to tape storage, with

the archiving operations running 24/7 to improve drive

utilization. Its changed data-store can be used to create

virtual full database copies at any desired point-in-time,

and the appliance can replicate data in

real-time to a remote Oracle recoveryappliance or to an Oracle Database

Backup Cloud service. Database blocks

are continuously validated to eliminate

data corruption during the transmission

process.

One judge called the Oracle Zero Data

Loss Recovery Appliance unique and

said it goes beyond RMAN integration.

“It’s RDBMS-controlled data protec-tion with huge levels of compression

and zero RPO and RTO,” he said. “For

non-stop business continuity environ-

ments, it’s an excellent value.”

The hardware is a base rack with a

minimum configuration of two compute

nodes and three storage servers that can

scale up to 18 nodes. n


http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/feature/Which-relational-DBMS-is-best-for-your-companyhttp://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/feature/Which-relational-DBMS-is-best-for-your-companyhttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Choosing-the-best-Oracle-backup-strategy-for-your-environmenthttp://searchoracle.techtarget.com/feature/Ascending-to-the-cloud-with-Oracle-Enterprise-Manager-an-excerpthttp://searchoracle.techtarget.com/feature/Ascending-to-the-cloud-with-Oracle-Enterprise-Manager-an-excerpthttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Oracle-backup-best-practiceshttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Oracle-backup-best-practiceshttp://searchoracle.techtarget.com/feature/Ascending-to-the-cloud-with-Oracle-Enterprise-Manager-an-excerpthttp://searchoracle.techtarget.com/feature/Ascending-to-the-cloud-with-Oracle-Enterprise-Manager-an-excerpthttp://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Choosing-the-best-Oracle-backup-strategy-for-your-environmenthttp://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/feature/Which-relational-DBMS-is-best-for-your-companyhttp://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/feature/Which-relational-DBMS-is-best-for-your-company


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Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

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About us

STORAGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Data Dynamics Inc. StorageX 7.6

Judges agreed that Data Dynamics Inc. StorageX 7.6 filemanagement software’s ease of integration, ease of use and

innovation set it apart from other finalists in the storage

management tools category.

StorageX software provides users with a unified dash-

board view into all storage in a multi-vendor environment,

and is used for data lifecycle management. It uses poli-

cy-driven automation to migrate and tier unstructured

data in a distributed file system (DFS) using a three-phase

copy process to minimize user disruption.The Data Dynamics Inc. software also features quality

of service (QoS) bandwidth throttling to maintain per-

formance. When files are being migrated, StorageX auto-

matically updates DFS namespaces so that manual LAN

or WAN routing is not required—

relieving one of the biggest pain

points for administrators dealing

with DFS migration.

StorageX version 7.6 added APIintegration to NetApp Data ON-

TAP and EMC Isilon and VNX,

which allows the use of features

native to those storage systems.

This upgrade also added distrib-

uted file system management

features including replication

and high availability. Additional

updates to this version include the ability to create cus-tom reports, automatic validation of file storage and DFS

namespace resources, and role-based access to StorageX

features.

StorageX was scored the highest among the group of

nine finalists, which included automation, provisioning

and performance monitoring tools. Judges gave the Data

Dynamics Inc. products the highest scores for its ease of

use and manageability, and for performance and function-

ality. One judge said StorageX 7.6 was an essential updateto the product because “it makes the product more com-

petitive with other offerings and offers several advantages

such as automated file storage management.” Another

judge said it was “unparalleled for file migration needs”

and predicted Data Dynamics Inc.

StorageX software could “save ev-

eryone 30% of new storage costs.”

Judges also acknowledged that

Microsoft DFS management isa narrow market, but one that is

worth pursuing because the file

systems are often complicated

and lack management features.

