Red Hat Storage combined with Commvault Simpana

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As software-only solutions,

CommVault and Red Hat

Storage represent an ideal

technology combination that

lets organizations consolidate

the Media Agent onto the

storage tier for dramatic

performance and scalability.

Together with a superior data

management and protection

architecture, Supermicro

SuperStorage storage servers

provide efficient building

blocks for scale-out Red

Hat Storage solutions with

built-in data protection from

CommVault Simpana.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2 INTRODUCTION

2 COMMVAULT SIMPANA AND RED HAT STORAGE

Facilitating Data Management and Protection for the Modern Datacenter

CommVault Simpana—Protect, Manage, and Access Data

Red Hat Storage—Smaller and Smarter Software-Defined Storage

7 A SUPERIOR ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH

Performance Limitations of Traditional NAS for Backup and Archival

Consolidating the Storage Tier

9 CHOOSING STORAGE SERVER BUILDING BLOCKS

Supporting a Flexible Range of Storage Server Hardware

SuperMicro SuperStorage Storage Servers

Building Blocks for Scale-Out Storage with CommVault Data Protection

12 CONCLUSION

12 REFERENCES

TECHNOLOGY DETAIL

CONSOLIDATING THE STORAGE TIER FOR PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITYData Management and Protection with CommVault Simpana and Red Hat Storage

2redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability

“Of all of the backup vendors

in this Magic Quadrant,

CommVault has been the most

vocal and articulate about the

future of backup.”

Gartner - 2012 Magic Quadrant

for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

Software

INTRODUCTION

In a time of dramatic unstructured data growth and flat budgets, the need to scale data protection

solutions along with storage capacity has never been more apparent. The sheer amount of unstruc-

tured data that must be protected is enormous, and growing constantly. Complicating matters, IT

modernization efforts and the shift to cloud solutions have disrupted traditional data protection

models. In fact, the number and size of virtual machines is one of the key factors driving the need for

more scalable and cost effective underlying storage for data protection. Increased regulatory com-

pliance and trends such as multi-tenancy are likewise complicating data protection policies, making

flexible storage architectures essential. Simply buying more tier-1 storage is not an answer, and

many organizations are actively seeking alternative solutions.

Commvault Simpana combined with Red Hat Storage provides a compelling data protection solu-

tion that unifies storage management across data types, diverse storage infrastructure, and remote

locations—all based on open scale-out storage. Consistently listed in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for

Enterprise Backup/Recovery Software, CommVault Simpana lets organizations backup, restore, rep-

licate, archive, and recover from disasters, while also enabling essential searching and data analysis.

This innovative approach lets organizations build storage solutions tailored to their specific needs,

avoiding vendor lock-in and costly proprietary NAS solutions while riding technology price curves for

storage, processing, and memory.

Moreover, unique architectural synergies between Commvault Simpana and Red Hat Storage greatly

improve backup performance and throughput, dramatically shortening backup windows and provid-

ing other benefits, including:

• Converged compute and storage tiers, allowing the Simpana Media Agent to be consolidated into

the storage tier

• Dramatic performance improvements, with backup and restore speed up to twice as fast as tradi-

tional NAS solutions due to data locality

• Data reduction and up to a 90% reduction in backup time due to source-side deduplication

• Lower network traffic with up to a 75% traffic reduction when compared to deduplication

appliances

• Lower cost per terabyte (TB) with up to a 52% reduction in up-front storage costs and a 20%

reduction in operating costs

This paper describes the unique architectural combination of CommVault Simpana with Red Hat

Storage for software-defined scale-out storage. Components of the architecture are described

as well as a range of useful storage server building blocks based on storage server systems from

Supermicro.

COMMVAULT SIMPANA AND RED HAT STORAGE

Both CommVault Simpana and Red Hat Storage are software-only solutions, making them an ideal

technology match. By using software-defined scale-out storage as a platform for software-defined

data and information management, organizations gain the flexibility they need to build appropriate

and cost-effective storage solutions, without being restricted to the offerings of any one particular

storage vendor.


FACILITATING DATA MANAGEMENT AND PROTECTION FOR THE MODERN DATACENTER

Modern organizations need to do more with their data. They need to minimize and hit backup

windows, even as data grows. They need to be able to replicate, archive, search, analyze, and comply

with stringent regulatory requirements for data retention. Most importantly, beyond backing up their

data, organizations actually need to be able to retrieve their critical data without fail in case disaster

strikes. Modern data protection solutions must be ready to address a range of challenges with broad

functionality, including:

• Backup and recovery, archive, e-mail file, eDiscovery, and compliance

• Data reduction, deduplication, and compression

• Enterprise reporting

• Replication, management, and continuous data protection (CDP)

• Desktop and laptop backup

Legacy approaches have sought to deal with these challenges with a long list of point products, with

some vendors offering seemingly extensive portfolios. While piecemeal storage management solu-

tions and point products may have sufficed in the past, they are no longer appropriate for today’s

diverse physical and virtual environments, and the growing amounts of unstructured data. In fact,

many legacy storage management solutions only cause more complexity and cost, and can pose real

risk to the organization itself in case of a disaster.

