EVault is a fifteen-year-old company with an extensive range of products, from backup software to complete backup solutions for on-site and cloud-based implementations. Several years ago, the company came out with a line of backup appliances that leveraged the company’s popular EVault backup software. Based on the success of these backup solutions, the company recently released two new appliance products designed to expand their offerings to smaller and larger companies. One is a comprehensive appliance solution for local backups and the other is a hybrid-cloud backup solution.
Turnkey Local Backup
The PnP (Plug-n-Protect) appliances are all-in-one, turn-key backup solutions that include the backup software, server and disk backup storage in scalable capacities from 1TB up to 38TB per system. The EVault Software features adaptive compression, bandwidth throttling, plus source-and target-side deduplication. Each appliance includes unlimited EVault client agents and supports all major platforms including Windows, Linux, VMware, Solaris, AIX and IBM i-Series. Application support includes Exchange, SQL Server, MS Cluster Services and Oracle.
Also included are EVault System Restore (ESR), a bare metal restore capability, and EVault Replication, which allows replication to another PnP system or to EVault’s cloud. PnP appliances are designed to provide a comprehensive backup solution in a single box, from a single vendor that can accommodate a small to mid-market company’s backup requirements.
Hybrid-cloud Backup
EVault Express Recovery Appliance (ERA) is EVault’s hybrid cloud solution. It provides an on-site server and disk capacity to store backups locally and will automatically transfer backups to EVault’s cloud. Offered in capacities from 500GB to 10TB (usable), the ERA is designed to hold a local cache of the last 7 days of a company’s backups on-site, providing fast recovery for the data most likely to be accessed during a restore.
Like the PnP products, the Express Recovery Appliances run the EVault Software backup application; which supports all major compute platforms and includes unlimited client agents. And since data will be sent to the cloud, the ERA encrypts backup data and uses delta block-level processing and bandwidth throttling to minimize network impact.
Business-grade Backup
In the cloud backup space many vendors rely on consumer-grade components to keep product costs down, a decision that can impact system reliability and data integrity. In comparison, both of these EVault appliances are built with the redundancy and enterprise-grade hardware needed to assure 24 x 24 x forever operation. EVault also offers a simplified capacity-based pricing model with unlimited client-side agents provided at no charge.
Storage Swiss Take
The backup appliance is arguably the best format for small to mid-sized business backups. It’s easy to implement and run and can provide a company with a real business-grade backup hardware and software solution. Appliances also support a hybrid-cloud configuration, the best way to implement cloud-based backup as well. With these two appliance lines, EVault has solid offerings in that space. But as a successful division of a very large company, (EVault is owned by Seagate), EVault brings one more thing to the table. They don’t present the risk of potential failure that many start up companies do; a fact brought to the forefront with the recent bankruptcy of Nirvanix.
EVault is not a client of Storage Switzerland
Eric is an Analyst with Storage Switzerland and has over 25 years experience in high-technology industries. He’s held technical, management and marketing positions in the computer storage, instrumentation, digital imaging and test equipment fields. He has spent the past 15 years in the data storage field, with storage hardware manufacturers and as a national storage integrator, designing and implementing open systems storage solutions for companies in the Western United States. Eric earned degrees in electrical/computer engineering from the University of Colorado and marketing from California State University, Humboldt. He and his wife live in Colorado and have twins in college.
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