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Commvault Launch Event – Accelerating Cyber Defense and Response with Next-Generation Data Protection

by Shawn Cannon
written by Shawn Cannon

On June 7th, Commvault held an online event called Accelerating Cyber Defense and Response with Next-Generation Data Protection. During this event, Commvault announced some exciting new products and updates. Here is what was announced.

Commvault ThreatWise (New Updates)

First, what is Commvault ThreatWise? The Commvault ThreatWise solution allows an organization to actively defend their data with fully-integrated cyber deception. This allows them to uncover, contain, and minimize threats the moment a ransomware attack begins.

The new addition is called ThreatWise Advisor. ThreatWise Advisor intelligently recommends sensor placement by continuously assessing workloads protected in backup environments and suggesting what decoys to configure (and where) to further safeguard these workloads.

Commvault Threat Scan (New)

The Commvault Threat Scan solution allows Operations teams can take control and defend their backup data by proactively identifying malware threats to avoid reinfection during recovery. Commvault Threat Scan analyzes backup data to find encrypted or corrupted files, ensuring users recover trusted versions of their data quickly.

This solution addresses the customer challenge of not having insight into malware & ransomware attacks at the early stages, such as when files are being encrypted or corrupted. These attacks can cause greater damage to a company – leading to longer recovery times.

Commvault Risk Analysis (New)

Commvault Risk Analysis helps organizations effortlessly identify and secure sensitive data across their entire infrastructure. They gain visibility into data risks, collaborate, and mitigate potential data breaches, all while saving costs through smart data management strategies.

This solution addresses the customer challenge of ITOps and SecOps teams not having an easy way to identify the classification of data, its age, or usefulness to the organization.

Commvault Auto Recovery (formally known as Disaster Recovery with New Updates)

Commvault Auto Recovery provides a single platform that can protect and securely recover applications. Auto Recovery provides customers the ability to protect all applications, not just mission critical apps, with secure verifiable recovery with the lowest TCO.

This solution addresses the customer challenge of needing a way to securely recover their applications when disaster or cyberattacks strike with minimal disruption to the business. Traditionally, this is done with expensive hardware that is cost prohibitive for all but large enterprises. Smaller customers must rely on incomplete offerings from one or multiple vendors and stitch together a complete offering.

Commvault Cloud Command (New)

The Commvault Cloud Command solution allows customers to manage their entire Commvault Data Protection estate for both on-prem and SaaS through a single comprehensive SaaS-based UI, including security and data protection health dashboarding.

This solution addresses the customer challenge of navigating a complex landscape of data protection tools and platforms, ranging from on-premises to SaaS-based solutions. This complexity can be difficult and costly.

Partner Integrations (new)

Commvault announced some new integrations as well, including the SOAR integration with Microsoft Sentinel.

Commvault SOAR integrations provide an enhanced security posture and improved collaboration between Backup and Security Operations teams. Alerts and audit events are sent to the SOAR platform, so SecOp engineers can swiftly respond to anomalies or evidence of compromise while leveraging orchestrated actions to reduce incident response time.

Plugin is available for all Commvault software and Metallic bundles.

Another new integration is with the CyberArk Indentity Security Platform.

Commvault’s integration with the CyberArk Identity Security Platform significantly reduces the risk of credential theft with best-in-class integration that segments the credential storage away from the backup environments. This integration helps organizations follow strong zero trust architecture practices, deploy rigorous lifecycle credential policies, and comply with the most stringent regulations.

Plugin is available for all Commvault software and Metallic bundles.

Final Thoughts

As a consultant that has experience in the cybersecurity field, having a solution to help protect your company data is very important. Commvault has pulled out all the stops by providing a comprehensive platform across their ecosystem. All these new and updated solutions in their platform address the challenges most companies face. I expect Commvault to continue to be the leader in this space and will continue to innovate with their platform.

For more information on all of these product announcements and updates, check out the on-demand version of the event.

https://discover.commvault.com/Event-Security-Launch-Data-Protected-Registration.html

The press release can be read here: https://ir.commvault.com/news-releases/news-release-details/commvault-redefines-data-protection-new-security-capabilities.

View what’s new in the Commvault Platform here: https://www.commvault.com/platform/whats-new

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CloudNetworking

Forward Networks twins your network, offering insights, direction and modeling for changes

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

The concept of a digital twin model is something new to me, but you and I likely use one every day, without knowing a name for it. When was the last time that you used Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze for directions or to chart a path or to check traffic? Each of these is a digital twin, representing the physical roads and buildings in our world in a digital form with data overlayed to assist with common tasks.

Forward Networks is creating the same digital representation of your network infrastructure, gleaning the configurations from your network devices and then assembling a representation of all the devices and their links. Just like the maps listed above, the base layer of representation are the intersections and the roads the extend from those intersections. This is your network devices and the connections that extend between them.

From the base layer, you can compute best paths between two points, look at all paths between two points and make some basic computations about optimized path. But the value does not stop with the computation of paths and best directions between two point.

Just like the map apps above, the digital twin can layer on additional context – such as traffic with the maps application or such as metrics like bandwidth and utilization and other metrics from the network devices.

During Cloud Field Day 16, I had to chance to learn a bit more directly from co-founder Peyman Kazemian. CFD16 was hosted onsite at Forward Networks’ headquarters in Santa Clara, CA. After sharing the basis of the digital twin network, Kazemain dove deeper into how customers can leverage the network and benefit from its capabilities.

