HPE and Commvault: Intelligent data protection for your mission-critical applications

StorageExperts · ‎11-12-2019

Learn how HPE and Commvault work together to bring intelligent data protection to your mission-critical applications.

To start this deeper dive on how HPE and Commvault work better together, I’d like to share bit about my recent experience at Commvault GO 2019. It was a busy show for the more than 2000 attendees—and it’s where Commvault unveiled its vision for protecting data and its strategy to provide a comprehensive platform for intelligent data management at massive scale.

It was also a busy show for HPE and our staffers! The team delivered five break-out sessions, with a record numbers of attendees showing up to learn about topics such a:

HPE Primera, a new approach to high-end storage that combines extreme resiliency and performance with the agility of the cloud
Commvault HyperScale™ Technology reference designs with HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10
HPE Cloud Bank Storage
HPE and Commvault Healthcare solutions
HPE data storage strategy—and particularly how to optimize your investment and improve ROI with HPE GreenLake backup services using Commvault software.

I had so much fun talking with customers and partners and hearing first hand how HPE is helping them enable a hybrid HPE at Commvault GO 2019cloud along with intelligent data protection and backup-as-a-service initiatives.

The ideal opportunity to showcase HPE Primera

In our demo area, we displayed some of our best-of-breed storage platforms along with Commvault solutions. The new HPE Primera generated a lot of interest from our partners and customers. Hopefully, most of you are aware of HPE Primera, but for the uninitiated here is a short summary: We introduced HPE Primera earlier this year and reception has been awesome! But don’t take my word for it (see just a small sample here, here, and here).

I believe HPE Primera ushers in a new era of storage for all your mission-critical apps. Not only have we made it super simple but we’ve done this while raising the bar on resiliency and performance with an architecture built for NVMe and storage class memory (SCM). With HPE Primera. you get:

An on-demand experience for instant app access to data consumed as a service. No waiting. No tuning. And no more forklift upgrades.
App-aware resiliency based on AI that sees the future to prevent disruptions before they happen, backed by a 100% availability guarantee. Yes, 100% (and that’s not a typo!).
Predictive acceleration with embedded AI to ensure your mission critical apps are not just fast some of the time, but all of the time

HPE Primera and Commvault IntelliSnap® technology integration: Rapid recovery when you need it

Organizations using traditional data backup methods have two choices. One, back up all data but risk exceeding backup windows because of the sheer volume of data. Or two, back up a subset of data to meet backup SLAs but risk exposure to data loss. Growing data volumes are driving organizations to adopt rapid, highly efficient storage snapshots as a vital first line of defense in protecting both physical and virtual applications, while traditional streaming backups are used for longer-term retention. However, storage snapshots and data protection operations are often fragmented across different tools, creating inefficiency and/or requiring a lot of manual scripts.

Building on our partnership with Commvault, we’ve made it seamless for you to adopt best-of-breed solutions in a unified stack that enhances the already strong value proposition for HPE data protection for the data center. We are happy to announce that Commvault has successfully completed all the Commvault IntelliSnap® technology certification and HPE Primeraintegration tests on the new HPE Primera supporting the following:

HPE Primera snapshots
HPE Primera snapshot replication
HPE 3PAR to HPE Primera replication
HPE Primera to HPE 3PAR replication

Commvault software technology combines complete data protection lifecycle management features with primary and secondary tiers of HPE storage. The combination of Commvault IntelliSnap technology with the native HPE Primera Storage snapshot engine provides consistent point-in-time recovery copies for enterprise applications—while incorporating hardware snapshots into the complete data protection process with no complex scripting required. Commvault IntelliSnap technology orchestrates AND indexes the snap contents to make searching and recovery of mission critical data within the snap copy far simpler and more efficient. Additionally, when you require a second or third copy of your data, Commvault can take a backup copy and send this to HPE StoreOnce or Cloud Bank storage for longer-term retention needs.

For applications that have very low tolerance for downtime, rapid recovery and rollbacks from snapshots provide the ideal solution. IntelliSnap technology combines a broad range of application awareness with the HPE Primera Storage snapshot engine to provide reliable recovery of complex applications such as Microsoft® Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and so on. Application-aware protection includes auto-discovery features that update protection coverage automatically when changes are made to an application environment.

Protection is also hypervisor-aware and includes auto-discovery of virtual machines with automatic policy-based snapshot protection. IntelliSnap technology and the HPE storage snapshot engine also allow you to meet demanding business-critical application SLAs with scalable protection for recovery point and time objectives in minutes. This integration produces accelerated application-level recovery with granular protection and retention options.

Commvault integration with HPE Primera is the result of a significant joint engineering effort between the two companies. What’s more, this extends Commvault’s industry-leading breadth and depth of snapshot management support across HPE’s primary storage portfolio to include HPE Primera, HPE 3PAR, Nimble Storage, and XP7.

Not at Commvault GO? No worries. Catch up here.

If you weren’t able to attend this year, catch up on some other notable moments from the show by watching The CUBE interviews with Chris Powers, VP and GM HPE Storage:

End-to-end availability and data protection

As you continue on your IT modernization journey, data protection and recovery are a critical component. The one-size-fits-all routine doesn’t work anymore. It’s important to develop a data protection strategy that aligns with your business objectives. HPE is a trusted partner to help you meet your goals. HPE Primera, HPE 3PAR , HPE Nimble Storage, and HPE StoreOnce, plus Commvault Software offer end-to-end data protection to safeguard your data and improve business resilience.

Meanwhile, I know I'm excited about the upcoming months and the things that are in store on the data protection front and our ongoing partnership with Commvault. Both organizations have the common goal of enabling customers to optimize business outcomes by leveraging their technologies, on premises or in the cloud.