Riverbed Whitewater With New Data Protection Options in Public Cloud

Riverbed Technology, Inc.  announced an expansion of the ecosystem for the Whitewater family of cloud storage gateway solutions for data protection, giving organizations choice and flexibility when replacing tape storage with a solution that off-sites data to cloud storage environments.

Riverbed has grown the number of cloud storage, backup software, and critical database protection solutions supported by Whitewater to more than 15, tripling the size of the ecosystem in the last six months.

Added to the Whitewater gateway ecosystem are cloud storage solutions Windows Azure, Rackspace Cloud Files and OpenStack Object Storage (Swift); backup software CommVault Simpana for Backup and Recovery, HP Data Protector and Veeam Backup & Replication; as well as critical database protection solutions Microsoft SQL Server backup and restore and Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN).

"Organizations are struggling to develop effective data protection strategies, primarily due to rampant data growth and expanding global enterprises. Recently, cloud storage has emerged as the next logical step in the evolution of data protection that allows organizations to transfer the cost and management burden to a third party," said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "The pace of data growth is making it more challenging for organizations to meet backup windows. With this release, Riverbed is introducing new levels of support for third-party storage providers and backup solutions. This will make it even easier for organizations to benefit from the scalability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of cloud storage without requiring any changes to their existing backup processes and tools, enabling organizations to meet or exceed corporate service level agreements."

Bigger Global Footprint with More Cloud Providers

Riverbed continues to expand its ecosystem with the addition of cloud storage solutions Windows Azure, Rackspace Cloud Files and OpenStack Object Storage (Swift). These solution additions build on the existing support for Amazon S3, EMC Atmos-based cloud storage solutions and Nirvanix Cloud Delivery Network (CDN). By providing support for many cloud storage providers, Whitewater offers enterprises flexibility to choose the cloud storage solution that best meets their requirements for DR, data storage location, service level SLAs and cost.

Windows Azure:
Windows Azure is the cloud-based service foundation underlying its Azure Services Platform that offers low-level scalable storage. "Microsoft is working with Riverbed to help organizations take advantage of Microsoft’s cloud platform, Windows Azure," said Prashant Ketkar, director of product marketing, Windows Azure. "Customers turn to providers like Riverbed for their public cloud needs because they offer a customized approach to data protection and operational needs."

Rackspace Cloud Files:
Rackspace Cloud Files provides unlimited online storage for files and media. Customers can also utilize Akamai’s content delivery network (CDN) for faster delivery of content to users. "With Whitewater gateways, Rackspace customers can further integrate data protection functionality into their cloud-based IT infrastructure," said Ven Shanmugam, senior manager, strategy and corporate development at Rackspace. "The integration of Cloud Files with Whitewater gateways allows customers to take advantage of the cloud while addressing their data protection concerns."

OpenStack Object Storage (Swift):
OpenStack Object Storage is open source software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of standardized servers to store petabytes of accessible data.

Support for Backup Applications
that Account for 85% Market Share

Riverbed continues to expand the number of backup software solutions supported by Whitewater gateways. Existing solutions supported by Riverbed are CA ARCserve Backup, EMC NetWorker, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, Quest vRanger, Symantec’s NetBackup and Backup Exec. Joining the list of supported backup software are CommVault Simpana for Backup and Recovery, HP Data Protector and Veeam Backup & Replication. With these additions, Riverbed now supports vendor software solutions that, according to a Gartner report, account for 85 percent of the backup software market.

CommVault Simpana for Backup and Recovery:
Simpana 9 software is the foundation for modern data management and allows users to better manage information assets, recover and search data more quickly, and ultimately save money over loosely integrated, legacy solutions. "CommVault’s Simpana software extends modern data protection into the cloud to help customers reduce costs and operational complexity," said Craig Halliwell, director of alliances at CommVault. "As organizations continue to struggle with data management, Simpana software and Riverbed Whitewater cloud storage gateways deliver a compelling solution for customers who want a fast, secure and efficient method for DR in the cloud to offload the management burden and reduce costs associated with data protection."

HP Data Protector:
HP Data Protector software simplifies application protection in virtual and physical environments through unified recovery and automation.

Veeam Backup & Replication:
Veeam Backup & Replication is built specifically for VMware vSphere to provide fast backup and recovery for ESXi virtual machines. "Veeam provides flexible and reliable backups of virtual machines running in VMware vSphere environments," said Rick Hoffman, vice president of channel and alliances at Veeam Software. "Customers can now deploy Riverbed Whitewater gateways and Veeam Backup and Replication with confidence to quickly backup and recover to and from the cloud. This joint effort enables customers to achieve high availability of their virtualized environments while reducing costs and enhancing their data protection."

New Support for Database Protection Solutions

Riverbed is also adding support for two database protection solutions: Microsoft SQL Server backup and restore, and Oracle RMAN.

Microsoft SQL Server backup and restore:
With Microsoft SQL Server Backup, customers now have a database backup technology to reduce disaster recovery time, so organizations can be up and running again in minutes instead of hours.

Oracle RMAN:
Recovery manager is a platform-independent utility for coordinating backup and restoration procedures across multiple servers.

Whitewater gateways deduplicate, compress and encrypt data to reduce storage costs in the cloud. Whitewater enables organizations to obtain the benefits of the public cloud’s economies of scale, flexibility, scalability and pay-per-use pricing, without changes to their existing infrastructure. This frees data protection staff from labor-intensive tape backup and tape infrastructure management with no disruption to their operations. In the event of a disaster, the secure cloud copy can be restored to any location and provides a DR solution without the need to purchase and maintain expensive hardware in remote locations.

Whitewater gateways connect directly to popular data protection software as well as the cloud service provider application programming interfaces (APIs), requiring no integration or complex configuration. Organizations can set up Whitewater and move data to the cloud in some cases in less than an hour, providing a return on their investment. The broad ecosystem for Whitewater enables organizations to transition between major cloud storage providers, should requirements change in the future. Customers that are taking advantage of Whitewater gateways include GeoEngineers, Psomas, SM Energy and Northland Services.

"Our data continues to grow by 30% every year, which made managing backup with aging disks a cause for concern from both a risk and management standpoint," said Frank Slaughter, network engineer at Northland Services, a provider of freight transport between Washington and Alaska and Hawaii. "Deploying Whitewater gateways with our existing CommVault backup software and the ability to connect directly into the Amazon S3 environment has provided us a fast, secure and cost-efficient method to seamlessly off-site data. Whitewater gateways enable us to be scalable, flexible and cost-efficient without having to shorten our retention periods as we are no longer constrained by capacity limits."

"By working closely with more than 15 leading solution providers that are now supported by Whitewater gateways, we’re giving customers the most comprehensive choices for their cloud-based data protection initiatives," said Ray Villeneuve, general manager of cloud storage at Riverbed. "With Whitewater gateways, customers now have flexibility that previously was not possible. This ensures organizations can enhance their data protection strategies with solutions that match their requirements while providing a clear and simple path for data protection in the cloud."

The version of the Whitewater gateway is expected to be available in Q4 2011.