Remote Office Data Protection Rolled into new HYDRAstor HS8-2000

The ease in which HYDRAstor's underlying grid storage architecture gives companies to migrate to higher capacity and faster performing hardware found in its new HS8-2000 make it easy to overlook some of its other new features. Part of the reason I devoted the last blog entry to HYDRAstor's self-evolving architecture is because I usually have to do just the opposite: educate readers about the advantages of upgrading to a new product so they can justify the pain of going through the migration. In HYDRAstor's case, it is so painless to upgrade and migrate to the new HS8-2000 release that it is almost easy to overlook its new features.

Part of the reason companies might miss these features is that they are more specifically targeted at enterprises either looking to bring a HYDRAstor in house for the first time or for those looking to extend data protection to remote offices or data centers. The two new features of the HYDRAstor that address these concerns include:

• Rack-less models of the HS8-2000. Part of the impetus for introducing a rack-less model of the HYDRAstor was two-fold. First, it provides companies a low-cost option to introduce the HYDRAstor into their backup environment, especially if they already have their own standardized rack hardware. The other reason is it meets the less stringent requirements for the protection of data in remote and branch offices. While the grid storage architecture of the HYDRAstor is well-suited for corporations that need disk-based solutions that are scalable from both a capacity and performance perspective, the entry level solution of the previous generation HS8-1000 was a bit of overkill for some remote offices. The HS8-2002S rack-less model that is now part of the HS8-2000 series gives companies the option to start with a smaller HYDRAstor configuration (1 Accelerator Node, 2 Storage Nodes) for their remote offices with the option to upgrade to the larger HS8-2004S. Many-to-one replication. As companies deploy more HYDRAstor grids in other data centers or in remote offices, companies also want the option to replicate that data back to one remote site. While HYDRAstor already supported asynchronous replication with the HS8-1000, the HS8-1000 only supported one-to-one replication. The HS8-2000's introduction of new, entry level models for remote offices makes it a logical time to enhance the replication capabilities found on the HS8-2000 so one central HYDRAstor can receive data transmitted from one or more HYDRAstor grids located in remote offices. Since companies can control not only when data is replicated between HYDRAstor grids but also what data is replicated by selecting which filesystems they want replicated on each HYDRAstor, companies can minimize network bandwidth between sites as well as minimize the capacity requirements at the DR site.

To date much of NEC's focus with the HYDRAstor was on providing enterprise caliber disk-based data protection that could easily and effortlessly scale either capacity or performance. That mission was accomplished in the HS8-1000. Now by adding rack-less models along with many-to-one replication to the new HS8-2000, enterprise companies can more economically extend HYDRAstor's reach outside of the data center and into remote offices while bringing their data back to the home office. In so doing, companies can bring HYDRAstor's benefits to these locations without introducing some of the data management headaches that tend to accompany other disk-based backup solutions.