Data Dynamics Inc. StorageX

7.6 is sold through the channel

and the list price starts at $500

per TB. n


http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/Data-Dynamics-StorageXhttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/tip/Crafting-a-data-lifecycle-management-strategy-to-control-capacityhttp://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/feature/Windows-Distributed-File-System-DFS-Namespace-primerhttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/Clustered-OnTap-complexities-clobber-NetApphttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/Clustered-OnTap-complexities-clobber-NetApphttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/4500257789/Data-Dynamics-StorageX-file-migration-app-adds-supporthttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/4500257789/Data-Dynamics-StorageX-file-migration-app-adds-supporthttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/4500257789/Data-Dynamics-StorageX-file-migration-app-adds-supporthttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/4500257789/Data-Dynamics-StorageX-file-migration-app-adds-supporthttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/Clustered-OnTap-complexities-clobber-NetApphttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/Clustered-OnTap-complexities-clobber-NetApphttp://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/feature/Windows-Distributed-File-System-DFS-Namespace-primerhttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/tip/Crafting-a-data-lifecycle-management-strategy-to-control-capacityhttp://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/Data-Dynamics-StorageX


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About us


Dell Inc. Foglight for Storage Management 4.0

Dell Foglight for Storage Management was upgradedin April 2015 and judges agreed the added support for Hy-

per-V and its resource management capabilities made it a

very competitive alternative in the storage management

tools market.

Dell Foglight version 4.0 monitors and analyzes storage

performance and availability in virtual environments.

The product is installed as a virtual appliance and can be

accessed through a standard Web browser. The single-

pane-of-glass monitoring view spans both physical and virtual components in a data center—a big plus for ad-

ministrators of virtual environments as the two often have

to be monitored separately. The monitoring tracks virtual

machine performance so Dell Foglight can proactivelypredict the effects of changes to the environment. The tool

is also able to detect over-provisioned virtual machines

and other underused resources so that the capacity can

be reclaimed and used more efficiently.

In version 4.0, Dell added storage capacity planning

capabilities. Foglight estimates when a storage pool will

exhaust all of its capacity so that administrators can plan

ahead. Administrators can also choose to review reports

across all storage arrays in an environment, or reports ona single array for a more granular view. According to Dell,

these reports display real-time statistics as well as histor-

ical consumption charts, and long-term and short-term

estimated trends to alert users of how much time they

have left before specific storage pools run out of capacity.

With the addition of Hyper-V support, Foglight is now

compatible with all major hypervisors: VMware, Open-

Stack and KVM are also included.

Judges gave Foglight for Storage Management highscores for its ease of use, ease of integration and perfor-

mance, citing that “adding Hyper-V support was smart,”

and that the product has a “better than average root cause

analysis troubleshooting tool.”

Dell acquired Foglight technology in June 2012 when

it bought Quest Software for $2.4 billion. Pricing for Dell

Foglight for Storage Management starts at $499 per CPU

socket. n


http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Introduction-to-virtualization-systems-management-toolshttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Introduction-to-virtualization-systems-management-toolshttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Introduction-to-virtualization-systems-management-toolshttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Four-mistakes-that-can-kill-virtual-machine-performancehttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Four-mistakes-that-can-kill-virtual-machine-performancehttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Virtual-capacity-planning-step-one-Evaluate-what-you-havehttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Virtual-capacity-planning-step-one-Evaluate-what-you-havehttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/KVM-hypervisorhttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/KVM-hypervisorhttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Virtual-capacity-planning-step-one-Evaluate-what-you-havehttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Virtual-capacity-planning-step-one-Evaluate-what-you-havehttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Four-mistakes-that-can-kill-virtual-machine-performancehttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Four-mistakes-that-can-kill-virtual-machine-performancehttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Introduction-to-virtualization-systems-management-toolshttp://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Introduction-to-virtualization-systems-management-tools


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About us


ProphetStor Data Services, Inc. Federator SDS 3.0

In a category of tools focused on one aspect of storagemanagement, breadth of functionality is what made

ProphetStor’s Federator SDS version 3.0 stand out.

Federator SDS provides data services, automation and

analytics. It is an out-of-band storage controller for het-

erogeneous scale-up or scale-out storage environments.

When installed, it automatically detects storage hardware

in an environment and pools

the capacity in an abstracted

layer so that all the functional-ity can be exposed to the user.

