Cobalt Iron rolls out Compass NAS backup system extension
The new extension offers file-level backups on one integrated system that removes the use of NDMP silos to make the process less time-consuming for users.
Cobalt Iron recently released Compass NAS Agent, a new extension to its Compass Enterprise SaaS backup platform that will back up network-attached storage data.
The Compass NAS Agent will allow users to back up files on a file-level basis with incremental backups while avoiding consuming too much of the users' time.
"The Compass NAS Agent approach reintroduces that policy-based management at the file and object level. It also allows granular restores at the file or directory level, as opposed to NDMP [network data management protocol] and NAS replications," said Greg Tevis, vice president of global strategy at Cobalt Iron. "You don't have to restore back to that original NAS device or another like NAS device. You can restore to another operating system, you can restore to the cloud, you can restore wherever you want."
Some other features of the NAS backup system are as follows:
- accelerates backups and restorations of NAS systems;
- integrates with major apps like Microsoft SQL, Exchange and SAP;
- enables policy-based service-level management of data;
- integrates data with the rest of the enterprise backup; and
- eliminates NDMP backups.
According to Marc Staimer, president and CDS of Dragon Slayer Consulting, users are investing more into data protection for their backup-as-a-service systems rather than just a simple NAS backup system. In the end, he said, deciding on a BaaS provider is about both cost and the level of data protection.
"The real issue today is data protection, whether you're talking about it as a service or whether you're talking about it as a product, is what are you doing to really contain and prevent ransomware and malware," Staimer said.
Through the use of Cyber Shield, a data protection feature rolled out in September by Cobalt, customer data is locked down in the case of a cyberattack without additional security add-ons.
"[Cyber Shield] actually locks down all backups, including the NAS backups," he said. "When you do a NAS backup, typically it's going into a backup server of some sort or you are doing an NDMP dump directly to tape. Those operations and that data has atypical security exposures that exist in the backup world, a backup server running a backup operating system that it is running on. [Cyber] not only reduces a lot of those ransomware attack vectors or security exposures, but they actually eliminate them."
The extension is free for customers already using Cobalt Iron Compass. Competitors of Cobalt Iron include GoodSync, Backblaze NAS Cloud Backup and StorageCraft.