Network Query Engine

Forward has created a query engine, where you can quickly ask questions and investigate data collected in the Forward Network model. The Network Query Engine is the primary power of the Forward Networks platform. Everything about the network is represented in the model and accessible to query, in a SQL-like language.

The query is very staightforward using language like 

foreach device in network.devices 
foreach interface in device.interfaces 
select { 
    devicename: device.name, 
    interfacename: interface.name 
}

The model is visible and can be expanded to find the elements you want to include and name. Often, when products have their own search language, this is the biggest barrier to usage – what elements and what language is used?

Output and Tests

The power of the platform is the computed paths for the network. For instance, can traffic pass from a source IP to a destination IP and port with the current configuration or do you need to adjust firewall rules or routing to allow this traffic to pass?

Forward is able to test the traffic on the digital twin network. It is able to use the active configuration and show the place where the traffic is going to fail and pinpoint that for easier reconfiguration or changes. Oft times, as an infrastructure administrator, you go to the network team with an issue but the network is an unknown to you. Being informed with the exact point where the failure is occurring can assist in time to resolution.

Other times, the network team needs to go and trace and test to find where the failure occurs. More times than not, my network admins have needed to adjust and test and adjust and test and adjust and test, before finding the winning combination – sometimes breaking things in the process. Forward Networks can eliminate this hunting and ensure that the changes will not cause adverse effects. Not only can Forward Networks find the failure point, it can propose the changes required that will allow it to work properly. Forward can model the results of the config changes, ensuring a clean change implementation on the production network and no interruption in service while making the necessary adjustments.

Use Cases

During Cloud Field Day 16, Jason Gintert tweeted out a great screenshot and I have it below where I quoted and gave my two cents. Preventing problems from network changes is a HUGE, game-changing use case for Forward Networks.

At Paypal, the team developed a Slack bot based on Forward Network’s digital twin and they called the app Pathbot. With Pathbot, any Paypal engineer can go into Slack and quickly perform a search between two IP addresses and a destination port and the twin network will compute if the traffic is able to flow and if not, directs the team where to submit a request. This simple troubleshooting is a highly effective in large and complex networks to test traffic flow between two endpoints.

From a security perspective, Forward Networks can help with the triage of a compromised host, but mapping all accessible devices from the device. Forward refers to this as blast radius detection, illustrated below. Because Forward Networks is aware of all the endpoints by IP and can see all paths from that endpoint that it is allowed to travel, it is able to map back to any other hosts and help to see the exposure of your network. With increasingly complexity associated with intent based networking, microsegmentation and, generally, enhanced security of networks, having analysis of the network and how traffic is permitted to flow is a huge time saver.

Forward Networks can also help to pinpoint CVE exposure on the network devices, as illustrated on the screenshot below. It is a rather straightforward use case, but it is a valuable one where you can look for known vulnerabilities exist in the network. But the CVE checks aren’t the only security risk that Forward is able to examine.

Perhaps more useful than the CVE checks, Forward Networks is able to check against STIGs for configured settings that do not meet the best practices. STIG checks is a huge benefit because CVEs aren’t always about patches, but about the active configuration – for instance, allowing Telnet on devices, which is not encrypted and the traffic could be intercepted.

Additional Resources

Foward Networks’ Cloud Field Day 16 Presentation

Forward Networks’ YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/@ForwardNetworks

Disclaimer: Tech Field Day, an independent organization, paid for my travel and accommodations to attend Cloud Field Day 16 where these cloud-native vendors presented. The views and opinions represented in this blog are my own and were not dictated or reviewed by the vendors.

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CloudCompute

Understanding the Building Blocks of Cloud-Native Infrastructure

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Cloud-native.  Containers.  Scale and velocity.  There is a still a lot of confusion and question about what and how cloud-native technologies should be adopted. I recently attended Cloud Field Day 16 in Santa Clara, hearing from solo.io, Forward Networks and Fortinet about their cloud-native solutions. Traveling to and from the event gave me some time to think about cloud-native. Many know that I have been advocating the move to cloud-native for many years. Conceptually, I have always felt it makes a lot of sense. I’m a huge fan of automation. My mandate to my operations team was to automate everything that could be automated, at my prior employer.

But, cloud native is not without complexity and a large amount of training and retooling. The Cloud-Native Computing Foundation has a slide showing all of the solutions in the cloud native landscape. Frankly, its daunting for any newcomer in the cloud-native space. There are so many projects and competing technologies in the landscape.

Source: https://landscape.cncf.io/

What are we chasing?

So, what do I think of as the Nirvana state?   What is the ultimate goal of cloud native? 

Automated continuous innovation, continuous development pipelines that deploy your applications without user interruption during operations, enabling a true 24 x 7 x 365 operation of your application, while preserving the ability to perform necessary maintenance and upgrades on the underlying infrastructure. 

What makes this Nirvina?  (aka What are the benefits?)

  • Your workloads are consistently deployed every time in a known and tested configuration
  • Manual deployments steps are eliminated and replaced by highly automated and repeatable workflows that enable scalability
  • Desired state is defined and enforced by the infrastructure automation software
  • Intelligent network services handle gracefully moving users and traffic between running software
  • Security and instrumentation are defined and enforced as part of the automated workflows

Who’s who in the Zoo?  Containers vs. Kubernetes vs. Istio

Containers solve the problem of consistently deploying code into dev, test and production by packing the code into an immutable format that includes only the required elements for the application to work, eliminating the bloat of a full operating system instance.  Independently available layers of software are combined to create a container image and that image does not change. 