Users can then access that stor-

age and the management and

analytics functions via a GUI or

an open REST-based API.

Data services offered by Fed-

erator SDS include data mi-

gration, copy management,

business continuity and disas-ter recovery. Storage features

provided by storage hardware such as thin provisioning,

deduplication, compression and encryption can be sur-

faced for all abstracted capacity.

Version 3.0 of the Federator SDS was a significant

upgrade that ProphetStor claims included features al-

ready on their roadmap as well as improvements based

on customer feedback. Also called the “Catalina” release,

the upgrade included the ability to virtualize storage vol-umes up to 16 exabytes in size. Storage tiering and data

migration capability was also improved. Users can now

use pre-defined or custom workload profiles to maximize

the utilization of flash and caches. Another new feature of

Federator 3.0 is dynamic quality of service, which has the

ability to throttle throughput to guarantee performance.

Support was also expanded in

this release: VMware vSphere

APIs for Array Integration andNFS are now compatible with

Federator SDS.

ProphetStor claims “Fed-

erator SDS is a cross-system

manager that was developed to

break vendor lock-in and cre-

ate a horizontally orchestrated

storage platform.”

However, one judge claimedProphetStor could have a hard

time getting support from other storage vendors because

it commoditizes storage control. That judge also noted the

product’s innovation could make up for any potential sup-

port issues and still help it move farther into the market.

“The out-of-band nature and ability to federate is clever,

fully functional and innovative, giving it a reasonable

chance for success,” he said. n


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About us

STORAGE SYSTEM SOFTWARE

DataCore SANsymphony-V Adaptive Parallel I/O

After third-place finishes in 2010 and 2013, DataCoreSANsymphony-V Adaptive Parallel I/O software finally

broke through to win the gold award in 2015.

The DataCore SANsymphony-V storage software lets

multicore servers use the processing power of all avail-

able cores to execute and schedule multiple I/O threads

to eliminate bottlenecks, boost application performance,

and facilitate the consolidation of virtual machines (VMs),

application workloads and physical servers.

“Many have tried to address the performance problemat the device level by adding solid-state storage (flash) to

meet the increasing demands of enterprise applications

or by hard-wiring these fast devices to VMs in hyper-con-

verged systems. However, improving the performance of

the storage media—which replacing spinning disks with

flash attempts to do—only addresses one aspect of the I/O

stack: read performance,” said George Teixeira, CEO and

co-founder of DataCore, in a company white paper.

DataCore SANsymphony-V Adaptive Parallel I/Osoftware can enable the processing of more data storage

requests in a given time frame and accelerate an applica-

tion’s ability to both read and write to storage. The I/O re-

quests would otherwise be waiting in line to get serviced.

Our judging panel rated DataCore’s Adaptive Parallel

I/O first in performance among the 13 finalists in the

Storage System Software category. The product also tied

for first place in innovation and value, and ranked second

in functionality.One judge said there is nothing else like DataCore’s

Adaptive Parallel I/O on the market, and he called the

software “potentially revolutionary.” Another judge noted

that most software-defined storage products, or storage

virtualization, are not capable of parallel I/O. “More peo-

ple ought to be evaluating SANsymphony,” said one judge.

The Adaptive Parallel I/O software is an upgrade to

the DataCore SANsymphony-V10 storage virtualization

product, which can pool capacity across heterogeneousstorage hardware and provide storage management capa-

bilities. The DataCore SANsymphony-V software can run

on standard x86 servers. Pricing starts at less than $5,000

per node.

One judge cautioned that the DataCore software is de-

signed for storage in Microsoft Windows Server environ-

ments. He said DataCore needs a Linux version. n


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2015 Products

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Backup shoppers

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Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

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scale-out NAS

About us


Hedvig Inc. Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform

The Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform snared thesilver award in our Products of the Year competition for

storage system software less than a year after Hedvig Inc.

launched from stealth.

