One of the more perplexing challenges that Nutanix administrators face is how to protect the data in their Nutanix deployments. Granted, Nutanix natively offers its own data protection utilities. However, these utilities leave gaps that enterprises are unlikely to find palatable when protecting their production applications. This is where Comtrade Software’s HYCU and ExaGrid come into play as their combined solutions provide a more affordable and elegant approach to protecting Nutanix environments.
One of the big appeals of using hyperconverged solutions such as Nutanix’s inclusion of basic data protection utilities. Using its Time Stream and Cloud Connect technologies, Nutanix makes it easy and practical for organizations to protect applications hosted on VMs running on Nutanix deployments.
The issue becomes how does one affordably deliver and manage data protection in Nutanix environments at scale? This becomes a tougher question for Nutanix to answer because to use its data protection technologies at scale requires running the Nutanix platform to host the secondary/backup copies of data. While that is certainly doable, that approach is likely not the most affordable way to tackle this challenge.
This is where a combined data protection solution from Comtrade Software and ExaGrid for the protection of Nutanix environments makes sense. Comtrade Software’s HYCU was the first backup software product to come to market purpose-built to protect Nutanix environments. Like Nutanix’s native data protection utilities, Nutanix administrators can manage HYCU and their VM backups from within the Nutanix PRISM management console. Unlike Nutanix’s native data protection utilities, HYCU auto-detects applications running within VMs and configures them for protection.
Further distinguishing HYCU from other competitive backup software products mentioned on Nutanix’s web page, HYCU is the only one currently listed that can run as a VM in an existing Nutanix implementation. The other products listed require organizations to deploy a separate physical machine to run their software which add cost and complexity into the backup equation.
Of course, once HYCU protects the data, the issue becomes, where does one store the backup copies of data for fast recoveries and long-term retention. While one can certainly keep these backup copies on the existing Nutanix deployment or on a separate deployment of it, these creates two issues.
- One, if there is some issue with the current Nutanix deployment, you may not be able to recover the data.
- Two, there are more cost-effective solutions for the storage and retention of backup copies of data.
ExaGrid addresses these two issues. Its scale-out architecture resembles Nutanix’s architecture enabling an ExaGrid deployment to start small and then easily scale to greater amounts of capacity and throughput. However, since it is a purpose-built backup appliance intended to store secondary copies of data, it is more affordable than deploying a second Nutanix cluster. Further, the Landing Zones that are uniquely found on ExaGrid deduplication systems facilitate near instantaneous recovery of VMs.
Adding to the appeal of ExaGrid’s solutions in enterprise environments is its recently announced EX63000E appliance. This appliance has 58% more capacity than its predecessor, allowing for a 63TB full backup. Up to thirty-two (32) EX63000E appliances can be combined in a single scale-out system to allow for a 2PB full backup. Per ExaGrid’s published performance benchmarks, each EX63000E appliance has a maximum ingest rate of 13.5TB/hr. per appliance enabling thirty-two (32) EX63000Es combined in a single system to achieve maximum ingest rate of 432TB/hr.
Hyperconverged infrastructure solutions are in general poised to re-shape enterprise data center landscapes with solutions from Nutanix currently leading the way. As this data center transformation occurs, organizations need to make sure that the data protection solutions that they put in place offer both the same ease of management and scalability that the primary hyperconverged solution provides. Using Comtrade Software HYCU and ExaGrid, organizations get the affordable yet elegant data protection solution that they seek for this next generation data center architecture.