Cohesity Backup: The Next Generation of Enterprise Data Backup
You don’t use your grandfather’s flip phone. Why use that kind of backup?
For a perfect example of how far technology has come since the early 2000s, look no further than data storage. A decade ago, IT organizations were backing up critical data via a disk-to-tape approach. This method isn’t just slow—it’s complex to manage and can make recovery times painfully long when every second counts.
Thankfully, organizations began to move towards a more modern disk-to-disk-to-tape approach, storing backups to disk before being transferred to tape for long-term retention purposes. This offered not only data deduplication, but also an opportunity for IT operators to back up straight to disk at the most reasonable cost possible—a terrific upgrade if there ever was one.
Disk made backups faster and easier to manage with faster recovery times. Unfortunately, this approach was designed as a point solution that resulted in a highly fragmented backup structure. This meant that the benefits were limited to a few very specific scenarios, such as when they were operating in a simple environment, when they had limited workloads of data to protect, and when that data was not growing exponentially.
Over the course of the early 2000s, IT infrastructures across the board have transformed dramatically, thanks in large part to the emergence of hyperscale organizations like Google and Facebook. They’ve demonstrated how to build and operate a better IT infrastructure using distributed, scale-out architectures and have shown by example how it’s possible to break free from the “old school” way of doing things for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Traditional Data Backup
Still, some businesses are hanging on to the older purpose-built point solutions for dear life (i.e. Data Domain being a primary example) despite their multiple drawbacks:
- Not supporting multiple functions
- Not software-defined
- Limited deduplication functionality
- Not supporting non-disruptive upgrades
Not only that but when you’re trying to recover data from these solutions, it will take time—time you may not have!
Software-Defined Backup
On the other hand, software-defined scale-out backup solutions dramatically simplify how data is stored and thus what you can do with that data over the long-term.
Not only does it natively offer the flexibility to backup data to the public cloud without any dependency on cloud gateways, but its web-scale roots also make adoption about as non-disruptive as it comes.
Let’s take a look at a leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions, Cohesity DataPlatform.
Why Use Cohesity DataPlatform? 10 Benefits of This Core to Edge to Cloud Backup
Cohesity DataPlatform has many benefits:
1. Seamless Integration
Cohesity DataPlatform can be deployed on a wide range of different hyperconverged appliances, from Cisco to HPE to Dell and beyond. As NFS storage to third party backup products like NetBackup and Veeam, it seamlessly integrates into your existing infrastructure in a way that can also expand to converged data protection over time.
2. Potential Cost Savings
With siloed backup, you are paying for things you don’t need like additional licenses, multiple support contracts and manpower. Consolidating backup can minimize these costs and save your team time.
3. Software Defined Backup
Cohesity’s backup solution is software-defined, meaning there is no dependence on proprietary hardware. Customers deploy it to qualified x86 appliances all the time, all in a way that can still be effortlessly managed via a single GUI.
4. Easier Management
Having all your data under one umbrella will allow your team to back off of update projects and management and have more time to help innovate.
5. Cloud Expansion
Likewise, Cohesity Backup natively integrates with the public cloud from providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud—for long-term archiving, active data tiering or replication.
6. Security
Cohesity provides enterprise-class features like software-based encryption with FIPS certification, flexible geo-replication for off-site data protection and disaster recovery, compliance auditing and much more. Cohesity backup can even scan backed up virtual machines for new vulnerabilities to keep your production servers operating one step ahead of harm by not accidentally restoring a VM with vulnerabilities.
7. Simply Better Analytics
Data is often sitting there, available to be mined for valuable information but no one actually gets to it. Cohesity Analytics provides immediate storage information such as:
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- Storage Analysis – Information on storage utilization, available capacity and your data growth trend analysis
- File-Level Knowledge – File level information such as file types and user access for secondary storage usage
- VM-Level Measurements – Consumption by application as well as data levels to show growth or diminishing data concentrations.
8. Powerful Processing
Integrating MapReduce enables quick processing of large amounts of data.
In the end, Cohesity’s cost is less than half of what you would expect to pay via more traditional deduplication appliances. A recent study stated that not only can Cohesity Backup reduce your Total Cost of Ownership by as much as 55% when it is used as a backup target, but when you pair it with Cohesity DataProtect for some use cases those cost savings can reach 80%.
Case Study: Rapid Business Growth Warrants Optimized Data Backup Strategy
Let’s talk about a recent Comport client and the implementation of Cohesity Backup.
A leader in the financial industry was struggling with its data management because of data silos created via acquisitions along their path to growth. With mounting costs and expanding operational complexity that was taking on a life of its own, they knew something needed to be done. Comport and Cohesity worked with the client to create a solution to modernize data management and ensure room for growth in the future. With strategic consolidation and phasing out multiple backup systems, the company was able to benefit from financial savings via licenses not renewed, upgrades to aging backup no longer required and numerous support renewals no longer needed. Read the full case study here.
Cohesity Proves Its Advantages for Software-Defined Backup
Comport can help you manage this transition by analyzing your data and existing backup systems and recommending the best solutions.
Think about it like this: you wouldn’t use your grandfather’s old flip phone to capture those incredible family memories. You want better. Modern technology, fewer hassles. Software-Defined backup is exactly that, so you can rest easy knowing that you can restore data in the event of a primary data failure—be it human error, an attack, or a hardware/software failure.
