ESG Solution Showcase: Commvault Announces a Validated ...

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the organizations' usual server/storage vendors), knowing hardware and software will work together. The VRDP program is
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Solution Showcase

Commvault Announces a Validated Reference Design Program for Its HyperScale Offering Date: November 2017 Authors: Jason Buffington, Principal Analyst; and Monya Keane, Senior Research Analyst Abstract: Commvault is one of very few data protection vendors that have staunchly remained providers of hardware-agnostic, software-based data protection. But that fact should not imply any lack of synergy in how the backup software interacts with the range of available hardware platforms in the form of joint solutions, or any lack of potential for truly better-together, best-of-breed outcomes. As such, Commvault recently announced Commvault HyperScale Technology—with the option to implement it as Commvault HyperScale Software and to leverage a Validated Reference Design Program that helps ensure customer and partner delight in the combined solution.

Introduction In today’s world of increasing complexity and ever-heightening expectations for data protection, organizations should be endeavoring to remove risk throughout their strategy and architecture. For some, this effort directly translates to leveraging the ease of acquisition and deployment found in “turnkey” backup appliances, where the software and hardware is right-sized and preinstalled at the time of purchase. As desirable as that route might be, many other organizations want the assurance of reliable deployment and operation that appliances promise, but they need the consistency that comes from hardware standardization across the data center using whatever servers (including backup and media servers) and storage (including deduplicated systems) they’ve deemed to be best-of-breed. Either way, the intended outcome is the same—to improve their data protection capabilities, one of the most common initiatives related to data center modernization for IT teams today (see Figure 1). 1

Figure 1. Top Five Data Center Modernization Priorities for 2017 We would like to learn more about your specific spending plans for data center modernization. In which of the following areas will your organization make the most significant investments over the next 12-18 months? (Percent of respondents, N=339, five responses accepted) Increasing use of server virtualization

36%

Improving data backup and recovery

32%

IT infrastructure orchestration/automation tools

32%

Data center consolidation

28%

Increasing use of solid-state/flash storage technology

27% Source: Enterprise Strategy Group

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Source: ESG Research Report, 2017 IT Spending Intentions Survey, March 2017. This ESG Solution Showcase was commissioned by Commvault and is distributed under license from ESG. © 2017 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Solution Showcase: Commvault Announces a Validated Reference Design Program for Its HyperScale Offering

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How Commvault and Its Hardware Alliance Partners Are Ensuring Customer Success For many years, Commvault has been a leading vendor of innovative software-based data protection solutions. To put it another way, Commvault was never burdened by the need to ensure its software solutions were, first and foremost, aligned to its own hardware lines because Commvault doesn’t make production servers/storage. Such freedom enabled Commvault to offer midsized and enterprise-scale prospects great choice and flexibility in how they could protect data. IT service providers catering to those organizations also benefitted from the flexibility and freedom associated with implementing hardware-agnostic Commvault software. Behind the scenes, Commvault maintains contact with major server and storage hardware manufacturers—specifically, with the hardware engineers and other technical personnel tasked with validating and verifying that their own companies’ servers, storage, and related gear would function properly with Commvault software in real-world environments. But Commvault strongly emphasizes customer success, and it knew those informal interactions could be bolstered to better meet customer demand. So it recently formalized its testing, validation, and prescriptive guidance related to integration with strategic hardware partners under an initiative called the Validated Reference Design Program (VRDP). Essentially, the Commvault VRDP (see Figure 2) ensures customers can choose their preferred hardware componentry (i.e., the organizations’ usual server/storage vendors), knowing hardware and software will work together. The VRDP program is expansive, covering configurations meant for medium and large data protection deployments.

Figure 2. Companies Participating in the Commvault Validated Reference Design Program

Source: Commvault

Already, Commvault and several of its hardware partners have formalized prescriptive configurations and created blueprints. Table 1 shows some pairings officially qualified so far.

Table 1. Examples of Server Hardware Qualified Through the Commvault VRDP Validated Medium-density Configurations (i.e., a typical block size of up to 360TB raw)

Validated Large-density Configurations (i.e., typical block sizes of 360TB to 720TB raw)

Cisco C240 M5

Cisco S3260 M4

Dell PowerEdge 740XD

HPE Apollo 4200 Gen9

Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX2540 M4

Huawei FusionServer 5288 v3

HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10

Supermicro SSG-6028R-E1CR24N

Huawei FusionServer 2288H v5 Lenovo SR650 Source: Commvault © 2017 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Solution Showcase: Commvault Announces a Validated Reference Design Program for Its HyperScale Offering

One nice feature of VDRP is its potential to streamline an IT organization’s efforts related to system acquisition, integration, administration, patching/updating, and support. Often, those organizations spend considerable time and effort trying to identify system compatibilities and manage unforeseen compatibility problems. Having a bill of materials, installation and integration guides, and end-user administration guides handy can give them time back to focus on more important tasks—and perhaps eliminate redundant administration tasks being performed.

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Details on the New Program The outcome of an effort spurred by customer demand, the VRDP provides a collection of qualified configurations tied to various hardware platforms—

Another especially important aspect of VDRP is its accessible collaboration framework, which enables vendors of up-and-coming hardware solutions to ensure better-thansatisfactory interoperability with Commvault software. The VRDP will streamline Commvault’s ability to officially ensure reliability, availability, and predictable performance for even more of those third-party solutions going forward.

available as “recipe cards” suited to

The Bigger Truth

lab, and Commvault intends the testing

The key to any hardware-plus-software solution is engineering its components for assured performance/reliability, and backing up that effort with thoughtful partnering for pre-validation and post-support of known-good configurations. When it comes to data protection, purpose-built backup appliances (i.e., hardware) can absolutely be the right answer when one is looking for truly productized softwarebased outcomes. But many organizations engaged in protecting data prefer to use the same storage and server manufacturers as they use across their production environments.

data protection deployments ranging from small to very large. The configurations are set up in either Commvault’s or the hardware vendor’s and validation efforts to be ongoing. So, as changes occur and new technologies become available, Commvault and its hardware alliance partners will conduct follow-on testing and validation to ensure interoperability on a continuous basis.

Those organizations need absolute assurance that the combination of hardware and backup software they wish to use when safeguarding data will deliver the results expected. To give them that assurance, Commvault has formalized its longstanding alliance-partnering efforts into a new testing and qualification program designed to help organizations achieve the data protection goals they’ve established, while enabling them to use the products they like best.

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Enterprise Strategy Group is an IT analyst, research, validation, and strategy firm that provides market intelligence and actionable insight to the global IT community. © 2017 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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