Archive – vBrainstorm.com

Today I am going to be covering a solution brief on one of Commvault’s latest offerings, Metallic® File & Object Archive.

Who is Commvault and Metallic®?

Commvault introduced Metallic® in 2019, as it’s DMaaS portfolio – bringing the best of data protection to the best of SaaS

History: https://metallic.io/why-metallic

Metallic® is part of the Commvault Intelligent Data Platform (the slide you have included in your blog) and provides SaaS delivered data protection, including:

Metallic® Backup-as-a-Service, offering protection for SaaS applications including Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce; protection for endpoints; and protection for hybrid cloud workloads including Virtual Machines, File Systems, Databases, and containers.
Metallic® eDiscovery, offering granular search and export capabilities for Office 365 and endpoint data to help satisfy regulatory compliance requirements.

Metallic® Recovery Reserve, built on Microsoft Azure and delivering secure and scalable cloud storage for your backups.

What is Metallic® File & Object Archive?

Metallic® File & Object Archive enables Storage Administrators and Archive Managers to manage important but rarely
used data at lower costs from a trusted and compliance-ready archive. Using archive modeling tools, actionable
data insights, flexible storage options and modern SaaS delivery, Metallic File & Object Archive delivers informed data
placement giving IT operations more granular control over costs and quality of service.

The volume of unstructured data continues to grow as well as the costs, complexity and risk of managing that data. To control these risks, organizations need to manage and store that data as efficiently as possible.

That is where Metallic® File & Object Archive comes in! It delivers informed data placement to manage storage costs and reducing compliance risk, all with a simple SaaS delivery!

4 Key Takeaways

Informed Data Placement
Actionable Insights
Trusted Archive

SaaS Simplicity

Informed Data Placement

Metallic® File & Object Archive will run an analysis on your data, providing you projections and cost/space savings. You can then use this information to determine what data to move to less expensive archive storage, based on the needs of the data. For example, you have purchase orders that are needed for compliance reasons but they are rarely accessed. These files can be sent to less expensive storage for archival.

Actionable Insights

Metallic® File & Object Archive allows you to model decisions, set policies and drive impact analysis based on data insights, such as file access time or size. Using this information you can automate lifecycle management, retaining the data you need and removing/retiring the data you don’t need.

Trusted Archive

Metallic® File & Object Archive is built on Commvault technology, the industry leader in backup and recovery solutions. This ensures your data remains safe, compliant and recoverable.

SaaS Simplicity

Metallic® File & Object Archive is cloud-based, meaning reduced management overhead, automatic updates and no Capex.

Here is an example dashboard showing what you will see once your NAS devices are connected.

A before and after snapshot is also provided. The purple line it what will be archived, the blue like is what will remain on disk.

This diagram depicts how the solution works. Your NAS devices and target storage are connected to a Metallic Gateway, which will analyze the data to give you projected costs and savings. After the analysis, the qualifying data will be archived to your target storage for long term retention. All the heavy lifting is done with policies, schedules, indexes and history, all provided in the SaaS solution.

Some Context

Thinking about data “backup”, remember that is all about making copies of data for availability needs (aka recovery after a data lost event). “Archive” exists to manage the old/inactive/historical data that may be needed in the future (i.e. Compliance).

Final Thoughts

Data is continuing to grow at an astonishing rate. Being able to manage and maintain this growth effectively is always going to be a challenge. As an organization, it is very important to know what is needed to remain on expensive disk (frequently accessed data) and what could be placed on a lower tier or less expensive disk. It is important to have a solution that can automate this as much as possible and this is why Metallic® File & Object Archive was created.

Additional Resources

Webpage: https://metallic.io/file-object-archive

Press Release: http://bit.ly/3R6beSS

Datasheet: https://bit.ly/3b2vzbd

Animated Video: https://youtu.be/Lsx_4OA-P3M

Solution Brief: https://bit.ly/3OFiKkx

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. Commvault compensated me for my time but any opinions given are my own.

