StorONE and Seagate Introduces Backup Storage Target With Improved Ransomware Protection

StorONE, Inc. announced a solution with Seagate Technology Holdings plc that promises to extend the hybrid storage use case while lowering the cost of production, archive and backup storage.

This solution combines updated versions of the 2 companies’s hybrid storage solutions based on StorONE’s Enterprise Storage Platform software and Seagate’s next-gen Application Platform (AP), the Exos AP BV-1.

The Seagate Exos AP BV-1 is the 2^nd gen AMD EPYC server module. It supports its existing family of compatible system enclosures, including the Exos AP 2U12, Exos AP 2U24, and Exos AP 5U84, providing storage enclosures for 12 to 84 drives, suited to StorONE’s Enterprise Storage Platform.

“Seagate’s enterprise systems have seen 10 consecutive quarters of growth in channel sales due to the product innovation, quality, and value delivered to customers. Software solutions utilizing these systems are critical to enabling enterprises to deliver business value and solve important storage-related challenges such as ransomware protection,” according to Samantha Clarke, director, systems, Seagate. “We have worked with StorONE for several years and look forward to working with them to optimize performance and address more use cases through the next generation of Exos AP application platform.”

Ransomware resilient backup storage solution
A widespread use case for the 2 companies’s customers is as a backup storage target to elevate the customer’s ransomware resiliency while shrinking their threat exposure window.

The company’s S1:Backup with the Exos AP BV-1 provides enhanced ransomware protection for backup infrastructures:

• Flash-first backups for faster, more frequent data protection, improving RPO.

• Improved immutability of every backup job across any storage protocol.

• Performance backup software vendors need to host backup software metadata immutably.

• Sterile recovery target delivers production-class performance and features at backup storage prices.

The firm’s Enterprise Storage Platform with the Exos AP BV-1 is a backup storage solution with flash-first storage. All backups are first received on a flash tier to improve backup performance, enabling IT to increase protection frequency. Then the S1:Backup software uses a predictive tiering algorithm, moving old backup data to the HDD tier during less busy times, eliminating the concerns of forced migration when receiving a new backup job.

The S1:Backup solution can also move data to and from the HDD tier in record time, thanks to the firm’s engine, which can take advantage of the 2x bandwidth provided by the Exos AP BV-1, as compared with the previous gen product.

Backup data is also sequentially written to the HDD tier for the best utilization, and higher performing recalls. Finally, because the company’s software manages the entire IO path, it can continue optimizing and refining HDD performance as the technology advances.

Recoveries are automatically instantiated on the flash tier. Thanks to the power of the Exos AP, combined with the StorONE engine, the solution delivers production-class performance at backup storage prices. The Exos AP’s dual-controller architecture, combined with data protection capabilities, enables the solution to become standby storage or backup storage that can support production applications.

“StorONE is the first vendor in over a decade to rewrite and optimize the storage IO stack for modern storage innovations like Seagate’s Exos AP platform and high-capacity hard disk drives,” said Gal Naor, CEO and co-founder, StorONE. “This significant development and investment enables StorONE powered appliances to deliver better performance and data protection at a lower cost while consuming a smaller data center footprint.”

The firm’s Enterprise Storage Platform solutions using the Exos AP BV-1 are available from the 2 companies’ distributors.

Exos AP BV-1 configurations optimized for StorONE include:

• Exos AP 2U12 hybrid array configuration – with 19TB of flash and 126TB of HDD, for small data centers or remote offices.

• Exos AP 2U24 all-flash array – with 184TB of flash, for virtualized and database environments. It is unique among AFAs because it can expand using HDDs enclosures.

• Exos AP 5U84 hybrid array – with 107TB of flash and 1.2PB of HDD, a mainstream data center workhorse capable of using S1:Backup software to be a backup storage target or the Enterprise Storage Platform and meet a wide variety of data center use cases, including backup, archiving, NAS, virtualized and database environments.

To learn how these combined solutions can improve RPOs and make Veeam Backups, even more, ransomware resilient, the 2 companies will be at VeeamOn 2022, May 16–18, 2022 at the ARIA Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, NV.