Yesterday, after the launch of 3PAR StoreServ 7450, David Scott announced a second product: StoreOnce VSA.
What is it?
StoreOnce is a series of VTLs (virtual tape libraries) with all the features that you can expect from these kind of enterprise products: deduplication, remote replication, scalability and so on. The features that I love the most about them are the scale-out capabilities, federation and the ability to enable, through a software option, deduplication at the client side too (useful to optimize network traffic and speed up backups).
Use case
The StoreOnce VSA is the second VSA (virtual storage appliance) from HP and it comes after the success of StoreVirtual VSA (more than 170.000 downloads!). StoreOnce won’t be as successful as StoreVirtual but it has some potential!
In fact, this appliance allows to build a StoreOnce VTL in software, using CPU power and storage space provided by the virtual infrastructure. It is compatible with Microsoft and VMware hypervisors and it’s cheap! It’s the perfect fit for remote and small offices but also for testing the product and using it in particular conditions.
Bottom line
Obviously it can’t be considered your primary backup option (mixing data and backups on the same virtual infrastructure could be very dangerous) but, as I wrote above, this virtual appliance has all the features of the physical models and it can easily replicate backups remotely to a central office/repository: it could be a very cheap option to make the most of your virtual infrastructure using all available resources, which are usually wasted during spare time. At the same time, especially on remote unattended infrastructures it is a way to avoid the installation and subsequent maintenance of unnecessary hardware!
Disclaimer: I was invited to this meeting by HP and they paid for travel and accommodation, I have not been compensated for my time and am not obliged to blog. Furthermore, the content is not reviewed, approved or published by any other person than the Juku team.
