A physical backup appliance is nothing but a complete backup system that includes hardware to store backed up data and software that controls the process of copying data from client servers and computers to storage system.
Previously, backup appliances where just used as alternatives for traditional backup practices which included separate software applications and storage devices such as tape media. They were designed for smaller firms that did not have the IT resources to design, implement and operate traditional backup systems, which could get rather complex.
As a result, backup appliance offering vendors came up with solutions that weren’t scalable, both in capacity and performance and lacked more traditional features that traditional backup applications include.
But now, companies such as StoneFly, Inc. are offering physical backup appliances which have storage and processing technologies attracting large organizations too. Data services such as data deduplication, thin provisioning, compression have increased the effective capacity of disk arrays, further enhancing the appeal of these turnkey solutions. And because processing power and network connectivity is so affordable these days, it’s possible to implement these features without significantly impacting the ingest and throughput speed of the appliance.
As dedicated physical backup appliances come with a backup software pre-installed and configured on the server hardware. So, with this feature onboard, there are no platform compatibility issues and the configurations available are optimized for the software. Moreover, users can add capacity and can also gain performance in proportion. In addition to implementation benefits, appliances can save on acquisition costs compared to buying separate hardware and software components, and provide operational savings by consolidating hardware and software support.
And nowadays, those looking for backup options are also interested in having advanced disaster recovery solutions available with backup solutions.
So, StoneFly a wholly owned business unit of Dynamic Network Factory offers Z-Series of DR Backup Appliances is a purpose-built backup system in one easy to manage appliance. The StoneFly Z-Series provides to the user with a total backup solution for all physical and virtual servers and workstations in a single box. Thus, users can manage all of their backup operations for their datacenter or office with a single central management console.
DR16Z and DR24Z appliance nodes can be scaled up to 1 PetaByte of backup storage capacity for those seeking solutions for large scale enterprise business. Every node can accommodate any combination of SATA, SAS and SSD storage tiers as required, achieving the performance needed for their requirements.
StoneFly Z-Series appliances are available in integrated or modular configurations. An optional embedded hypervisor allows backed up VMs to be spun up directly on the Z-Series appliance. The backup engine automatically creates backup images of physical servers based on flexible user-defined policy. These images can be restored (bare metal recovery) to the same hardware, to dissimilar hardware to build a new server, or can be mounted as a drive to retrieve an earlier copy of a specific file, folder, etc.
Z-Series supports P2P, P2V, V2P, and V2V operations (Physical-to-Physical, Physical-to-Virtual, Virtual-to-Physical, Virtual-to-Virtual) including restoring physical machines to completely different hardware and restoring Virtual Machines to a completely different Hypervisor.
The backup engine also includes snapshot, one-pane management, SSL-encryption, data deduplication at the source and target, compression, and much more.
To get more info call 510.265.1616 or click on StoneFly Z series of DR Backup appliances web page
So, to the title question that whether “Physical backup appliances have value in virtual world?” .
Yes, when all these smart features are available, it surely has a definite value in the virtual world.
storageservers.wordpress.com 