Disclaimer: I recently attended VMworld 2017 – US. My flights were paid for by ActualTech Media, VMware provided me with a free pass to the conference and various bits of swag, and Tech Field Day picked up my hotel costs. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event. Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.
Here are my rough notes on “STO3331BUS – Cohesity Hyperconverged Secondary Storage: Simple Data Protection for VMware and vSAN” presented by Gaetan Castelein of Cohesity and Shawn Long, CEO of viLogics. You can grab a PDF of my notes from here.
Secondary Storage Problem
SDS has changed for the better.
Primary storage has improved dramatically
Moving from:
- High CapEx costs
- Device-centric silos
- Complex processes
To:
- Policy-based management
- Cost-efficient performance
- Modern storage architectures
But secondary storage is still problematic
Rapidly growing data
- 6ZB in 2016
- 93ZB in 2025
- 80% unstructured
Too many copies
- 45% – 60% of capacity for copy data
- 10 – 12 copies on average
- $50B problem
Legacy storage can’t keep up
- Doesn’t scale
- Fragmented silos
- Inefficient
Cohesity Hyperconverged Secondary Storage
You can use this for a number of different applications, including:
- File shares
- Archiving
- Test / Dev
- Analytics
- Backups
It also offers native integration with the public cloud and Cohesity have been clear that you shouldn’t consider it to be just another backup appliance.
Consolidate Secondary Storage Silos at Web-Scale
- Data Protection with Cohesity DataProtect;
- Third-party backup DB copies with CommVault, Oracle RMAN, Veritas, IBM and Veeam;
- Files; and
- Objects.
Deliver Data Instantly
Want to make the data useful (via SnapTree)?
Software defined from Edge to Cloud
You can read more about Cohesity’s cloud integration here.
Use Cases
- Simple Data Protection
- Distributed File Services
- Object Services
- Multicloud Mobility
- Test / Dev Copies
- Analytics
You can use Cohesity with existing backup products if required or you can use Cohesity DataProtect.
Always-Ready Snapshots for Instant Restores
- Sub-5 minute RPOs
- Fully hydrated images (linked clones)
- Catalogue of always-ready images
- Instant recoveries (near-zero RTOs)
- Integration with Pure Storage
Tight Integration with VMware
- vCenter Integration
- VADP for snap-based CBT backups
- vRA plugin for self-service, policy-based management
CloudArchive
- Policy-based archival
- Dedupe, compression, encryption
- Everything is indexed before it goes to the cloud – search files and VMs
- Individual file recovery
- Recover to a different Cohesity cluster
CloudReplicate
- Replicate backup data to cloud
Deploy Cohesity to the cloud (available on Azure currently, other platforms soon).
Reduce TCO
You can move from “Legacy backup”, where you’re paying maintenance on backup software and deduplication appliances, to paying just for Cohesity.
Testimonial
Shawn Long from viLogics then took the stage to talk about their experiences with Cohesity.
- People want to consume IT
- “Product’s only as good as the support behind it”
Conclusion
This was a useful session. I do enjoy the sponsored sessions at VMworld. It’s a useful way for the vendors to get their message across in a way that needs to tie back to VMware. There’s often a bit of a sales pitch, but there’s usually also enough information in them to get you looking further into the solution. I’ve been keeping an eye on Cohesity since I first encountered them a few years ago at Storage Field Day, and their story has improved in clarity and coherence since them. If you’re looking at secondary storage solutions it’s worth checking the out. You’ll find some handy resources here. 3.5 stars.