NEC With HYDRAstor Universal De-Duped Transfer

NEC Corporation of America (NEC) announced enhancements to its HYDRAstor scale-out grid storage platform that reduce bandwidth requirements for general applications data transfer, help facilitate remote backups, and automate and speed up full backups.

HYDRAstor HS6-4000A

The key feature of the HYDRAstor 4.4 release is Universal Deduped Transfer, which increases the maximum performance of HYDRAstor for general applications running on Linux. An additional significant benefit of Universal Deduped Transfer is that it does not require any application-specific integration, so it can deliver immediate benefits to many applications as soon as it is deployed via a standard file system interface. With Universal Deduped Transfer, HYDRAstor delivers up to 40TB/hr per hybrid Node, and up to 4PB/hr (>1TB/s) per system for general applications, matching the performance previously only available for specific applications. By comparison, the maximum system performance is about 20x higher than the next closest competitor in the Purpose-Built Backup Appliance (PBBA) market. The solution’s distributed architecture accommodates low end requirements and scales seamlessly to handle and secure the largest data needs.

Click to enlarge

The Universal Deduped Transfer feature builds on top of Universal Express I/O, which is HYDRAstor lightweight transfer protocol. Customer can choose to deploy either just Universal Express I/O for highly efficient data transfer that also includes in-flight compression and encryption options, or can deploy it together with the Universal Deduped Transfer to also leverage the additional reduction in bandwidth requirements and higher performance. Universal Deduped Transfer maximizes backup performance and reduces network bandwidth consumption, easing massive data transfer by pre-processing data streams on the media server and taking deduplication to a new level by breaking through present interface limitations and making it available across a set of applications. This capability is especially important for remote backups, enabling direct high-speed full backup from remote installations to the data center at a lower cost without requiring a separate system in each location.

Click to enlarge

Scott Sinclair, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. noted: “With the deduplication intelligence on the application server, HYDRAstor’s new Universal Deduped Transfer capability speeds up performance by eliminating the need to write the data in the first place. While this is an obvious fit for backup environments, the resulting boost in performance combined with HYDRAstor’s massive scalability has the potential to open up a myriad of other opportunities.“

Click to enlarge

The HYDRAstor 4.4 release introduces a OST Accelerator support for Veritas NetBackup, automating and speeding up the backup process. Accelerator minimizes the backup window by offloading synthetic full backup processing from the media server to HYDRAstor and automating the synthesis of the next full backup as soon as the new incremental backup is received. Accelerator enables the user to eliminate weekly full backup from the job schedule and maintain an up-to-date full backup image with only daily incremental backups, while improving the efficiency of the backup process by reducing backup server workload and network traffic.

Release 4.4 include:

Universal deduped transfer

• Source-side deduplication on Linux application servers writing directly to HYDRAstor

• Reduced B/W requirements from application servers to HYDRAstor

• 4-6x faster than Universal Express I/O for duplicative data throughput

• Up to 40TB/hr maximum for HN

• Up to 25.2TB/hr per HN for up to 165 nodes

OST accelerator

• Fast, automated process to synthesize full backups and minimize the time for completing the backup within available time window

Enhanced efficiency statistics analysis

• Aggregated statistics reporting through CLI, including deduplication and compression statistics per backup job to assess efficiency of storing dataset on HYDRAstor

Click to enlarge

“The latest HYDRAstor 4.4 release introduces significant enhancements that continue to enhance speed, efficiency, and automation for our customers,” said Gideon Senderov, director, advanced storage products, NEC. “Universal Deduped Transfer raises the bar for deduplication solutions, by immediately extending HYDRAstor’s highest performance and efficient capabilities to many environments without requiring any additional integration. We will continue to extend the HYDRAstor solution to meet customer requirements and maintain the leadership position in performance, efficiency, and investment protection.“

Features of the HYDRAstor 4.4 release are available.

Universal Deduped Transfer can be licensed for HYDRAstor HS8, HS3, or HS6 customers, and it is available at no additional charge for customers who have already purchased OST Deduped Transfer. OST Accelerator can be licensed for HYDRAstor HS8 or HS3, and it is available at no additional charge for customers who have already purchased OST Optimized Synthetics. The enhanced statistics reporting and analysis is included with the base HYDRAstor software, including no charge for customers upgrading the HYDRAstor software under an active support contract.