Kubernetes solves the problem of orchestration of your containers.  It exists and scales within a datacenter.  Kubernetes allows for monitoring for desired scale and state of the containers and their workloads, ensuring high-availability and accessibility within the cluster.  Kubernetes is a policy engine and relies on declarative definition files to say how the application or service should run.  Kubernetes relies on registries to download the Container images for runtime and injects configuration and policy into them. 

Istio exists to orchestrate and solve problems at a higher level than Kubernetes, with strong integrations on the container orchestration platform.  While Kubernetes focuses on orchestration of the containers runtime, Istio focuses on offload of certain desired or required services – such as encryption of traffic, load balancing and failover – potentially across many Kubernetes clusters (or pods). 

Istio solves:

  • Encryption of traffic between services and applications, often the first reason companies adopt Istio
  • Visibility within the application, container and Kubernetes cluster
  • Global load balancing and network policies that dictate failover and resiliency, in addition to locality

First 3 Steps

I believe that these three components represent the first three steps on a journey to cloud native. There are many packaged workloads sitting ready to run in container registries thaht can be consumed and deployed onto a Kubernetes cluster.

Step 1 – Deploy Kubernetes

Whether this is Ubuntu, Nutanix or VMware Tanzu – find a Kubernetes deployment that works for you.

Step 2 – Deploy your First Containerized Applications on Kubernetes

Something like Helm will be hugely assistive to deploying your first workloads.

Step 3 – Deploy Istio and learn to pair sidecars with apps and scale deployments into multiple clusters and regions

More on this in a near term post…

Disclaimer: Tech Field Day, an independent organization, paid for my travel and accommodations to attend Cloud Field Day 16 where these cloud-native vendors presented. The views and opinions represented in this blog are my own and were not dictated or reviewed by the vendors.

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KubernetesVMware

Error deploying VMware’s demo Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster on vCenter 8

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

For users getting started on vSphere 8 and Tanzu, after you get everything setup and configured, you’ll likely hit a snag. VMware’s GitHub hosts a quick start guide and YAML manifest for deploying your first Tanzu workload cluster. It will fail with the following error:

Error from server (unable to find a compatible full version matching version hint "1.18" and default OS labels: "os-arch=amd64,os-name=photon,os-type=linux,os-version=3.0".

vCenter and Kubernetes Versioning

Why does this error? This is a brand new cluster, after all? The answer is a versioning issue.

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is tied to the vCenter version and since we are running vSphere 8 and vCenter 8, the release has specific Kubernetes releases it supports. K8s 1.18 is not compatible. vCenter 8.0.0.10100 releases with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6.1. The compatible versions for vCenter 8.0.0.10100 are Kubernetes 1.21, 1.22 and 1.23. The supervisor cluster deployed with vCenter 8.0.0.10100 is Kubernetes 1.23.10.

My VMware team has told me that each vCenter will ship with a specific K8 release and upgrading vCenter is the way to upgrade your Tanzu Kubernetes versions. In addition to the vCenter and Tanzu Supervisor Cluster being tied at the hip, VMware will support the current and two prior K8 releases on each vCenter version.

VMware, for its part, doesn’t do much to help the confusion of versioning – as Tanzu has its own versioning, separate from vCenter and separate from the Kubernetes releases. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid version 1.6.1 has K8 version 1.23.10 as its release. TKG 1.5.4 was K8 1.22.9, TKG 1.4.2 was K8 1.21.8.

Demo YAML File

Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vsphere-tmm/vsphere-with-tanzu-quick-start/master/manifests/tkc.yaml

apiVersion: run.tanzu.vmware.com/v1alpha1
kind: TanzuKubernetesCluster
metadata:
  name: tkc-1
spec:
  distribution:
    version: v1.18
  topology:
    controlPlane:
      class: guaranteed-small
      count: 1
      storageClass: kubernetes-demo-storage
    workers:
      class: guaranteed-small
      count: 1
      storageClass: kubernetes-demo-storage
  settings:
    storage:
      classes: ["kubernetes-demo-storage"]           #Named PVC storage classes
      defaultClass: kubernetes-demo-storage          #Default PVC storage class

Troubleshooting the Issue

The first thought is, can my supervisor cluster see the library of Kubernetes images? How can I verify that? Google results point me to a post from Anthony Spiteri with some helpful troubleshooting commands. After verifying that my content library was linked correctly, I ran the following command: 

kubectl get virtualmachineimages

This output is a good sign. I can see that I have a LOT of images that are available to this namespace. That’s promising, but no silver bullet why I’m getting this error. Digging a bit further into Google results, I hit another kubectl command: 

kubectl get tanzukubernetesreleases

BINGO. In the output, I noticed that the version I requested in the YAML was not “READY” or “COMPATIBLE” in the list.

What needs to be altered to allow this to run on vCenter 8 and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6.1?

Its a simple change – just adjust the distribution version number to 1.21, 1.22, or 1.23. The error is very helpful, in that it says it can’t find a compatible version.

