11 Storage Appliance Solutions For Cloud-Based Data Protection

Data Protection Appliances: For When Cloud-Based Data Protection Software Isn't Enough

Software that takes advantage of the capacity and flexibility of public or private clouds is an important component for a complete data protection solution. But for customers looking beyond simple data protection, cloud-focused backup and recovery software may not be enough.

For an extra layer of protection combined with a burst of performance, data protection appliances may be the answer. These appliances are typically based on commodity hardware to provide local backup and recovery for performance, although software-based virtual appliances are also available. For additional resiliency and to provide remote access to data in a disaster, they also replicate data to external clouds.

CRN has assembled a list of 11 data protection appliances spanning the customer gamut from businesses with 10 seats to those with tens of thousands of seats. Turn the page to explore the possibilities.

For more on the cloud market, check out CRN's Cloud Storage Week project.

Arcserve UDP Appliance

The Arcserve UDP Appliance Series from Minneapolis-based Arcserve targets SMB and upper-midmarket clients with plug-and-play "set it and forget it" ease. It combines a hardware appliance with the company's UDP software for an all-in-one backup and recovery solution, available in six models, to protect up to 90 TBs of source data.

The UDP appliance comes with cloud-native capabilities, and offers such features as global source-based deduplication, multisite replication, tape support and automated data recovery capabilities. It can replicate to or from other UDP appliances and UDP software instances.

Barracuda Backup Appliance

Campbell, Calif.-based Barracuda Networks' backup appliances protect physical, virtual, on-premises, cloud-hosted and hybrid environments. They quickly deploy with local storage, software and built-in offsite replication to either Barracuda Cloud Storage, privately to a separate Barracuda Backup appliance in an offsite location, or to external disk or tape.

The appliances also feature the ability to boot a protected virtual machine on the device within minutes; the ability for remote employees to restore files and folders to folders on the company's CudaDrive; source- and target-based inline deduplication; preloading of the most recent data into a replacement appliance that ships the day after a disaster for quick recovery; and physical-to-virtual portability.

Carbonite Backup Appliance

Boston-based Carbonite's backup appliances, available exclusively through channel partners, are all-in-one solutions combining high-performance local backup with cloud security.

Carbonite's appliances enable bare metal recovery to existing, new or dissimilar hardware with image backup that protects an entire server in one pass -- including files, applications, operating system and settings. Users can monitor and manage all backed-up devices from a central dashboard, including scheduling, retention and bandwidth settings, to optimize performance and recovery point objectives.

The hardware is included in the annual subscription, along with service, support and a cloud storage starter pack. Five models with mini-tower and rack-mount options provide up to 8 TBs of local storage.

Datto SIRIS 2

The SIRIS 2 appliance from Datto, Norwalk, Conn., protects business data on premises, in virtualized environments, in the cloud and in Software-as-a-Service applications. The SIRIS 2 appliance, available as physical or virtual versions, can be configured with up to 50 TBs of storage capacity.

When first installed, the appliance does a full initial backup of data, and afterward, backs up incremental changes to ensure the current backup is ready to use when needed.

It comes integrated with wizard-driven bare metal restore to automate disaster recovery, and provides seamless file sharing abilities with the company's ownCloud integration.

Dell DL Series Backup and Recovery Appliances

Round Rock, Texas-based Dell's DL series backup and recovery appliances combine its PowerEdge servers with its AppAssure (now rebranded Dell Data Protection | Rapid Recovery) data protection software. The DL4300 targets small enterprises with up to 120 TBs of capacity in a 2U appliance, while the DL1000 targets small business with up to 3 TBs in a 1U appliance.

The Dell DL series backup and recovery appliances work across physical, virtual and cloud environments, and feature native cloud support for Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, Rackspace or any OpenStack provider. Previously installed Dell DL appliances are slated to be upgradable to the company’s new Dell Data Protection | Rapid Recovery software later this year.

Evault Integrated Backup Appliance

San Francisco-based Evault's all-in-one integrated backup appliances both serve as enterprise application data targets and do remote data backup and recovery to another appliance or the cloud. The appliances work in both central and remote or branch office environments, and seamlessly connect to the cloud to replicate data for additional data protection services.

Included in the appliances, which are available in capacity points of up to 170 TBs, are built-in compression, deduplication, encryption and replication capabilities.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise HP StoreOnce VSA

The StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) from Palo Alto, Calif.-based HPE is a virtual appliance version of the company's StoreOnce data protection appliances. It delivers the StoreOnce capabilities as a VMware, Hyper-V or KVM Ubuntu virtual appliance running on existing storage or server hardware.

The StoreOnce VSA lets partners offer managed services via the cloud, including backup as a service and disaster recovery as a service. Service providers whose subscribers don’t have a deduplication solution can let them use HP StoreOnce technology for high-speed local recovery using HP StoreOnce VSA and a subscriber’s existing backup software of choice.

StoreOnce VSA is licensed based on capacity, with a maximum size of 50 TBs. Services providers can also offer individual StoreOnce VSA licenses to their subscribers.

Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance

Customers with tens to thousands of databases needing protection may want to look at Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle’s Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance. The Recovery Appliance is completely integrated with Oracle Database to provide a minimum of data loss and backup overhead while delivering cloud-ready scalability. It includes secure replication, autonomous archiving to tape and end-to-end data validation.

To support the deployment of data protection as a service in private clouds or as service offerings by services providers, the appliance provides policy-based data protection management to support various service-level agreements, as well as database-aware space management to manage capacity according to each database’s recovery window goal.

Quantum Q-Cloud Protect With DXi

San Jose, Calif.-based Quantum's Q-Cloud Protect is a cloud service using an on-premises Quantum DXi deduplication backup appliance to replicate on-site data to the cloud for off-site disaster recovery at a cost of pennies per Gbyte per month.

With Q-Cloud Protect, deduplication technology is used both with the on-premises DXi and the DXi in the Q-Cloud Protect data center to shrink final capacity by up to 90 percent to reduce backup windows, network resources and overall costs. The on-premises DXi provides fast local restores, and works with tape or a second disaster recovery facility in addition to cloud on the back end.

Unitrends Recovery-Series 946S

The hybrid cloud Recovery-Series 946S from Burlington, Mass.-based Unitrends is a purpose-built physical backup appliance designed to handle the demands of increasing data volumes and compressed backup and recovery windows. The hybrid-cloud appliance features Release 8.2 of the data protection software powering the Unitrends Recovery-Series family. Release 8.2 features the company's Adaptive Data Deduplication with dedupe acceleration, and allows the Recovery-946S to scale beyond 100 TBs.

Recovery-946S includes up to 182 TBs of raw storage capacity and a suggested backup capacity of 118 TBs given typical industry usage rates. It can handle up to 25 back up data streams to help businesses manage thousands of virtual machines.

Veritas NetBackup 5330

Veritas NetBackup 5330 from Mountain View, Calif.-based Veritas, which is in the process of splitting from parent company Symantec, is an integrated media server with storage. It delivers scalable capacity and resiliency to address data center backup and recovery objectives while protecting both virtual and physical environments.

Built on NetBackup software, the NetBackup 5330 Appliance offers both client and target deduplication. With Auto Image Replication (AIR), the NetBackup appliance may be geographically dispersed as needed for disaster recovery requirements.