Unitrends Recovery-943: The Soul of a New Backup Appliance (Part 6)

Unitrends recently introduced the Unitrends Recovery-943. This appliance is the next generation flagship of the Unitrends Recovery-series of backup appliances. We began this series of blog posts by discussing why backup appliances are experiencing such rapid demand and adoption, and continued the discussion by addressing the challenges facing enterprise-class data protection backup appliance vendors. The most recent blog post explored the Recovery-943 architecture and the next few posts will address the specific responses that the designers of the Recovery-943 had to each of the challenges discussed in this post.

IMPLEMENTATION

Over the next few blog posts, we’ll respond to each of the challenges raised earlier with the specific implementation information for the Recovery-943. In other words, we’ll tell you how our designers and engineers specifically responded to each of these challenges to build our flagship data protection device.

Integration: Vertical and Horizontal

Vertical integration is the integration of the hardware, software, and support services; horizontal integration refers to the data protection functionality available on the appliance. Both of these concepts in terms of their implementation on all Recovery-series appliances are explored in the subsections that follow.

• Vertical Integration: Platform/Software/Service Stack
• The Recovery-943 continues the tradition of all Unitrends Recovery series appliances with respect to a strongly interconnected stack consisting of the
• Hardware platform consisting of an integrated server, networking, and storage complex;
• Software platform consisting of our RecoveryOS™ Linux CentOS-based operating system and Unitrends Simply Scalable™ backup, archiving, instant recovery, and disaster recovery software;
• Support platform consisting of our proactive monitoring coupled with our world-class support organization with a 99% NPS (Net Promoter Score) customer satisfaction rating.

Horizontal Integration: Backup, Archiving, Instant Recovery, and Disaster Recovery

Horizontal integration for the Recovery-943 is achieved through the use of our all-in-one integrated Simply Scalable™ backup, archiving, instant recovery, and disaster recovery software. This is depicted in the figure that follows.

Horizontal integration can easily be limited by restrictive licensing that treats each component as a separately licensed component. Unitrends offers its No Limits™ licensing in order to bring the full value of our horizontal integration to our customers.

Time to Value: Shrink-Wrapped Enterprise-Class Data Protection

In order to minimize TtV on the Recovery-943 as well as all of its Recovery-series appliances, Unitrends created a first in the data protection industry – shrink-wrapped enterprise-class data protection. Enterprise-class data protection has tremendous advantages in terms of flexibility and adaptability with respect to the IT infrastructure that it protects. In addition, enterprise-class data protection caters to the power user – thus delivering the maximum capability in the fewest
number of clicks (this is also termed click minimization.)

But there is a downside to enterprise-class data protection – the wide number of choices available with enterprise-class data protection typically means a steep learning curve for users when they first begin using the system. This means more limited data protection systems – such as those offering limited heterogeneity, or offering only GOS-level protection, or offering only HOS-level protection – can be easier to use initially before the user gains experience and begins chafing against the
restrictions of these types of systems.

In order to solve this, Unitrends created data protection software that is adaptive to both the environment and to the expertise of the user. A simple setup system enables the backup appliance to be configured within minutes after it is racked. Resisting the tyranny of “either/or” types of choices, we instead created “and” choices. As an example, Unitrends offers both simple single server backup and multiple servers per job backup which are context sensitive with respect to how the user chooses to navigate her or his IT infrastructure.

All of this enables Unitrends to achieve best-in-industry TtV while simultaneously addressing the needs of not only intermediate but advanced power users.

What other design challenges would you like us to explore?Let us know so I can address them in the next post.