Working YAML

apiVersion: run.tanzu.vmware.com/v1alpha1
kind: TanzuKubernetesCluster
metadata:
  name: tkc-1
spec:
  distribution:
    version: v1.23
  topology:
    controlPlane:
      class: guaranteed-small
      count: 1
      storageClass: kubernetes-demo-storage
    workers:
      class: guaranteed-small
      count: 1
      storageClass: kubernetes-demo-storage
  settings:
    storage:
      classes: ["kubernetes-demo-storage"]            #Named PVC storage classes
      defaultClass: kubernetes-demo-storage           #Default PVC storage class

Further assumptions – for this file to work, you need to have created a “kubernetes-demo-storage” storage policy and assigned it to the namespace where you’re running this YAML. You also need to have the default VM Class of “guaranteed-small” assigned to the namespace and available for consumption. If that’s in place, run kubectl from the same directory as the YAML file and voila, you will get a working Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster for workloads! 

kubectl apply -f ./tkc.yml

Happy clustering!

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Big DataCloudDatacenterNews

Datadobi Enables CBX to Migrate Entire Distributed Data Storage Infrastructure

by Phil Marsden
written by Phil Marsden

DobiMigrate Ensures Data Security and Integrity Objectives Met During Migration; Cuts Months Off Project Timeline

Datadobi, the global leader in unstructured data management software, today announced that the CBX agency has migrated its entire distributed data storage infrastructure with DobiMigrate enterprise-class migration software for network-attached storage (NAS) and object data. In doing so, CBX now enjoys greatly expanded features and functionality, including greatly enhanced data security and support for cloud tiering.

Recently, the NetApp data storage platform and associated software on which CBX had long relied on was end-of-life. This meant that no additional firmware, patches, or upgrades would be made available. In addition, warranty support would soon come to an end. CBX decided that its best option would be to remain with NetApp and upgrade to the vendor’s newest platform. In doing so, it would not only remain with a brand it trusted but CBX would also benefit from increased capabilities and heightened security. With this decision made, the next critical consideration was how best to migrate the NAS data from its existing data storage environments to the new. The data migration would involve the entirety of CBX’s client and internal business production data housed across two geographically dispersed locations in Minneapolis and New York City.

CBX reached out to their technology vendor SHI, for a recommendation on how best to proceed. SHI highly recommended Datadobi, and its DobiMigrate enterprise-class migration software for NAS and object data.

“SHI assured us that DobiMigrate could be trusted to deliver in the most complex and demanding environments, while ensuring that we meet our data security and integrity objectives for migration to our new storage,” said Don Piraino, IT Manager, CBX. “The fact that Datadobi is also vendor-agnostic and has the ability to move data from any vendor’s platform to another heterogeneous platform on prem, remote, or in the cloud added to my comfort level. It is nice knowing that I am not locked into any one vendor. But more importantly for me, this spoke to Datadobi’s industry unique experience managing diverse migrations across many different platforms and environments.”

“We couldn’t allow even a moment of downtime or loss of data availability of any kind. The migration involved every single piece of CBX data – from client to CBX business data, spread across two geographically dispersed locations,” Piraino explained. “Typically, we use NetApp SnapMirror, but we knew it wasn’t the answer for this level of a migration. With DobiMigrate, we finished in weeks, rather than in months, with not even one hiccup.”

When asked what advice Piraino would offer others contemplating an enterprise class data migration, he replied, “We had a Datadobi Implementation Specialist dedicated to ensuring the success of our migration initiative… Having that level of expertise was invaluable. Nothing happened without Datadobi making sure it was being done correctly. It was such a load off my mind.”

Piraino concluded, “The final cutover was really smooth – with absolutely zero impact on any of our team’s work. We completed it on a Friday evening. And on Saturday morning, everything was up and running. When you, your internal users, and your boss feel zero pain, that’s always a good thing.”

To read the CBX case study in its entirety, please visit: https://datadobi.com/case-studies/.

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CloudNewsSoftwareVirtualization

DH2i Closes 2021 As Another Year of Record Sales Growth, Product Innovation, and Strategic Partnership Development

by Phil Marsden
written by Phil Marsden

DH2i Closes 2021 As Another Year of Record Sales Growth, Product Innovation, and Strategic Partnership Development

Strengthened Foothold Across Key Verticals and Transitioned to 100% Software as a Subscription Model