Thousand Oaks, CA – Jan. 15, 2020 – Nexsan announced the newest release of its Assureon Archive storage system. Version 8.3 includes Private Blockchain and end-to-end RMDA (Remote Direct Memory Access) over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) both adding a whole new level of data security and protection.

Assureon is ideal for organizations that need to implement regulatory and corporate compliance, the long-term archiving of unstructured data, or storage optimization.

The Private Blockchain feature means that customers can now protect their data by:

Storing it in an immutable data structure
Utilizing cryptography to secure transactions
Relying on an automated integrity audit at the redundant sites to maintain data integrity and transparency.

Full press release :

Nexsan Adds RoCE and Private Blockchain Technology to Award Winning Assureon® Solution

Nexsan Assureon 8.3 includes Private Blockchain to protect and secure digital assets and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) to enable over a 2x performance improvement for data retrieval

Thousand Oaks, CA – Jan. 15, 2020 – Nexsan, a global leader in unified storage solutions and part of the StorCentric family, today announced the newest release of its Nexsan Assureon active data vault storage solution. Version 8.3 includes Private Blockchain and end-to-end RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) over Converged Ethernet (RoCE). The latest version is also ideal for organizations that need to implement regulatory and corporate compliance, the long-term archiving of unstructured data, or storage optimization.

Assureon Private Blockchain enables organizations to protect and secure digital assets by storing data in an immutable data structure, utilizes cryptography to secure transactions and relies on an automated integrity audit at the redundant sites to maintain data integrity and transparency. Combined with Assureon’s unique file fingerprinting and asset serialization process, with metadata authentication and a robust consensus algorithm, Assureon Private Blockchain allows secure archiving of digital assets for long-term data protection, retention and compliance adherence.

Nexsan has adopted the high performance and low latency RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) to eliminate the performance-robbing layers of the network stack. Together, Nexsan with RoCE ensures all customers have ultra-low latency, are regulatory compliant and that the solution is ready for the ever-increasing data demands.

“Nexsan has a strong track record of creating products and services that capitalize on the advances in data archiving, security, protection and retrieval,” commented Surya Varanasi, CTO of StorCentric, Parent Company of Nexsan. “With the release of Assureon 8.3, we have implemented RoCE to provide over a 2x performance improvement and private blockchain technology for a secure, immutable data structure. Users are now able to quickly and efficiently retrieve data with a 40G RDMA Converged Ethernet connection between the Assureon server and Assureon Edge servers, and thereby accelerate access to archived data storage securely.”

Assureon 8.3 offers a number of benefits to Nexsan customers, including:

Virtual shortcuts that require zero disk space and reside purely in memory as reference points to physical files in the Assureon archive.

A 40Gb/s ethernet connection that provides blazing fast data retrieval from the Assureon server.
- Data is retrieved directly from user-space with minimal involvement of the operating system and CPU.
- In addition, zero-copy applications can retrieve data from the Assureon archive without involving the network stack.

Security, traceability, immutability, and visibility of data with Assureon Private Blockchain technology.

About Nexsan

Nexsan® is a global enterprise storage leader, enabling customers to securely store, protect and manage critical business data. Established in 1999, Nexsan has built a strong reputation for delivering highly reliable and cost-effective storage while remaining agile to deliver purpose-built storage. Its unique and patented technology addresses evolving, complex enterprise requirements with a comprehensive portfolio of unified storage, block storage, and secure archiving. Nexsan is transforming the storage industry by turning data into a business advantage with unmatched security and compliance standards. Ideal for a variety of use cases including Government, Healthcare, Education, Life Sciences, Media & Entertainment, and Call Centers. Nexsan is part of the StorCentric family of brands. For further information, please visit: www.nexsan.com

About StorCentric

StorCentric provides world-class and award-winning storage solutions. Between its Drobo, Nexsan, Retrospect and Vexata divisions, the company has shipped over 1M storage solutions and has won over 100 awards for technology innovation and service excellence. StorCentric innovation is centered around customers and their specific data requirements, and delivers quality solutions with unprecedented flexibility, data protection, performance and expandability. For further information, please visit: www.storcentric.com