The Hedvig software runs on off-the-shelf x86 and ARM

servers, and supports in-software provisioning of block,

file and object storage. Customers can deploy the soft-

ware-defined storage on premise and in public clouds and

in hyperscale or hyper-converged mode. They can scale

the system from several terabytes to petabytes by addingadditional commodity servers and manage the storage as

a single pool.

Granular storage policies enable the provisioning ofcapabilities such as inline deduplication and compression,

snapshots and clones by application, virtual machine

(VM) or container. Additional product features include

a Web interface to enable IT administrators to provision

storage from any device and built-in, tunable multi-site

replication to send up to six copies of data to various sites

or clouds.

The Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform supports

a wide range of hypervisors and operating systems andprovides a broad set of RESTful APIs, drivers and plug-ins

to enable integration with technologies such as Docker

containers, Hadoop, NoSQL, OpenStack and VMware

vCenter.

Our panel of judges scored the Hedvig Distributed

Storage Platform first in functionality; it tied for first in

innovation as well as ease of use and manageability. The

product also ranked second in value and tied for second

in ease of integration among the 13 finalists in the compe-tition’s storage system software category.

One judge labeled the Hedvig Distributed Storage Plat-

form as the “best new competitor.” He said the product

“certainly checks all the boxes.”

Hedvig customers have two purchase options: a perpet-

ual, capacity-based license starting at 50 cents per GB or

an annual subscription starting at $5,000 per server. Both

options include all features and capabilities. n


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storage

2015 Products

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Backup shoppers

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Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection


scale-out NAS

About us


Zadara Virtual Private Storage Arrays OPaaS 15.07

The June 2015 release of Zadara Storage Inc.’s VirtualPrivate Storage Arrays (VPSA) on-premise as a service

(OPaaS) packed in enough substantial new features to

merit the bronze award in the storage system software

category.

Zadara Storage provides on-demand, enterprise-grade

block and file storage—based in part on OpenStack

technology—with dedicated resources on premise, in

the cloud or in multiple locations. The company’s VPSA

OPaaS version 15.07 added support for snapshot-basedbackup to Amazon S3-compatible targets, multi-zone high

availability (through geographically distributed replica-

tion across a metropolitan area network), Microsoft’s Vol-

ume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and Docker containers.

Zadara Storage COO Noam Shendar told SearchStorage

that the company integrated the Docker container capa-

bility to enable customers to run applications or arbitrary

code within the storage system rather than at the server.

“Think of this as hyper-convergence backwards. Insteadof running compute with storage inside the compute, this

is storage with compute inside the storage,” said Shendar.

Scoring from the judging panel rated Zadara’s VPSA

OPaaS in a tie for first place for value as well as ease of use

and manageability, in third place in both innovation and

performance, and tied for third in functionality among the

13 finalists in the category.

“Clever, useful, effective cloud-based service—public,

private and hybrid—makes it quite innovative, especially with the guaranteed [quality of service] QoS,” said one

judge.

Zadara Storage delivers the storage system to the cus-

tomer site at no cost, and after the storage is racked and

connected, contacts the system via external network to

configure it based on the user’s needs. The Zadara system

handles monitoring, management and maintenance. The

software supports iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER) to

boost performance and reduce latency.

Customers consume the storage via a Web-based inter-

face and pay based on consumption. Pricing starts at $0.01

per GB, per month for a fully managed, on-premise sys-

tem, inclusive of hardware, software, remote monitoring

and management, support and service-level agreement. n


H

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2015 Products

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Backup shoppers

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Hyper-converged

systems prove

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Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection


scale-out NAS

About us

STORAGE SYSTEMS: ALL-FLASH SYSTEMS

SolidFire SF9605

SolidFire only does all-flash storage, beginning in2011 during the early days of all-flash in the enterprise.

The startup’s main innovation comes from its operating

system software that delivers features such as the quality

of service (QoS), which helped SolidFire distinguish its

products’ value early on.

In 2015, SolidFire, which has

since been acquired by Net-App,

rolled out version eight of its

Element OS, a version knownas Oxygen, and the SolidFire

SF9605 storage node in 2015.