DH2i today announced that 2021 marked another year of record growth, with a 44% percent sales growth year-over-year, across both its DxEnterprise multi-platform smart availability software and DxOdyssey software defined perimeter (SDP) security software solutions.
“2021 was a transformative year for DH2i,” said Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder of DH2i. “In addition to our enviable sales growth, DH2i strengthened its foothold across key verticals, such as financial services – making strong gains in the multinational investment banking segment – as well as technology, healthcare, and media.” He continued, “We also continued to build-out a market leadership product feature set, transitioned to a 100% software as a subscription model, and strengthened and entered into new highly strategic channel and technology partnerships.”
DH2i’s 2021 Milestones:
Product Innovation
–      DH2i Launched Free DxEnterprise & DxOdyssey Developer Editions – Database, System, and Network Administrators now able to ensure instance level workload and SQL Server Availability group high availability (HA) and build secure zero trust connections between on-premises, remote, edge, IoT, and cloud environments — without a VPN.
–      DH2i Launched DxEnterprise (DxE) Smart Availability Software for Containers – Enables cloud-native Microsoft SQL Server container Availability Groups (AGs) in Kubernetes (K8s).
–      DH2i Launched DxEnterprise v20 Improving Microsoft SQL Server High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) Performance – Improves the performance and resilience of transaction processing workloads found in financial services, as well as other sectors, running on top of Microsoft® SQL Server.
New Customers
–      Docler Holding Selected DH2i’s DxEnterprise To Help Maintain Operations Uptime and Minimize Business Disruption Across Multinational Conglomerate – ICT, media and entertainment leader deployed DxEnterprise software and is now achieving near-zero planned and unplanned downtime for its SQL Server on Linux cluster.
Strategic Channel Partnerships and Global Expansion
–      DH2i and Nubelity Entered into Strategic Channel Agreement — Expanding DH2i’s Latin America Footprint – Announced First Joint Customer, a premier Latin American Digital Bank.
Market Education and Thought Leadership
–      Microsoft’s Amit Khandelwal and DH2i’s Connor Cox Presented “How to Deploy Highly Available AGs Across Containers in Azure” at PASS Data Community Summit 2021 – Webinar explained how to improve performance, scalability, and portability of IT environments with highly available SQL Server Availability Groups (AGs) that span containers in Azure.
–      Pythian and DH2i Presented Live Webinar, “Highly Available SQL Server AGs in Google Kubernetes Engine” – Webinar explained how to set up and configure highly available SQL Server Availability Groups (AGs) between containers in Google Cloud Platform.
–      Microsoft’s Amit Khandelwal Joined DH2i’s Connor Cox to Discuss, “How to Achieve Peak Availability for Containerized SQL Server in Kubernetes” – Webinar explained how to create hybrid AG clusters across SQL Server containers, achieve near-zero RTO, and avoid SQL Server HA/DR configuration and networking challenges.
–      DH2i Joined Microsoft Azure Webinar to Discuss “How to Unlock Free SQL Server Licenses and Hybrid DR with DH2i” – Webinar explained how to use DxEnterprise, SDP-enhanced clustering software, to take advantage of free replica benefits while unlocking easy hybrid cloud, advanced fault detection/auto-failover, and superior performance.
–      Microsoft and DH2i Presented, “Paving the Way to SQL Server HA on Linux in Azure” – Webinar explained how to achieve peak high availability with unmatched management simplicity, infrastructure and platform flexibility, and advanced fault detection with automated failover for nearest-to-zero downtime.
These and additional DH2i webinars are archived and available on-demand here: https://dh2i.com/webinars/.
Market Intelligence
–      DH2i Pre-Pandemic State of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) Survey Revealed Inadequate Security Number One VPN Pain Point – Premier Virtual Private Network (VPN) survey of IT professionals across small-, mid-, and enterprise-sized organizations revealed almost 40% of respondents believed their network had already been breached by bad actor(s).
Tweet this: @DH2i Closes 2021 As Another Year of Record Sales Growth, Product Innovation, and Strategic Partnership Development https://dh2i.com/press/ #SQLServer #Kubernetes #Containers #HA #SDP #Data #Security
About DH2i: https://dh2i.com/
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News

Press Release – Zerto Customers Lead DR-to-Cloud Trend with Rapid Adoption of Azure

by Shawn Cannon
written by Shawn Cannon

Zerto Customers Lead DR-to-Cloud Trend with Rapid Adoption of Azure

Global Azure Adoption Doubles in 1H 2020 Across Several Verticals; Zerto Triples IT Resilience Footprint Across Federal Government and Public Sectors with New Customer Acquisitions

BOSTON – September 1, 2020 – Zerto, an industry leader for IT resilience, today announced cloud technology trends and positive growth among its customer base for the first half of 2020. Zerto’s customers are pursuing the disaster recovery (DR)-to-cloud trend with rapid global adoption of Microsoft Azure. Additionally, Zerto has tripled its global IT Resilience footprint across the federal government and public sectors with new customer acquisitions.

Azure Adoption Ascends

During the first half of 2020, global adoption of Microsoft Azure doubled across several verticals. Virtual machines protected to Azure using Zerto has doubled year-over-year with half of the consumption driven by the education, financial services, healthcare, and technology sectors.

According to Gartner, Inc., “Cloud DR costs can be a fraction of the total costs for traditional DR sites.” In the 2019 Security and Risk survey, for more than 300 IT organizations worldwide, cloud-based recovery is the most popular choice across all levels of system availability.*

Innovation in the Public Cloud

Zerto customers also expanded their adoption among other public cloud providers. Earlier this year, Zerto announced integrations with AWS Storage Gateway and introduced support for Oracle and Google Cloud. The company also continues to make it easier for customers to adopt public clouds. A joint customer, QAD, a premier supplier of ERP software took advantage of the new Google Cloud and Zerto integration.

“With Google Cloud VMware Engine, we are able to quickly extend the enterprise class disaster recovery capabilities we have become accustomed to with Zerto to the Google Cloud,” says Scott Lawson, Director, IT architecture at QAD.

IT Resilience Footprint Grows

Zerto expanded its IT Resilience Platform footprint by more than 200% with new customers in the federal government and public sector in the first half of 2020. Additionally, Zerto experienced more than 200% increase in customer project implementation sizes among the legal, software and internet, and telecommunications sectors.

