ETI-Net benefits from early customer dialogues; support for QoreStor headed for production

Reaching for the sky! As an expression it is probably one that we have all used in our professional lives. But seriously, setting our goals as high as we can even as we try to achieve something really difficult has all the hallmarks of thinking there are no limits to what we can do. And yet, today, it’s not so much a case of reaching for the sky as it is about reaching for the clouds.

CIO digital publication, CIO.COM, posted on June 14, 2021, the article, Cloud or bust: IT leaders go all in on cloud computing. The way CIO contributor Mary K. Pratt sees things, “CIOs have been moving to the cloud for more than a decade, seeing it as instrumental to success in the digital era. And a growing number of CIOs are reaching a pinnacle of their cloud computing journeys by having most or all of IT running in the cloud.”

For some time, the need to support clouds has touched IT so deeply that even the most traditional NonStop users has begun to be impacted. Not so much as turning to the cloud to run NonStop or even to turn to virtual NonStop in order to facilitate deployment of a private cloud, but rather to become engaged in the cloud experience. Perhaps it is concerns about privacy and even security that is leading to some hesitation on the part of NonStop IT managers but even so, the first signs of NonStop to cloud integration is beginning to emerge.

“But reaching that level of adoption isn’t the real prize, even if it’s the target some CIOs are aiming to hit,” wrote CIO contributor Pratt. “Experts and veteran IT leaders say the real objective is knowing how to use the cloud to its fullest extent in supporting digital innovations that will propel the organization into the future.” Even as clouds are ideal for supporting often used common processes it’s also a great place to store data where the sky is the limit.

Perhaps there is not quite the recognition of data back up as being innovative but nevertheless, when you consider the early adoption of clouds by IT management, more often than not it is cost based – reducing cost being an ever present concern of all in IT – and the need to back up business critical data to something other than a dedicated system has its advantages.  ETI-NET was early to recognize the potential cost savings that could be derived from exploiting the almost unlimited resources on offer from cloud services providers. Today, those early baby steps have led ETI-NET to provide support for the Quest product QoreStor.

QoreStor has been covered in numerous articles from ETI-NET since the first gem of an idea to support QoreStor took hold. BackBox/QoreStor provides data deduplication, replication, encryption and cloud archiving.  It opens the door the NonStop customer that would like to take advantage of the cloud.  ETI-NET focused on making it easy to migrate to QoreStor and it has paid dividends. When it comes to migrating to QoreStor, if you missed reading last month’s article in NonStop Insider you will have missed the explanation provided by ETI-NET COO, Sylvain Tétreault:

“The BackBox/QoreStor allows the customer to keep a hybrid environment, one dedupe with QoreStor and one non-dedupe with regular storage.  So the beauty is that the customer can, on the same BackBox VTC, create a datastore without dedupe and move its current tapes there and create a second datastore with QoreStor for all the new backup.

“Once the legacy backup in the first datastore expires, then the disk spaces can be moved to the second datastore for QoreStor to use it. So no migration is needed. The BackBox allows the customer to keep its legacy tapes from the previous VTC version and use the new QoreStor feature for all new backups.”  

“If no encryption was used, the migration is even easier.  The customer just needs to click and drag the existing tape backup into the datastore with QoreStor and the dedupe is done automatically.”

Discussing the benefits that come with deploying BackBox/QoreStor makes for good headlines, but eventually interest will always turn to who is going to break the ice, reach for the clouds, and embrace BackBox/QoreStor. This month, such an event has taken place with the very first customer order EIT-NET has just received. “It’s always a trying time when it comes to introducing a new product. Did we make the right assumptions? Did we deliver enough functionality in the first release? Does it truly benefit the NonStop customer? These thoughts and several others were the subject of numerous conversations,” said Tétreault.

“This customer participated in our Beta program and the questions above were all answered and contributed to this first sale of BackBox/QoreStor . But now, with the successful closing of the deal behind us and the order in hand, we are putting the service together for this customer,” Tétreault was only too keen to acknowledge. “ETI-NET is most likely to ship BackBox/QoreStor as ‘production ready’ around early-August. Watch for more news to follow shortly.”

As we just recently explained to the NonStop community:

Embracing new features like QoreStor can be pursued with similar levels of transparency and for systems that run 24 x 7 x 365, this is of paramount importance. Rest assured, working so closely as we do with NonStop development, where HPE resells ETI-NET products including BB, we are just as non-stop as the NonStop systems themselves.    

It’s important to note that with BackBox/QoreStor, ETI-NET is indeed opening the door to better ways of exploiting clouds that are beneficial to all NonStop users. Should you now have any questions about your need to reach for the clouds and you are considering capitalizing on cloud support for data and would like to know how best BackBox/QoreStor  could work for you, then don’t hesitate giving us a call or sending us an email.

Said Hini
said.hini@etinet.com (514) 663-0501
http://etinet.com