ETI-NET – Your HPE partner whenever topic of backup comes up!

Let’s talk about backup. When it comes to tasks such as backing up our data, many times assumptions are made even as discussions take place in corridors and around the coffee pot. We do backup our data, don’t we? Where exactly do we keep those backups? How timely would any forced recovery happen to be? And of course, that all important question, what data are we backing-up? If only we could point to a backup key on our consoles, wouldn’t it make it a whole lot easier to explain?

Let’s also talk about the changing world around us. With all the presentations we see on Hybrid IT and the coverage given to Digital Transformation (DX) it’s as if we are being flooded with new methodologies, architectures, practices and yes, mandates. Nothing stands out more today than the cloud. Combining data storage with data processing accessed via the internet protocols, it’s made life very easy for some.

If you are starting a new business then all you need to do is call up one of the big cloud providers and you will be able to access every application imaginable. If you happen to be a mature business then there are some options worth exploring, none more so than leveraging the cloud experience on-prem via private cloud deployments. For many it’s revolutionary while for others, it’s a bit of a yawn.

Oracle has been in the news of late but one commentator on the CNBC network was quick to remind us that Oracle Co-founder, Larry Ellison, seemed to favor this explanation, telling his audience –

“I mean, what the hell is cloud computing?” Ellison said in a meeting with analysts in 2008. “I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud computing other than change the wording on some of our ads.”  

It’s no surprise then to read in a post to CNBC Tech, Oracle is a distant laggard in cloud infrastructure market even after TikTok deal that in the view of Gartner –

“Oracle remains a ‘niche player’ in the market, according to Gartner, well behind the leaders. Oracle’s market share sits at around 2%, based on data from Gartner, Synergy Research Group and Canalys, and ranks no higher than sixth globally.”

On the other hand, the NonStop community should be grateful to Oracle as it was the presence of tens of thousands of Oracle licenses across HPE globally that spurred the migration away from Oracle and onto NonStop SQL. Today, the compatibility is such that customer migrations to NonStop are being fueled by this ease of migration and as for the benefits, NonStop SQL runs 24 x 7 – something Oracle was never designed to accomplish.

It is against this backdrop of a world that is changing all around us that the NonStop community is being presented with many more options of what to target for backup, be that a disaster recovery site, a third-party offsite storage vendor, or even a cloud service provider. Price will also be a consideration but of late, it’s the cloud opportunity to “package” resources and IT staff together with an almost unlimited ability to provision more storage on the fly.

For ETI-NET, this was more than a call to view these changes as an opportunity as it was a recognition that some of the company’s biggest customers were already going down that path. Not prepared to simply view cloud services as the old rebadged as new, these ETI-NET customers realized the potential benefits that came with greater utilization of clouds. One such solution that represented a complementary fit for ETI-NET was the Quest QoreStor (QS) “Cloud-connected data storage, deduplication and replication software.”

It was at last year’s NonStop Technical Boot Camp (TBC) where the announcement was made of ETI-NET becoming an OEM partner of Quest for QS. At that time and seeing the potential to provide additional value to NonStop users, “ETI-NET would be leveraging the QS, product offering from Quest, where it is anticipated that our customers will be able to improve backup efficiency, reduced storage requirements and costs through content-aware, variable block deduplication, and replicate faster and safer to DR site for disaster recovery and access the cloud for data archiving.”

“Beta Testing BackBox (BB) / QS is well under way “and it’s looking very good based on the customer feedback received to date,” said ETI-NET COO, Sylvain Tétreault. “We can see that NonStop users will be able to readily archive data critical to the business within the cloud.” For now, testing is focused simply on the integration and the performance of  the BB storing to QS data storage. This will be followed shortly with additional testing as we capitalize on the deduplication capabilities afforded by QS before then testing our ability to archive in the cloud with QS. There is also the question of security where we are implementing two form factor authentication among other security features we believe necessary to meet the standards expected of solutions running on NonStop.”

As for the specifics about the testing under way Tétreault had high praise for the NonStop customer. “The customer is in the process of testing now: Selecting what they want to move from the QS (portion on NonStop?) to the cloud, QS will do it automatically and keep track of it in case you need to restore it.  The QoreStor license provides a 3:1 ratio between the cloud and the local storage increasing the storage capacity. For example if you have 100TB QS license, we can move 300TB to the cloud for a total of 400TB of compressed total capacity all with the same license.  This represents 8,000TB of backup data before any compression and dedupe.”

As for what will be covered at the upcoming TBC, we will announce our plans shortly. Should you have any questions as to what we will be discussing at TBC, then give us a call or simply email us – we would be happy to talk with you any time.

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

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