Key growth highlights include:

  • New customers in the federal government sector increased by more than 250%.
  • New customers in the public sector increased by 225%.
  • New customers in the insurance industry increased by 18% with the average customer project implementation size increasing by 20%.
  • The average new customer project implementation size in the legal and telecommunications industries nearly doubled.
  • The average new customer project implementation size in the software and internet industry more than tripled.
  • The average new customer project implementation size in financial services increased by 30%.

Customer Successes and Wins

In the 1H 2020, Zerto customers continued to build IT resilience and achieve results across multiple sectors and use cases:

  • Ritchie Bros., a global asset management and disposition company, leveraged Zerto to simplify DR, gain more control, and support data center migrations. To learn more, read the Ritchie Bros. case study here.
  • A leading chemical corporation leveraged Zerto to move DR operations to the Azure cloud and achieved new operational efficiencies. To learn more, click here.
  • A regional credit union strengthened its IT resilience by adopting a multi-cloud DR strategy using Zerto with both Azure and AWS. To learn more, click here.
  • New global customers using Zerto with Azure include  Cairn Energy PLC, City of SeaTac, Grey County, and KIK Custom Products.  

“We serve the people of Grey County, and because data serves the people, it needs to be available 24/7,” said Evan Davis of Grey County. “Zerto enabled us to easily make the move to Azure for more resilience. Now we have peace of mind that we can recover our data easily even in the midst of a disruption.”

ZertoCON was all About the Customer!

During ZertoCON 2020 Virtual Event in June, several customers spoke about their experiences and success with Zerto. Click here to access the following on-demand speaker sessions:

  • Rich Bailey, VP of IT operations, PruittHealth discusses “A Customer’s Guide to DR in the Cloud with Zerto and Microsoft Azure.”
  • Rodney Carlson, systems analyst, Horizon Bank shares his experience in “Modernize Your Backup with Zerto.”
  • Kent Pollard, senior technical architect, IFDS discusses “IT Resilience for Kubernetes and Containers.”
  • Jayme Williams, senior systems engineer, TenCate shares “A Tale of Two Ransomware Attacks: TenCate Uses Zerto to Recover from Ransomware in Minutes.”

In June, Zerto also honored KIND Snacks as the inaugural IT Resilience Innovator , a program that highlights IT leaders in disaster recovery, data protection, and cloud that are striving to protect their business from disruption.

“Organizations are increasingly recognizing that building IT resilience and leveraging the cloud for DR is critical not only for IT operations and business continuity but also for simplicity, greater efficiencies, and control,” said Coley Burke, CRO of Zerto. “We’re excited to see the momentum for our IT Resilience Platform across federal and public sectors and look forward to bolstering IT resilience across all customers for the second half of 2020.” 

* Gartner, What I&O Leaders Need to Know About Disaster Recovery to the Cloud, Nik Simpson, 27 November 2019

About Zerto

Zerto helps customers accelerate IT transformation by reducing the risk and complexity of modernization and cloud adoption. By replacing multiple legacy solutions with a single IT Resilience Platform, Zerto is changing the way disaster recovery, data protection and cloud are managed. With enterprise scale, Zerto’s software platform delivers continuous availability for an always-on customer experience while simplifying workload mobility to protect, recover and move applications freely across hybrid and multi-clouds. Zerto is trusted globally by over 8,000 customers, works with more than 1,500 partners and is powering resiliency offerings for 450 managed services providers. Learn more at Zerto.com.

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News

Repost : Veeam Backup For Microsoft Azure Overview

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

I was looking for information on Veeam’s azure backup product. And I found this blog post.

Veeam Backup For Microsoft Azure Overview

 

Last year, Veeam released Veeam Backup for Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s first cloud-native solution. A month ago, Veeam was hitting the cloud data protection market once again, announcing the general availability of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure. Veeam, with this new integration, keeps expanding on the hybrid cloud realms, claiming to overcome any cloud data loss. The service, deployed as an appliance, delivers native Azure backup for Microsoft Azure virtual machines (VMs). Furthermore, Veeam enables its users to cost-effectively and securely protect their cloud data; through new features and neat policy-based protection.

by Juan Mulford

This is a great write up on the overview and the configuration of the product.

Enjoy.

 

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DatacenterNewsStorage

Datadobi Offers Ultimate Unstructured Data Migration Flexibility with S3-to-S3 Object Migration Support

by Phil Marsden
written by Phil Marsden

I was lucky enough to sit in on a product demonstration of DobiMigrate last week and was thoroughly impressed by the level of thought and attention to detail that goes into dobiMigrate,

every migration planned to the highest degree in order to minimise the service window with rollback procedures in place.

Now with Added S3 support Datadobi represents a truly cross-platform solution for data migration which is easy to recommend, if you want to know your data is safe.

Attached is their press release.

 

Datadobi Offers Ultimate Unstructured Data Migration Flexibility with S3-to-S3 Object Migration Support

 

DobiMigrate 5.9 provides the ability to migrate or reorganize file and object storage data to the optimal accessible storage service

 

LEUVEN, Belgium – June 2, 2020 – Datadobi, the global leader in unstructured data migration software, today announced DobiMigrate 5.9 with added support for S3-to-S3 object migrations. The addition of S3-to-S3 object migrations offers the most flexible and comprehensive software suite for migration of unstructured data. Customers can move data in any direction between on-prem systems of different vendors, cloud storage services, or a mixture of both. All objects and their metadata are synchronized from the source buckets to the target buckets.