The SolidFire SF9605 scales to

44.5 TB of effective capacity and

50,000 predictable input/output operations per second.

Features added to Element over the years have helped

SolidFire transition from a vendor selling exclusively to

service providers to one with customers split between

providers and large enterprises. Advanced data protectionfunctionality and expanded multi-tenant security were

key focuses of Oxygen.

New features include synchronous replication, and

snapshot replication and scheduling. Synchronous rep-

lication writes data coming into the system to primary

and secondary sites at the same time, and is an important

feature for enterprises.

SolidFire already supported asynchronous replication,

which writes data to primary storage first and then copiesit to the secondary array. SolidFire’s snapshot replication

allows customers to copy snapshots to a second site.

Administrators can use the scheduler to determine the

number of recurring snapshots and how long they stay

on the array.

SolidFire expanded its VLAN

tagging to 256 VLANs that allows

for 256 secure, logically isolated

per-tenant storage networks onone platform. It also added LDAP

Authentication support for secu-

rity. Oxygen also enables support

for 256 secure, logically isolated

per-tenant storage networks on one platform.

SolidFire allows its feature set to be delivered as a ser-

vice, inside its arrays or as software-only for industry-stan-

dard flash hardware.

The SolidFire SF9605 scored highest among ourjudges in innovation among all-flash finalists. The Solid-

Fire SF9605 also won solid marks for ease of use and

functionality.

“Highly innovative for multi-tenant, shared infrastruc-

ture or managed service providers, especially with guaran-

teed QoS,” one judge commented of the SolidFire SF9605.

“Its new feature functions expanded on that while bring-

ing it up to par on enterprise-required features.” n


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storage

2015 Products

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Backup shoppers

back big names

Hyper-converged

systems prove

more than hype

Backup buyers

seek bargains

Primary data

protection primer

Buffington: Mix

media for better

data protection


scale-out NAS

About us

STORAGE SYSTEMS: ALL-FLASH SYSTEMS

Tintri VMstore T5000

Tintri, known best for its virtual machine-aware stor-age, was a late arrival to all-flash storage. Tintri arrays had

flash in them from the start, but they were hybrids that

used solid-state drives to handle all writes and most IOPS

in the system. Around 15% of total capacity on a Tintri

hybrid array is solid state with SATA hard drives making

up the rest.

The arrival of the Tintri VMstore T5000 All-Flash

shows how all-flash is becoming almost mandatory for

storage vendors. It also comes as no surprise that theT5000 takes the same VM-aware approach to storage as

other Tintri VMstore arrays.

The Tintri VMstore T5000 can scale to support 5,000

VMs in just two rack units. It can isolate each VM in its

own lane through quality of service, and allow for pro-

visioning, replication, analytics and management at the

VM level. The T5000 uses the same OS as Tintri’s T800

Hybrid-Flash arrays, so admins can balance workloads

across all-flash and hybrid systems and manage their en-tire footprint from one pane of glass. The system supports

any server hypervisor. The all-flash arrays also make use of

data deduplication that is built into Tintri’s hybrid arrays.

The Tintri VMstore T5000 uses a 12 Gbps SAS back-

plane to 24 SSD drives for up to 23 TB of raw capacity.

It is a dual-controller system, with each controller sup-

porting up to four 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections. The

T5000 uses a 64 Gbps non-transparent bridge between

controllers for high speed with data integrity. Tintri claimsthe T5000 can deliver sub-millisecond latency, and that

the system can be installed and configured in less than 40

minutes.

As with all Tintri storage, VM-aware management

means customers don’t have to provision LUNs or deal

with NAS mount points.

“VMstore was very innovative when it first came outseveral years ago, and this iteration evolves it,” one judge

said.

The Tintri VMstore T5000 All-Flash series consists

of the T5080 and T5060. The T5080 holds 23 TB of raw

capacity and the T5060 holds 11.5 TB and can handle

2,500 VMs. Both are 2U systems. Pricing for the Tintri

VMstore T5060 starts at $250,000 for 11.5 TB of raw (36

TB) effective capacity. n


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