This morning, NetApp announced AltaVault—the next iteration of what was Riverbed SteelStore, which was acquired in 2014.
Check out my earlier blog: Riverbed announces the end of excuses in D2D2C.
I am admittedly a fan of cloud gateway appliances as part of a data protection architecture—having previously said, “If you want to add cloud to your data protection strategy, a cloud gateway may very well be the easiest way to get you there.”
Check out my short video on Cloud Gateways, as part of our Data Protection Appliance (DPA)research.
In much the same way that someone can “drop” a deduplication appliance into an environment running a diverse range of new/existing backup software and then the “better target” simply makes the overall data protection solution more efficient … cloud-gateways offer the same potential value as a “better target” than simple storage by only storing the most recent backups locally and the rest transparently in a cloud storage tier.
Today’s announcement from NetApp is just another step in that journey, with the rebranding of SteelStore as AltaVault and enhancements within the offering:
- New virtual appliances for ESXi and Hyper-V, with the boast that folks can be connected within 30m. I’ve actually run an earlier version of the virtual appliance within my own Dallas lab with positive results, so I am looking forward to not only upgrading my own appliance, but hopefully also getting the ESG Lab team to take a deep hands-on look.
- Reduced time (4X) for data transmission, which is quite a claim considering that most folks presume that the Riverbed secret sauce was already among the most efficient, bending the space/time continuum to transmit ridiculous amounts of data across thin connections. If the AltaVault dev team has further optimized that, that’s exciting. Faster data access times were also announced.
- Lastly, NetApp announced “advanced capabilities for in-cloud recovery,” which begs further exploration as organizations of all sizes are looking to cloud-based solutions for BC/DR and IT resiliency initiatives.
Considering that improving data backup and using cloud infrastructure are both top priorities among IT organizations of all sizes (according to ESG’s 2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey), the rebranding and the incremental innovation complete the journey of SteelStore/AltaVault from Riverbed to NetApp. With a name like “NetApp” and the market eager for cloud-enhanced data protection, now is the time to watch as they potentially help lead the way out of the building for better backups and data durability.
[Originally blogged via ESG’s Technical Optimist.com]