Catalogic Releasing ECX 2.1 Software-Defined Copy Data Management

Catalogic Software, Inc. announced the availability of ECX 2.1, the latest release of its product.

Just four months after the release of ECX 2.0, version 2.1 extends company’s market, delivering software-defined copy data management for all VMware environments, enabling deployment options, and extending the feature set to address key enterprise requirements.

ECX 2.1 builds on the architecture of version 2.0, delivering significant functional advancements that meet customer requirements, and expanding the IT environments that ECX supports. Most, ECX 2.1 delivers a deployment configuration option for customers- – the option of creating an ‘off-host’ copy data management (CDM) environment. Whereas the majority of ECX customers implement ‘in-place’ CDM, in which data copies are collocated in the production environment, the ‘off-host’ approach uses VMware VADP to non-disruptively copy VMs from the production storage environment into an ECX-supported storage system. Both deployment options deliver the same rich set of enterprise functionality, allowing customers to manage, orchestrate and analyze their copy data across their environment, including the cloud. Significantly, with the new off-host deployment approach, customers can use ECX 2.1 to provide intelligent CDM for all VMware environments.

“We were thrilled to learn about the new Copy Data Services for VMware function in ECX 2.1,” commented William Grainger, systems administrator, Alachua County Information Systems in Florida. “We have a large and growing VMware environment that utilizes a mixed storage infrastructure. ECX 2.1 will now allow us to consolidate a number of disjointed activities, and finally put in place a centralized system to manage the creation and use of copy data.“

ECX 2.1 includes the addition of support for NetApp’s Data ONTAP 7-mode systems. Support for NetApp CDOT systems, which have been certified with ECX V2.0, and ONTAP 7-Mode systems allows ECX to be deployed into any NetApp environment. These certifications come on the heels of the announced certification effort for the IBM storage portfolio, and help demonstrate the pace at which Catalogic is able to achieve new infrastructure certification.

“ECX 2.1 represents a significant milestone in the execution of our vision to have ECX become a ubiquitous software-only copy data management platform for the enterprise,” commented Ed Walsh, CEO. “With a simple deployment, an agentless architecture, and a ‘provider model’ that allows for rapid delivery of storage qualifications, we’ve built ECX the way the modern enterprise data center customer prefers to deploy and use a copy data management solution.“

“Increasing demand for access to copies of the production data sets for use cases such as recovery, analytics, testing, and application development is driving rapid growth in the Copy Data Management market, which represents $51 billion in total spending for 2015,” said Laura DuBois, lead analyst and VP, storage group, IDC. “With ECX, Catalogic has taken a compelling approach that allows customers to tap into their existing investments in data copy technologies, and achieve significant cost savings while delivering improvements in their overall operations.“

Key features:

• Extended ecosystem support
  In addition to Clustered Data ONTAP platform ECX 2.1 extends the robust intelligent copy data management platform to all VMware environments. ECX 2.1 also extends support to Data ONTAP 7-mode systems.

• Flexible deployment options: In-place copy data management and off-host copy data management
  ECX 2.1’s software-only architecture allows for flexibility in deployment approaches and now delivers the option of creating an ‘off-host’ CDM environment. With this approach, ECX uses VMware VADP to copy VMs from the production storage environment to an ECX-supported storage system.

• Docker deployment option
  ECX 2.1 extends deployment to either bare metal Linux or VMware hosts through Docker container technology. Docker-based deployment supports multiple host containers that distribute processing load and helps improve performance.

• ECX marketplace
  The ECX 2.1 release also introduces the ECX Marketplace. Users will now be able to acquire features as they become available. With Marketplace, users can find new tools, utilities, reports, and updates in a single pane of glass.

ECX 2.1 is available at prices starting at $5,000 per controller.