We have news on backup systems, NVMe-oF bundles and benchmarks, NVMe/TCP, Commvault data management, disk ships and fast access object store migration. Read on.
Acronis and Exagrid
Acronis Cyber Backup software can squirt backup data to a deduping Exagrid storage box. The two companies say the combo is suitable for remote and branch offices. Remote sites use Acronis agent software to pump their data to a central Exagrid store.
Data can be replicated to a second-site ExaGrid system for disaster recovery.
The remote sites can be split into two groups with each backing up to a single Exagrid system. The two Exagrids cross-replicate to each other to provide Disaster Recovery for the whole system.
Commvault augments Activate
Commvault has upgraded its Activate data management insights and governance software. Activate works as standalone product or in tandem with Commvault’s backup software. It gives customers visibility into their data, and helps them locate areas for storage efficiencies.
The upgrade includes Entitlement Management, which gives customers better control of critical or sensitive data.
File Storage Optimization dashboards are now consolidated into Commvault Command Center for easier management and reporting. Users can access the various views when reviewing storage distribution and identify duplicated or orphan files for clients or client-groups.
Sensitive Data Governance ets Redaction when exporting files. For those who respond to GDPR Right-to-Access and other similar requirements, the export function will optionally redact sensitive data entities found within the files or emails.
Commvault Activate remains available on a per user basis, but customers can now flexibly purchase Commvault Activate’s capabilities. This is either on a per terabyte (for use with file and VM data) or a per user(for use with email or Microsoft Office 365 data).
The new pricing options are available via Commvault resellers in early Novemeber.
Excelero love-in with Quanta Cloud Technology
Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT) NVMe storage servers are being combined with Excelero’s NVMesh NVMe-oF software for sale to HPC, cloud service providers and hyperscale customers.
QxStor Excelero NVMesh is a pre-validated and pre-configured software-defined storage product. The technology has been tested in disaggregated and converged architectures.
The two companies say it fulfils an unmet and growing demand for storage architectures with high throughput and/or ultra-low latency at terabyte-to-petabyte scale.
Mellanox supports NVMe/TCP
Mellanox has announced acceleration of NVMe/TCP at speeds up to 200Gbit/s.
Its ConnectX adapters supports NVMe-oF over both TCP and RoCE. The ConnectX-6 Dx and BlueField-2 products also secure NVMe-oF connections over IPsec and TLS, using HW-accelerated encryption and decryption for both RoCE and TCP. Mellanox claims they are the fastest and most secure NVMe-oF SmartNICs.
This NVMe/TCP storage acceleration enables customers to deploy NVMe storage in existing TCP/IP network environments. There’s no need to buy costly datacentre-class Ethernet, which you would need for NVMe-oF RoCE, which is faster though.
Pavilion Data Systems performance STACs up
NVMe-oF startup Pavilion Data Systems’ array has produced world-record performance in four STAC-M3 analytical benchmarks against all other publicly disclosed systems, including systems with direct-attached SSD storage and Intel Optane drives.
STAC (Securities Technology Analysis Center) runs benchmarks on financial trading systems for financial trading firms. These benchmarks are not publicly available. If you are a STAC member, you can see details here.
In eight records versus all-flash arrays Pavilion beat E8 with Optane, Dell/EMC with DSSD, Vexata and the IBM Flash System 900.
There were four more STAC records versus all systems, which includes filers, with Pavilion beating WekaIO and Dell/EMCIsilon.
Beating E8 with an Optane-enhanced system must have been satisfying. Pavilion said it used a mix of Toshiba and Western Digital SSDs with older servers; meaning ones not using Xeon SP processors we think. Read a Pavilion blog about its STAC wins here.
SwiftStack and InfiniteIO
SwiftStack is teaming up with InfiniteIO to migrate older inactive files off NAS storage and move them to on-premises or in-cloud SwiftStack object store – but still accessible as files.
InfiniteIO software can present them, wherever they are, as if they are local files. Customers can continuously tier and migrate files based on policy and/or metadata attributes to SwiftStack to optimise local storage.
This file lifecycle management combo will compete with Cohesity SmartFiles, Data Dynamic’a StorageX, Komprise, Spectra Logic’s StorCycle.
Shorts
There is an ingenious blog about a disk drive’s life by Backblaze here.
Analytics firm Databricks is donating its Delta Lake platform to the Linux Foundation, a non-profit that wants to help innovation through open source software.
Tarun Thakur, GM for Rubrik Database Products, and the CEO of Rubrik-acquired DatosIO, has left Rubrik. He co-founded distributed database protector DatosIO in June 2014 and was its CEO when Rubrik bought it in February 2018. He became the database products GM at Rubrik but now wants to take time out and perhaps look around for another startup opportunity.
Object storage service supplier Scaleway has a get-started offer with 75GB of free storage. Beyond the free 75 GB, additional gigabytes are priced at €0.01/month for storage and €0.01/month for the outgoing data transfer. The network transit infrastructure is free of charge within Scaleway regions, allowing inter-regional exchanges in Scaleway data centres in Amsterdam, Paris and very soon Warsaw.
StorMagic’s SvSAN is compared, to its advantage, with VMware’s vSAN in a DCIG report available here.