Together with existing support for all NAS protocols, DobiMigrate customers can now benefit from the ultimate flexibility to migrate or reorganize their file and object storage data.

“We have always been a company that can manage our customer’s most difficult migration projects and have been involved in a number of different types of object migration projects over the years,” said Carl D’Halluin, Chief Technology Officer, Datadobi. “In this release, we are incorporating everything we have learned about S3 object migrations into our DobiMigrate product, making it available to everyone. We have tested it with the major S3 platforms including AWS to enable our customers’ journey to and from the cloud.”

The ability to move unstructured data whenever needed allows customers to continuously optimize their storage deployments and data layout. This keeps data on the optimal accessible medium needed at any moment, enables users to decommission ageing hardware, and offers the freedom to reconsider which data belongs on premises and which data better lives in cloud services.

With its unrivalled knowledge of cross-vendor storage compatibility, Datadobi has qualified migrations for an ever-expanding list of storage protocols, vendor products, and storage services, including S3 object storage, SMB and NFS NAS storage, and Content Addressed Storage (CAS) and is a partner with most of the major storage vendors.

“The exponential growth in the creation, storage, and use of unstructured data can create serious migration bottlenecks for many organizations,” commented Jed Scaramella, Program Director for IDC Infrastructure Services. “Migration services that leverage automation will mitigate risk, accelerate the process, and provide insurance that data transfers will proceed without interruptions.”

 

About Datadobi

Datadobi, a global leader in data management and storage software solutions, brings order to unstructured storage environments so that the enterprise can realize the value of their expanding universe of data. Their software allows customers to migrate and protect data while discovering insights and putting them to work for their business. Datadobi takes the pain and risk out of the data storage process, and does it ten times faster than other solutions at the best economic cost point. Founded in 2010, Datadobi is a privately held company headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, with subsidiaries in New York, Melbourne, Dusseldorf, and London.

For more information, visit www.datadobi.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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DatacenterNewsStorage

