In recent years, data protection appliances have become increasingly popular. There are many reasons for this. In this article, I would like to explain the general advantages of data protection appliances.
Contents
1. what is a data protection appliance?
2. what are the advantages of appliances?
- Advantage #1: Best Price
- Advantage #2: No administration effort
- Advantage #3: Cost transparency
- Advantage #4: Security
- Advantage #5: Scalability
- Advantage #6: Virtual appliances
3. conclusion
What is a data protection appliance?
A data protection appliance is generally understood to be a solution offering that consists of software and hardware. This combination is sent to the customer already configured and can be put into operation directly. Depending on the solution, the appliance includes compute nodes and storage nodes. Under certain circumstances, the associated network or SAN is also included. This depends on the solution used and the size of the appliance.
For many solutions, a single server that handles all tasks is also sufficient. Appliances are also characterized by the fact that they can be easily expanded, either by extending existing appliances or by connecting several appliances in a network.
What are the advantages of appliances?
Best Price
Appliances are based on x86 hardware components that are optimally matched to the requirements. The hardware is specially selected for this purpose and thus offers sufficient resources at an optimal price. Since appliances are produced in large quantities, the manufacturer can also achieve better prices in purchasing.
The advantage of optimization and many similar solutions also plays out in the software. There is minimal installation in the operating system, and customizations and configurations can be fully automated. This reduces installation and configuration time, no settings are forgotten and all appliances work in the same way.
No administration effort
In addition, there is no administration for appliances needed. Updates are provided centrally by the manufacturer, installed automatically and are already tested. This means that updates can be rolled out with minimal downtime or, depending on the manufacturer, even without any updates or customer intervention at all. These updates bring not only security fixes, but also new features that are ready for immediate use.
Cost transparency
This combination ensures maximum cost transparency, as hardware, licenses and operating costs are already known prior to purchase. Modular expandability means that unforeseen growth or expansion of workloads can be easily integrated. To do this, existing appliances are expanded or new appliances are added to the network.
Security
On an appliance, only those functions of the OS are active that are required for the intended use. The number of additional packages is deliberately reduced and a hardened Linux derivative is predominantly used without a console login intended for the customer.
The administration is mainly realized via a web interface within the application. Updates of the appliance are also displayed and offered via this mechanism. An administration on OS level is not provided.
A local firewall prevents external access to the appliance: Only the ports necessary for the appliance are accessible from the customer network. When data is shared from the appliance (e.g. to create a cloud copy of the data), this is done via modern protocols that require transport encryption as a standard.
In addition, all appliances offer the ability to store data in encrypted form, and some appliances do not even allow this feature to be turned off.
Immutable storage support and worm functionalities complement the requirement for security and immutability of the data to be protected. A variety of options for creating copies - to a second appliance, to a private or public cloud, or to an S3-based storage system - increases data redundancy and thus resilience. Some appliances also offer the ability to use tape libraries to write an offline copy of the data.
Scalability
Whether a small "stand-alone" installation or a multi-location concept, data protection appliances are suitable for different use cases and offer a variety of solutions for different requirements.
Many vendors offer entry-level models with a few TB of storage (in the 5-20 TB range) for securing remote sites, or the appliances are also provided as virtual editions to protect smaller environments. Additional data copies are then created on larger models at headquarters or in national subsidiaries.
All appliances are managed via the central Web GUI, minimizing administration effort and enabling new sites to be secured very quickly with company-wide SLAs. It does not matter whether only one or several hundred appliances are managed.
Furthermore, depending on the manufacturer, client separation and multi-tenancy can also be implemented in the central administration. This means that individual areas can use an appliance separately or jointly.
Using a granular Role Based Access Model (RBAC), users only get the authorization and insight they actually need. Thus, the appliance supports self-service models and e.g. national subsidiaries via the central management interface and it enables simple data management processes.
Virtual appliances
Modern appliance concepts not only offer virtual appliance images for operation as local VM or container installation, but also integrate with the marketplaces of large cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud or IBM Cloud.
This allows customers to store additional copies of their data in the cloud or even protect workloads in the cloud with the same technologies used in a data center. In addition, these appliances are also managed through the central GUI, providing administrators with a common view of on-premise and multi-cloud installations.
This makes it possible to have common data governance even in complex environments. In this way, the transformation of local applications into cloud applications is also optimally supported and data is primarily secured and made available where it is created.
Conclusion
Data protection appliances are a modern solution for the increased backup requirements in companies. On the one hand, data is backed up where it is created and made available to users via simple web portals; on the other hand, the administration of the environment remains centralized and it is possible to react quickly to new requirements.
An appliance concept can mean a plus in security, availability of the data protection solution and a reduction of administration effort and costs at the same time.
