Pure Storage introduces cloud-native data protection built for flash

Pure Storage, the all-flash storage player that helps innovators build a better world with data, has announced ObjectEngine, the industry’s first data protection platform purpose-built for flash and cloud.

With ObjectEngine, Pure Storage says enterprises can implement a new data protection approach to restore on-demand and enable use of data in the cloud. Designed to enable data centricity for the enterprise and built on cloud-native technologies from recently-acquired StorReduce, ObjectEngine further unifies cloud and on-premises with seamless, rapid backup and recovery across both. The launch of the ObjectEngine platform comes just months after the acquisition of StorReduce, which brought flash-native deduplication technology designed to enable user-friendly, cost-effective recovery and backup to the public cloud.

Lee.

The majority of today’s legacy olutions are built for a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) approach, meaning that hot and warm data are stored on disk while historical or backup data goes to tape, where it is largely inaccessible. Pure Storage says legacy backup appliances optimised to back up data are 10x slower when data needs to be restored.

Today’s solutions can take hours or days to recover business-critical data when real-time has become the consumer expectation. Archived data needs to be readily accessible at a moment’s notice – one contemporary scenario is if a business is hit by ransomware, and refuses to pay the ransom. Such a business is held back from business as usual until it can fully restore a backup.

Pure Storage is in favour of F2F2C, or flash for current use, deduped and backed up to flash for near-term archival and then cloud for long-term archival.

"The appliance can handle network backups, will do data deduplication, write to a flash blade for instant restores and tier the data to public cloud," said Rob Lee, VP and Chief Architect for Pure Storage.

Instead of backing up production applications to traditional backup software, write to ObjectEngine, Lee suggested. Flash blades can provide nearline restore of last week's backups, with older data accessed from the cloud.

"Multiple sites can share the backup store and restores can be made to different sites," he pointed out.

“For too long, backup and protection has been an insurance policy rather than a strategic asset. In today’s ultra-competitive environment, organisations need every advantage possible to ensure they get the most value out of their data,” said Matt Burr, GM for FlashBlade, Pure Storage.

“ObjectEngine offers an evolved, cloud-centric approach to business continuity that can help forward-looking customers do more with their data.”

ObjectEngine enables a flash-to-flash-to-cloud (F2F2C) approach to data protection and allows users to meet stringent backup and restore service level agreements (SLAs) without any change to their existing backup workflow. For those who have built data protection processes with backup software vendors like Veritas, Veeam and Commvault, ObjectEngine simply works under the same cover.

ObjectEngine allows customers to take advantage of cloud economics and a pay-as-you-go model, and instead of waiting hours or days for business to recover, customers can be back online in minutes. The solution will be available in two configurations:

ObjectEngine//A

Fast

Delivers 25 TB/hour backup performance and 15 TB/hour restore performance, with the most advanced deduplication engine on the market.

Efficient

Reduces storage and bandwidth costs by up to 97%

ObjectEngine//Cloud

Object fabric

Secure, enterprise-ready platform built with a cloud object storage virtualisation layer offering 11 nines of durability in the cloud.

Cloud-native

Native AWS S3 interface that enables openness, integration and data portability.

Single namespace

Offers a single pane of glass for data across hybrid clouds.

Scalable

Near-linear scaling to deliver 100+ petabyte and 100+ terabyte-per-hour performance in the cloud.

According to Pure Storage, a similar solution from Dell EMC requires 4.5 racks to do the backup and restore job that it can do with one rack. Dell EMC yields 1 PB in usable capacity compared to 2 PB for Pure Storage. Pure Storage also has better throughput per hour for the backup (68 TB/hour for Dell EMC versus 100 TB/hour for Pure Storage). Pure Storage solution can also restore at 60 TB/hour; no restore performace was published for the Dell EMC system.

“In today’s business environment, smart leaders understand that if data is their most important organisational asset, data recovery is an equally critical investment,” said Steve McDowell, Senior Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategies.

“ObjectEngine provides Pure customers with an evolved approach to backup and restore, one that focuses primarily on powerful, reliable restoration and reuse that ensures no slowdowns due to loss of mission-critical data.”

Chua.

Chua Hock Leng, Regional Director, Pure Storage for ASEAN said that while many customers are still using D2D2T for backup, restoration has been a challenge. There are different tape formats, and tapes turn mouldy, for example.

"Customers are starting to explore this new way of backing up and recovering right now," he said. "To have a backup on cloud is a better way than backups to tapes. This is going to be a game changer in this region."

He added, “If you're adopting the approach of going to cloud for a second site it makes sense to get something resilient. With this story – I think there's a good oppotunity for us in this region.”

Pure Storage separately appointed Matthew Oostveen as CTO for Asia Pacific & Japan. Based out of Singapore, Oostveen joins Pure Storage with deep experience in working closely with customers in the region across a range of technologies. Prior to joining Pure, he had CTO roles with Dell EMC and VCE and also worked with IDC, Microsoft and IBM.

Details:

 ObjectEngine//A will be generally available in March, and CloudDirect software to enable F2F2C is to be released in May. ObjectEngine//Cloud. optimised for AWS, will roll out in 2H19.