Moving Precious Data at Record Speed

by Phil Marsden
written by Phil Marsden
Backblaze Case Study: AK Productions
 
 
Moving Precious Data at Record Speed
 “I was spending between 30 minutes to an hour every day trying to figure out simple tasks on Google Cloud Platform. On Backblaze it literally takes me 5 minutes.”
-Aiden Korotkin, Director of Photography, AK Productions
Situation
Aiden Korotkin started taking on big clients with big projects when he transitioned from freelancing to open his own full-service video production company. Unfortunately, his existing storage solution, Google Cloud, took hours to manage-time he couldn’t afford to lose while growing his business. He also worried about the privacy of his clients’ important data on Google. With more at stake, he needed a simple, secure solution.
Solution
It was clear to Korotkin that he needed to transfer his data quickly and securely to a more user-friendly service, without disrupting his workflow. Backblaze, partnering with cloud migration company Flexify.IO, was able to move his data from Google Cloud to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage while also configuring his QNAP NAS to upload all new content directly to Backblaze B2.
Result
Backblaze and Flexify migrated Korotkin’s first 12 TB in less than a day and set him on a path to backing up a remaining 40 TB in real-time. Backblaze’s simple interface reduced the time Korotkin spends managing data backup by 83%, freeing him to focus on growing the business. He knows his files are safely stored, accessible when needed, and can confirm their status and fidelity any time.
Customer Profile
AK Productions is a full-service video production company based in Washington, D.C. They believe that powerful films begin with innovative storytelling. By combining engaging visuals, beautifully mastered sound, and intriguing stories, AK Productions crafts thought-provoking media for the D.C. and Detroit Metro areas. AK Productions has created multi-platform content for organizations such as the World Bank, the British Embassy, National Geographic Channel, and Discovery Communications.
Astonishingly Fast Data Transfer Enables Simpler Storage
Aiden Korotkin was a successful freelance videographer and photography director before he opened AK Productions in 2015. Moving from freelancing to full-service production meant bigger clients with bigger projects-documentaries, corporate video, commercials, and short films for international brands like National Geographic and the World Bank. Rather than simply shooting footage and delivering the files, he was responsible for the full project lifecycle, from pre-production through finished product.
As his business requirements evolved, he needed a better solution for backing up important client data. “At one point, I was using hard drives,” he confessed. “I wasn’t really backing them up. When I lost some project files, it was a wake-up call.”
Korotkin worked to implement a 3-2-1 backup philosophy using a QNAP NAS server that backed up to a RAID and Google Cloud Platform, where he kept the final copies of his projects. The 3-2-1 philosophy advises keeping three copies of data, storing it on two types of media, and keeping one off-site. “I knew Google had a cloud platform. It was a quick decision, and I didn’t really look into it,” he admitted.
At the time, Google offered a promotional credit. “That lasted about a year,” Korotkin said. When the credit expired, it forced him to take a closer look at the cost efficiency and security of the Google Cloud Platform. “I realized that it’s super confusing. You have a lot of options, but it seems like chaos unless you know exactly what you’re doing,” he noted.
Searching for Safe Storage
Frustrated with navigating the Google Cloud Platform, Korotkin started looking for other solutions. This time, he did his research. With privacy in mind, he turned to DuckDuckGo, a search engine that protects users’ personal data. “Their blog led me down the rabbit hole of security and privacy,” he said. “Backblaze kept coming up on different lists as more private, simpler, and more user-friendly. I also started to have some privacy concerns with Google.” Finding a steady drumbeat of news about the way Google collects and uses customers’ data solidified his decision to switch.
Choosing to transfer his data to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage was the easy part. “The Backblaze solution engineers were very responsive in helping me figure out if they were the best option for me,” he said. But then Korotkin and the Backblaze team turned to the harder aspect of the process: transferring 12TB of data from Google without disrupting his business.
 “Backblaze kept coming up on different lists as more private, simpler, and more user-friendly. They were very responsive in helping me figure out if they were the best option for me.”
-Aiden Korotkin, Director of Photography, AK Productions
The Challenges of Data Migration
Transferring large amounts of data from one cloud storage service to another can be costly, time-consuming, and complex. Korotkin wasn’t even sure how much data he had stored on the Google Cloud Platform, so he struggled to determine the cost of egress fees. “Their costs conflicted, and I couldn’t contact anyone [at Google] for support,” Korotkin said.
He was also concerned about the integrity of his data through the transfer process. Korotkin had lost some older projects to corrupted drives before he fully implemented his 3-2-1 backup system, so the files on Google were his only copies, some of which, he found out later, had not fully uploaded. “Because I had so many drive failures uploading to Google,” he explained, “I couldn’t confirm that some of my older data was still intact. The data in Google included some of my only copies. The transfer had to work.”
A Partnership for a Seamless Transfer
Backblaze developed a cloud-to-cloud data migration solution by partnering with Flexify to facilitate transfer of AK Productions’ data. Flexify leverages cloud internet connections, as opposed to client’s local internet bandwidth, to achieve significantly faster migrations.
Korotkin connected with a Flexify support tech who was with him throughout the process. Korotkin shared that the transfer failed at first because he had the wrong IDs from Google. But the Flexify tech followed up immediately to let him know the steps he needed to take to remedy the error.
By cultivating partnerships like this one, Backblaze enables more versatile, responsive storage solutions for clients. Integrations that make data easy to access via client’s go-to hardware and software mean that they don’t need to learn new tools or change workflows by switching to Backblaze.
Up and Running in One Day
Flexify transferred the 12TB of final project data AK Productions’ had stored on Google to Backblaze in just 12 hours. Transferring that amount of data via standard business connections can take weeks, months, or even longer.
Through Flexify, transfers happen so fast, they can be scheduled so there is zero downtime in production and no disruption to business workflows. With the ability to migrate data at 10 Gbps (up to 100TB per day) from other cloud providers like AWS and Google, large transfers can happen overnight or over a weekend with Flexify.
“It was super, ridiculously fast,” Korotkin marveled. “I don’t know what their voodoo magic is, but it’s great.”
With the ability to migrate data at 10 Gbps (up to 100TB per day) from other cloud providers like AWS and Google, large transfers can happen overnight or over a weekend with Flexify.
Stellar Support from People Who Care
At the end of the migration, some files didn’t transfer because they had not completely uploaded to Google. Flexify’s support team responded immediately. “They were more concerned than I was at that point,” Korotkin said. “Honestly, it was some of the best tech support I have ever received.”
Backblaze looks for companies with shared values for partnerships, and Flexify was a perfect match. They offer amazing technology and tech support from real people.
“It was very comforting,” Korotkin said. “Flexify cared that my data transferred correctly, which is refreshing. They had no idea that some files were the very last copies I had, but they treated them that way regardless.”
“Flexify cared that my data transferred correctly, which is refreshing. They had no idea that some files were the very last copies I had, but they treated them that way regardless.”
-Aiden Korotkin, Director of Photography, AK Productions
Simple Solution Saves Time, Cures Headaches
With AK Productions’ data safely transferred from Google, Backblaze worked with Korotkin to configure his QNAP-another long-time Backblaze partner-NAS to upload directly to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage so Korotkin could back up the remaining 40TB of data stored on his NAS.
The most significant benefit Korotkin realized was the time saved by Backblaze’s simplicity. “If I had to estimate, I was spending between 30 minutes to an hour trying to figure out simple tasks on Google (i.e. setting up a new application key, or syncing to a third-party source). On Backblaze it literally takes me 5 minutes,” he estimated.
“I spent a good four hours or more trying to figure out how to make things work on Google’s end to do the transfer, only to fail and be left with an actual headache, cross-eyed from staring at my screen,” he estimated. “I don’t know what a Storage HMAC Key Administrator is or how it’s different than an Apigee Analytics Agent, but I also don’t need to know. More importantly, I don’t need to know the difference in order to make Backblaze work for me and my business.”
Fast Transfer Allows AK Productions to Enjoy Backblaze Benefits
Korotkin came to Backblaze with specific business needs. He wanted to get away from using Google, back up his on-site QNAP NAS in real-time, and archive his projects to the cloud once they’re complete. He found exactly what he needed in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. It offered a solution that met his desire for simplicity, security, and privacy.
Even with the cost of egress fees from Google, AK Productions will break even and start realizing significant cost savings in approximately six months. A simpler, more cost-effective storage platform that integrates seamlessly with his existing tools took Korotkin’s storage concerns off the table (and completely eliminated his Ibuprofen budget).
“I’m just so glad that Backblaze exists as a company. Backblaze is not only simple to navigate, but it seems to be designed to be user-friendly for those who aren’t in IT.”
-Aiden Korotkin, Director of Photography, AK Productions
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