GreenBytes' GB-X Series of inline deduplication storage appliances have been qualified for use with NetBackup through the Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) program.
Data Protection is optimally a multi-faceted approach to ensuring business continuity in the event of unplanned loss or other unintended alterations of critical business data. GreenBytes’ high performance, inline deduplication appliances provide flexible solutions, including support for industry leading products from Symantec, BakBone, LaserVault and others for data protection challenges that reduce cost and simplify processes for this mission-critical activity.
Backup and Recovery
Backup and Recovery is a critical part of technology operations for all businesses. Increasingly, disk-based deduplication appliances have replaced tape libraries as the preferred backup methodology, providing customers with more control on backup, retention and remote replication policies. The benefits of GreenBytes’ disk-based inline deduplication appliances for backup operations include:
- Target-based deduplication, providing for storage consolidation across backup nodes and media servers
- Enhanced backup capabilities with Symantec OpenStorage (OST) standard
- N-to-N replication, enabling maximum flexibility for offsite and remote office transfer and collection of backup data sets
- High-speed recovery capability with superlative read performance on the GB-X appliance platform
Real-time, Inline, Target-Based Deduplication
The GreenBytes GB-X Series are target deduplication appliances. Unlike client-based deduplication technology, GreenBytes systems can optimally coalesce your diverse backup sources into one global deduplication pool. There are no separate administration tasks associated with client systems to be backed up - all storage optimization processes occur on the appliance and can be observed with the Windows MMC-based StorageManagement interface. Target-based backup represents a significant reduction in software administration over client-based deduplication products.
Inline deduplication performance means that you are not required to overprovision storage, or provide ‘landing space’ for inbound backup data sets. All of your purchased storage goes to the accommodation of your policy-based backup strategy. The GB-X Series appliances are high-performance storage servers and can support multiple aggregated 1 GbE, or 10 GbE network architectures, and sustain GB/sec ingest rates for simultaneous multiple backup server performance.
GreenBytes GB-X Series appliances maintain their performance, regardless of their capacity status. Whether your backup is 1 TB or 100 TB, storage performance is superlative. There are no deduplication namespace boundaries that require your backup policies to accommodate multiple nodes as your backups get larger over time. By simply adding expansion shelves to your base configuration, you can grow your storage pool to accommodate larger backup requirements.
Industry Standard OST Support
All GB-X Series appliances come with support for Symantec’s OpenStorage (OST) protocol. OST is the optimal method for managing backups to disk with Symantec NetBackup and BackupExec product families. With OST, customers can create policy-based backup jobs that optimize network resources and therefore reduce backup windows significantly.
OST-based backup architectures also benefit from Symantec’s duplication and optimized synthetic backup features, using one or more GreenBytes systems for primary and duplication targets.
GreenBytes supports all three NetBackup media server configurations: Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems. GreenBytes’ latest OST support information can be found here.
GreenBytes brings its unique value-add to NetBackup environments powered with OST compared with other solution approaches:
| Feature |
GreenBytes GB-X Series |
Other Alternative |
Target-based deduplication |
GreenBytes deduplication is global, across your entire NetBackup topology, all clients and all media servers. If duplicate data exists, it will be consolidated. |
Source-based deduplication engines do not have visibility across media servers, missing an opportunity for data reduction. |
Capacity scaling with virtual storage pools |
Even with deduplication, your backup policies may require capacity expansion over time. GreenBytes systems can be expanded to 216 TB of physical data… 3 times larger than any other OST certified appliance. |
Legacy OST deduplication appliances will require either forklift upgrades or separate storage namespaces to accommodate large-scale deployments. |
High-performance restore |
With GreenBytes’ high-performance architecture, file level restores are fast, with speed equal to or better than our initial storage performance. |
Performance matters when you really do need to restore a file in a data recovery scenario! |
Optimized Duplication |
GreenBytes’ replication capability, driven by OST’s duplication feature, optimizes network resources by intelligently sending unique blocks to the replication target. |
Systems that re-hydrate your data for delivery to replication targets waste valuable network resources and increase backup windows. |
Acquisition Price |
On a per-TB basis, GreenBytes systems cost significantly less than the competition. GreenBytes systems come with our complete software suite, including OST powered NetBackup interface. |
Combined with high acquisition costs, some vendors charge for replication and OST licensing which complicates ROI justifications. |
N-to-N Replication
One of the biggest challenges for all businesses is the management of backup and restoration of data across multiple locations. With limited budgets for remote staff, IT infrastructure and wide area network connectivity, simple solutions that efficiently utilize resources are best. With GreenBytes’ flexible replication capability, inexpensive solutions for remote office and offsite DR backup retention are possible.
With the GB-1000, GB-2000 and GB-4000 appliance configurations, right sized solutions for hub-and-spoke replication requirements are easily and economically achieved. The GreenBytes StorageManager interface provides single-pane-of-glass management of all GreenBytes appliances to support configuration and management of replication operations. Customers have maximum and nearly limitless configuration control over replication topology so that optimal point-in-time recovery objectives can be achieved.
GreenBytes optimizes the utilization of precious and sometimes sparse WAN resources by intelligently sending replication data that has been previously deduplicated in its optimized, reduced state. There is no need to ‘re-hydrate’ large and cumbersome backup datasets before transmission to remote replication targets.
High Speed Recovery
There is no greater urgency in IT operations than the recovery of critical backups in the aftermath of a primary data loss situation. With the SSD accelerated architecture of the GreenBytes GB-X Series appliances, data recovery operations are fully optimal and return your backups to their native sources as fast as your network will deliver.