Backup hardware devices: 2017 Products of the Year finalists
Backup and disaster recovery hardware products that made the initial cut extend into the cloud and have more support for software-defined storage, data analytics and even tape.
Finalists in the backup hardware devices category of Storage magazine and SearchStorage's 2017 Products of the Year competition have a diverse set of capabilities, ranging from hyper-convergence to support for the cloud and Oracle Recovery Manager to continued dedication to keeping tape relevant. The eight finalists include veteran vendors that are trying to keep up with cloud-based startups.
Although integrated with hardware, the value of most of the backup hardware finalists comes from their software stacks.
The following types of products were eligible to compete in the backup hardware devices category: tape libraries and drives, backup media, disk backup targets, virtual tape libraries, deduplication devices and gateway appliances for cloud backup.
Barracuda Backup 6.4
Barracuda Backup 6.4 is aimed at channel partners and managed service providers. It supports backup to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for both on-premises and public cloud storage. Barracuda has added one-to-one replication of physical appliances to virtual appliances and Cloud LiveBoot support for Microsoft Hyper-V that can be used for testing and backup verification.
Cohesity DataPlatform 4
This hyper-converged secondary storage is a software-defined platform that consolidates legacy secondary storage silos. This version supports Amazon Simple Storage Service object storage with global deduplication across an entire cluster. The platform provides three-to-one and five-to-two erasure coding for data resiliency, and it also supports write once, read many volumes for data security.
ExaGrid EX Series 4.0
This version of ExaGrid's hyper-converged secondary storage backup appliance has been upgraded to support Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) Channels, Veeam Scale-Out Backup Repository and replication to the AWS public cloud for disaster recovery. It can back up as much as 1 petabyte of Oracle RMAN Channels database data or a single 1 PB database in a single grid. It provides global deduplication across a grid configuration.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Nimble Storage Secondary Flash Arrays
Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) Nimble Storage Secondary Flash Arrays are built on hybrid flash technology that uses in-line data compression, deduplication and capacity optimization for backup and secondary storage. The flash backup hardware devices are integrated with data availability software that includes Veeam software. These arrays are integrated with HPE InfoSight predictive analytics, which anticipates and prevents issues, and resolves them automatically about 86% of the time.
Quantum Scalar i3 tape library
The entry-level Quantum Scalar i3 is a tape library using LTO automation. It scales from one tape drive and 25 tape slots to 12 tape drives and 200 tape slots in a 19-inch rack; 3U modules support as many as three drives and 50 tape slots. The Scalar i3 is integrated with Quantum's iLayer intelligent software for proactive monitoring and diagnostics.
Quantum Scalar i6 tape library
The Quantum Scalar i6 enterprise-level system scales to 12 PB in a standard 19-inch rack; 6U modules each support as many as three drives and 100 tape slots. The i6 also is integrated with iLayer management software with features such as policy-based data integrity checks, automated in-library vaulting, monitoring and reporting.
Quorum OnQ 4.0
The latest version of the Quorum OnQ backup and disaster recovery appliance is available in hardware, software and as-a-cloud service where customers can use snapshots to recover via one-click automation from a browser interface at any point in time. The appliance is built on modular storage with as much as 400 TB of raw storage and 2 TB of RAM per pod.
Rubrik Cloud Data Management (Alta 4.0)
Among the backup hardware devices, the Rubrik Cloud Data Management appliance helps address legacy backup headaches with high ingest rates and linear performance scalability. Alta 4.0 supports physical Linux, Windows, and NAS SMB and NFS devices. It integrates with Oracle RMAN and supports Oracle Automatic Storage Management without the need for agents.
