All-in-One Backup and Business Continuity Solution

A backup appliance is a physical device that includes preinstalled backup software, storage capacity, preconfigured and hardware components integrated into the same device. Backup appliances may or may not contain dedupe disks, cloud connectivity or other distinguishing features; however, the key to this product category is having the backup management engine and a considerable storage within the consolidated device.

Purpose-built backup appliances (PBBAs) are disk-based storage solutions engineered for storing backed-up data. PBBAs can be either target systems for data that comes from a backup application, or integrated systems with the backup software integrated into the hardware. Many target devices do not have their own backup software and are designed to be used in conjunction with other third-party backup applications. However, in some cases, an appliance may serve as a backup system, a replication target or both. For example, when a Unitrends system is deployed, you can set the installation type to either local backup system, replication target or both per the needs of each environment.

PBBAs usually include deduplication, encryption, compression, redundant hardware components, and automated setup and maintenance. Since these appliances are designed with a specific focus on backup and recovery, providing enhanced protection against malware attacks, hardware failures, natural disasters and so on, most organizations use them for data protection and disaster recovery.

The following are advantages of using a PBBA:

• PBBA solutions offer customers a turnkey, cost-effective way to extend their investments in data protection hardware and software without changing existing processes.
• PBBAs can be customized to suit a specific backup requirement.
• PBBAs are plug-and-play storage devices, which means they are ready for immediate use. These devices are easy to set up and manage, with most of them seamlessly integrating with existing architecture.
• These devices include multiple redundant components, such as RAID disks, power supplies and network interface cards that help prevent data loss in the event of component failure.
• PBBAs are optimized for efficient backups, which means they are dedicated specifically to the backup and recovery use case, unlike a server and software that could have a variety of roles.
• Since these devices are designed to run only backup-related workloads, they minimally impact other servers or extract resources from other devices.
• Features like deduplication in backup appliances help to reduce storage costs by removing redundant copies of backed-up data.
• Data encryption at rest preserves data confidentiality, while role-based access control (RBAC) restricts access to the device, allowing only authorized personnel to obtain/retrieve data or perform certain functions.

Backup appliances typically work by connecting to devices/components on the local network. The preinstalled backup software uses a combination of agents (computer programs running on the production machines for reading, processing and sending data to the backup appliance) or integration with a virtual machine hypervisor to capture data from attached/configured devices. Backup data is stored on the appliance’s local storage media. That same data can be replicated to another target or restored from the backup appliance as required. Advanced backup appliance solutions will offer granularity when choosing to replicate or restore files and folders, disk or virtual disk volumes, or a full machine image.

Backup appliances are built to meet your organization’s backup and recovery needs, SLA requirements, and business continuity and disaster recovery efforts. These devices are powerful, enabling quick access to your data, adding reliability to your backup and recovery processes.

Backup appliances empower you to sustain your business’s operations by enabling quick restoration and recovery in case of disruptive incidents, such as cyberattacks, hardware failures, natural disasters and so on. Today, most organizations use backup appliances to protect mission-critical data and recover from disasters. Modern-day backup appliances come equipped with highly intelligent and efficient capabilities, such as snapshots, SLA policies, WAN-optimized replication and recovery testing, in order to automate many backup-related tasks — making data protection effortless.

Cybercriminals are now increasingly targeting your backups — attempting to disable them from occurring, encrypting them or deleting them completely. If subsequent attacks on your primary data are successful, you will not be able to recover, forcing you to pay the ransom.

Backup appliances can play a critical role in thwarting ransomware attacks by blocking physical connection to your backed-up data, encrypting data, creating immutable copies that threat actors cannot alter and verifying login credentials through access control methods to prevent insider attacks.

All backup appliances are built differently. Solution providers implement different approaches that make their products unique. It is critical that businesses are aware of these differences when evaluating a backup appliance. Here are a few criteria that you must look for in a backup appliance.

Ease of use: Look for a backup appliance that is easy to install, manage, use and scale — as easy as “power on, connect and go.” The right backup appliance comes preconfigured with hardware, software and networking. Hardware components and software should be optimized to work in tandem.

Regulatory compliance: Consider a backup appliance that enables automated regulatory compliance. Efficient backup appliances enable SLA policy automation that lets you define and schedule backups and archiving to meet recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO and RPO) as well as retention requirements.

Saves time: A reliable backup appliance should not only be able to make data protection simple but also help you save time. Unitrends backup appliances help IT administrators save more time on data backups. An intuitive, purpose-built management console lets you quickly and easily search, filter, manage and recover thousands of backups. This helps you save time to focus on other important strategic initiatives.

Saves money: A good backup appliance will help you save a considerable amount of money on data storage. For instance, Unitrends backup appliances come equipped with built-in adaptative deduplication that combines global and inline dedupe with compression for industry-leading storage efficiency, resulting in reduced storage costs and better retention.

Scalability: Look for a backup appliance that enables you to easily scale up, out or extend to the cloud to meet your business’s current and future needs. Unitrends’ Recovery Series backup appliances are built to scale with your business. Increase your protected capacity by swapping with a larger appliance. Scale out by adding backup appliances within a single site, or at remote office/branch office (ROBO) sites or extend to the cloud.

Robust data protection: Data loss and downtime are among the top challenges businesses face today. The right backup appliance should be able to protect your data from hardware/software issues and malware as well as enable safe recovery from clean backups. Predictive analytics in Unitrends’ backup appliances, proactively identifies and resolves threats to recovery before they even occur. Self-healing software automatically rectifies VSS errors and other software-related issues, and self-healing technology in appliance hardware reduces disk-drive-related downtime by up to 90%.