CommVault and Dell Pursue Partnership

The shift toward virtualized and cloud-enabled data centers promises efficiency as servers, storage, applications and networks are deployed, configured and managed as a single entity. This converged infrastructure model can offer agility and automation in responding to changing business needs. It also requires, however, an integrated data protection solution that can address server consolidation, high data density and collapsing backup windows, effectively and economically.

At the Dell Storage Forum 2011 Conference, CommVault Systems, Inc. and Dell Inc. have partnered to introduce such a solution, which encompasses CommVault Simpana software, Dell PowerEdge Blade servers and Dell EqualLogic storage to streamline and accelerate the protection and recovery of modern data centers with thousands of virtual machines.

CommVault and Dell have collaborated on a Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block, designed to provide fully integrated protection, recovery and retention of mission-critical data residing in virtual environments. The building block reference framework delivers a massively scalable solution for protecting and managing critical data in a VMware environment.

The turnkey reference solution combines Dell PowerEdge Blade Servers, Dell PowerConnect Network Infrastructure, Dell EqualLogic Storage and VMware vSphere 4.1 with CommVault’s Simpana 9 software. The result: all the components needed to build a scalable, reliable virtual data center, that starts small and scales in simple increments.

This joint effort between CommVault and Dell allows companies to add identical virtualization blocks by leveraging CommVault’s snapshot protection capabilities. With this newly combined solution from Dell and CommVault, customers can reap the benefits of virtualized, modern data centers including  integration, automation and scalability, while bypassing many of the performance problems and migration pitfalls associated with traditional data protection platforms.

Protect Thousands of Virtual Machines in Minutes

• The Converged Virtual Infrastructure Building Block reference architecture applies to Dell’s recently launched vStart Solutions. Dell’s vStart virtual infrastructure solutions are pre-tested and pre-configured data center building blocks that include servers, storage, networking and software optimized for VMware virtualization, including management plug-ins for VMware vCenter Server, enabling users to leverage existing tools and skills and make IT generalists more productive through simplification and automation.
• To increase automation and minimize the impact on production servers. Simpana software integrates with VMware vStorage APIs and EqualLogic’s PS API. In addition, the solution leverages CommVault’s integrated snapshot protection technology for policy-based, application-consistent snapshot creation, control and retention of files, databases and VMware data stores.
• For example, CommVault’s snapshot protection technology takes advantage of EqualLogic’s underlying storage infrastructure to create rapid, consistent snapshot copies, for expediting recovery while providing multiple recovery points per day to support more aggressive Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• According to performance benchmark tests conducted by CommVault and Dell, it takes 30 minutes to create persistent EqualLogic snapshot-based recovery copies of 500 virtual machines with a total of 15 TB datastore in a single building block.
• Additional building blocks can be added in simple increments to deliver rapid snapshot copies of 1,000 VMs (with 2 building blocks) or 2,000 VMs (with 4 building blocks) each in 30 minutes.

Michael McMahon, Vice President of Worldwide OEM Sales for CommVault, said: "By delivering all the building blocks needed to rapidly and reliably deploy a virtual data center, CommVault and Dell are enabling customers to shift more readily to modern, agile and automated environments while achieving unmatched data protection and performance."

Brett Roscoe, Executive Director of Enterprise Storage, Dell, said: "Dell’s collaboration with CommVault not only addresses the challenges rising out of limitations in legacy data centers but more importantly, offers organizations a clear roadmap for building virtualized and cloud-enabled data center strategies that are optimized to meet the unique challenges of virtualization while scaling easily to keep pace with changing business needs."