Nutanix Mine Hyperconverges Secondary Storage

Nutanix, Inc. announced Mine, an open solution that integrates secondary storage operations with its Enterprise Cloud Platform, delivering a complete platform for primary and secondary storage within the private cloud.

Through native integration with backup vendors Veeam Software, Inc., HYCU, Inc., Commvault Systems, Inc., Veritas Technologies LLC and Unitrends, Inc., customers will be able to manage their HCI environment and backup operations from a single management console, reducing the operational cost and complexity of standalone backup and recovery solutions.

Mine will streamline overall deployment, and simplify the full lifecycle of backup operations, including on-going management, scaling and troubleshooting – all while preserving the customer’s freedom to choose the right backup service for their particular infrastructure environment.

According to Gartner, Inc: “There are many challenges with current backup and recovery solutions deployed today. The top concerns are most often related to the cost, complexity and capability. These costs often continue to rise despite overall cost improvements in the IT industry, and many organizations continue to perceive backup as an expensive insurance policy.“¹

As companies modernize their datacenter with HCI to realize the simplicity, performance and scalability needed to run modern applications, their backup and data protection strategies have remained siloed from their core datacenter environment. With Mine, customers will be able to converge secondary storage operations into the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform to deliver backup services for all business applications. Integrated with Nutanix’s native HCI data fabric that provides tiering and advanced data reduction capabilities, Mine will enable enterprises to choose the best backup software for their organization, optimized for their HCI environment; reducing the time and expense of configuring standalone secondary storage solutions.

“Backup and recovery strategies are often regarded as a painful necessity for most businesses because of their complexity and lack of integration into the overall IT infrastructure. Even more modern solutions, which tout the same customer-centric principles of hyperconverged infrastructure, only address the challenges of the secondary storage environment,” said Phil Goodwin, research director, cloud data management for protection, IDC Corp. “With more applications and use cases converging on a single platform within the private cloud, integrating secondary storage tightly with primary datacenter operations introduces even more flexibility and ease-of-use for customers.“

“As companies modernize their datacenter, they look to new solutions which make it easy to run business critical applications, eliminating silos and reducing complexity in their private cloud environment so IT can serve as the foundation of business success,” said Carey Stanton, VP of global alliances, Veeam. “By integrating our software so closely with Nutanix through Mine, we’re delivering our joint customers a full platform for their primary and secondary storage needs, dramatically reducing the complexity of running and protecting applications.“

Embracing an open platform strategy, Mine will integrate with backup solutions from Veeam, HYCU, Commvault, Veritas and Unitrends. Through integration with HCI data fabric and Prism management console.

Mine will provide:

• A reduction in the complexity of separate systems to backup and recover business data, so secondary storage can be managed as easily as primary storage
• The simplification of the full lifecycle of backup operations, including initial sizing and procurement, streamlined installation, and easy provisioning of the full solution, and the ability to scale-out both primary and secondary storage to accommodate business growth

“The hyperconverged market’s rapid growth is largely attributable to its promise of modernizing infrastructure and reducing complexity by eliminating silos within the datacenter. But even as customers embraced HCI, the secondary storage silo persisted,” said Sunil Potti, chief product and development officer, Nutanix. “With Nutanix Mine, customers will get all the benefits of collapsing this silo into a single platform – reduced management complexity, simplified operations and reduced TCO – without the requirement that they forgo the backup solution best suited for their business needs.“

Mine with Veeam, sold by Nutanix, and Mine with HYCU are expected to be available in 2H19. Mine with Commvault, Veritas and Unitrends is expected to be available in a future release.

“Our customers use our technology to protect their most critical applications, but have felt the pain points of having their backup operate in a silo, separate from the rest of their datacenter,” said Brian Brockway, global CTO and VP, Commvault. “With Nutanix Mine, those customers will be able to integrate their Commvault backup deployments into the same platform as their primary storage environment and under the same management plane, eliminating the complexity of siloed operations.“

“Nutanix and Veritas help enterprise customers abstract the complexity of managing infrastructure and data for on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments,” said Cameron Bahar, Veritas Technologies CTO. “Our customers can leverage Veritas’ enterprise data services platform to manage unforeseen business risks and protect their data while benefiting from tight integrations with the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform, giving them a unified view of their datacenter operations.“

“It is critical for our customers to make sure that they are striking a balance between a reliable data protection solution that also simplifies IT processes, without sacrificing the solutions that work for their business,” said Joseph Noonan, VP of products and marketing, Unitrends. “Through Nutanix Mine, our customers will benefit from a solution which allows them to combine two things they love in their datacenter – the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform and Unitrends Backup Software – so they can manage their primary and secondary storage from within a single platform. It gives them the choice to pick the solution that best fits for their environment while at the same time simplifying their broader IT operations.“

¹ Gartner, Report Highlight for Market Trends: Expand Your Software-Defined Storage Market by Leveraging Backup and Archiving, by Santanu Patro, July 2018, ID G00367503