Datrium DVX 4.0 Software Including Cloud DVX SaaS-Based VM Backup and Recovery

Datrium, Inc. announced the shipment of DVX 4.0 software, the third major software release in less than a year.

This software release extends DVX tier 1 capabilities with support for Oracle RAC, greater VM fault tolerance, and improved data and administrative security. DVX 4.0 also includes Cloud DVX, a SaaS-based VM backup and recovery service, a free one year trial cloud backup subscription, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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The company’s DVX converges tier 1 hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) with scale-out backup and cloud DR. DVX enables up to ten times more VMs to run at lower latency than HCI, enables ten times faster VM restores than scale-out backup products, and with Cloud DVX, offers backup to cloud with up to ten times lower AWS fees than many cloud backup providers, all in the same simple converged system.

Cloud backup and free trial subscription
First introduced at AWS re:Invent, Cloud DVX is a cloud-native instance of the firm’s DVX that offers backup and recovery services for VMs running in DVX on-premises. Beyond as-a-service simplicity, the new service offering delivers cloud deduplication and incremental backups to minimize the cost of capacity and network bandwidth. Granular, dedupe-aware recovery provides accelerated RTO versus other AWS S3-based offerings. Customers can also eliminate on-premises infrastructure sprawl by connecting directly to cloud from on-premises DVX without additional hardware or software products.

The company also announced that all new systems running DVX 4.0 or later now include a complimentary one-year subscription to Cloud DVX. The free subscription includes up to 1TB of AWS capacity, which can protect up to 6TB of effective data in the cloud after the firm’s cloud-based data reduction. This program will be available through September 30, 2018 and does not cover the AWS subscription fees.

Extending Tier 1 data security and resilience
With the release of DVX 4.0 software, the company provides support for Oracle RAC on a 4-node vSphere cluster. With a software-defined yet stateless host set-up, DVX performance is ast with 100% local flash reads, and can support losing three out of four nodes without impacting data availability.

Peer Cache Mode is new with DVX 4.0 software and provides VM fault tolerance. In the case of the failure of all host SSD drives or the host’s RAID controller, all VMs on the affected host stay online. Peer Cache allows VMs on the affected host to use the SSDs on a neighboring host until the SSD or RAID controller failure can be addressed.

DVX 4.0 software brings FIPS 140-2 validated mode to the company’s Blanket Encryption. The data security software also debuts the ability for organizations to set two decryption passphrases. With a single decryption passphrase, if an administrator with sole knowledge of it forgets the passphrase or leaves the organization unexpectedly, recovery can be a challenge. By providing the ability to set two passphrases, the chances of losing access to data due to unavailability of the passphrase is minimized.

DVX 4.0 software also provides built-in auditing. HIPAA, PCI, SOX all have compliance controls which must be audited. With the V4.0 software, administrators can continuously log any actions taken across the system and view events within the DVX console. This auditing capability will track user actions whether or not they have authenticated through vCenter, a standalone user interface, API or CLI. The auditing also monitors API actions, simplifying security analysis, change tracking, troubleshooting and auditing.

The DVX has been written and architected with an API-first approach. DVX 4.0 software provides a Python-based Software Development Kit (SDK) leveraging a RESTful API framework for customers to automate key functions of their DVX system such as VM Get, snapshot, clone and replication.

“Security is not optional for processing electronic payments, and we take a layered approach,” says Gilbert Martin, VPay director, infrastructure. “Datrium Blanket Encryption secures our data end-to- end with no performance degradation, so we can meet SLA’s, performance and security expectations at the same time.“

Money back guarantee
Starting with DVX 4.0 software, the company offers a customer satisfaction guarantee with every DVX system shipped. The guarantee provides for a refund if a customer is unhappy for any reason within 30 days after receiving the product. For years, customers have had to accept certain limitations and inflexibility with HCI. In contrast, the firm’s customers are passionate about the benefits the company delivers, including use of their existing server infrastructure, independ, scalability of performance and capacity resources, running and protecting VM data on a common platform, and access to cloud for DR. This guarantee reflects the company’s confidence in the customer’s experience with DVX and open convergence.

DVX 4.0 Software is available for U.S. list pricing of $12,000 per server/compute node. Upgrades to DVX 4.0 are available at no charge for customers with a valid support agreement.

Cloud DVX recovery service is available, and requires DVX Software 4.0 U.S. list pricing for the service is $6,000 per 5TB (up to 30TB effective) of S3 capacity per year.

Resources:
DVX 4.0 blog: HCI & SAN Customers? Look! Open Convergence (OCI) Just Got Even Better
Oracle RAC blog: Extending Open Convergence to Oracle RAC
Cloud datasheet: Datrium Cloud DVX
Security datasheet: Datrium Blanket Encryption