Unfortunately, having multiple products and interfaces—even from the same vendor—can be more

costly and more difficult to support and use. At a deeper level, however, these complex non-inte-

grated approaches lack contextual and content insight due to restrictive and disconnected index-

ing and cataloging approaches. Most also lack rich metadata to link logical application context with

stored data copies. Because of these limitations, legacy point solutions typically can’t meet the next

generation of multi-tiered recovery service levels, making it difficult for IT management to adopt

modern data management models.

COMMVAULT SIMPANA—PROTECT, MANAGE, AND ACCESS DATA

CommVault Simpana addresses these issues and more with a highly integrated solution that is built

from a single common code base. This unique approach provides dramatic simplification along with

broad functionality that is difficult to match with multiple point products. Building these features

into an integrated platform also delivers a much more powerful experience for organizations deploy-

ing data protection solutions.

The solution is made simpler and more powerful still when CommVault Simpana is coupled with Red

Hat Storage. In typical enterprise architectures, data protection software resides on its own hard-

ware tier, particularly when dedicated deduplication appliances are deployed. While this approach

provides necessary functionality, it also creates latency, as data must travel over the network

between tiers. Because Red Hat Storage provides a Red Hat Enterprise Linux instance, however,

CommVault Simpana can run directly on the physical server running Red Hat Storage, consolidating

the CommVault Media Agent directly onto the storage tier, with benefits that include:

• Less hardware to buy, requiring approximately half the servers

• Dramatic improvements in throughput by eliminating a network tier

• Simpler scalability with a single hardware tier instead of two


A modern approach to backup and recovery requires deep application and hypervisor integra-

tion and intelligence, paired with the capability to manage heterogeneous storage array snapshots

for fast application-consistent recovery. Organizations need to be able to maximize efficiency

with deduplication, automation, fewer processes, tiering, and replication to any storage or loca-

tion. Solutions must likewise be resilient and secure, and posses the capability to deliver insights

through integrated reporting, allowing for continual improvement. Over time, all protected data

should become an asset rather than a management burden, by securely allowing self-service access

through a single searchable index for new uses. With a unified code base, CommVault Simpana soft-

ware delivers these capabilities through a single platform and console (Figure 1).

Data mangement• Backup and recovery• Snapshot integration• Deduplication• Virtual server protection• Archive• Data protection• Edge data protection• Storage tiering

Information management• Info governance• Regulatory & compliance• Meaning-based retention• Enterprise search• E-Discovery • Legal hold• Defensible deletion• Business decision making

Figure 1. With a unified code base, Commvault Simpana includes best-in-class modules for both data and information management.

CommVault Simpana can be deployed across locations, and at any scale—from a few terabytes to

multinational enterprises with petabytes of data to protect and manage. Organizations can protect

complex heterogeneous environments, physical servers, remote offices, and even information

on laptops and desktop systems with one solution. Organizations can also maximize efficiency by

deploying whatever storage best suits their needs within the CommVault ContentStore—optimiz-

ing for cost and access while supporting diverse media types that include disk arrays, tape, and the

cloud.

Some of the key technology innovations in Simpana software that can help organizations transform

and deliver modern data protection for their organization include:

• Simpana OnePass. Simpana OnePass converges backup, archive and reporting with a single scan

of the data to simplify administration, reducing time and resources by up to 50% and eliminating

complexity for file and e-mail data (Figure 2).


DOCX PDF PPTXXLSX XMLAVI DOCX PDF PPTXXLSX XMLAVI

File sytem & email File sytem & email

Bac

kup

Arc

hive

Rep

ort

Sou

rce

dedu

plic

atio

n

Reporting | Recovery | ArchiveRepository

Simpana Content Store

RepositoryRepository

• Scan• Collect• Transfer



Figure 2. CommVault Simpana OnePass converges backup, archive, and reporting with a single scan of data utilizing source deduplication.

• 4th generation deduplication. Building on a history of innovation in both source and target-based

deduplication, the fourth generation of deduplication in Simpana 10 allows organizations to scale

linearly from small, individual nodes up to extra large, multi-node deduplication databases by

introducing Parallel Deduplication. Organizations can multiply capacity, throughput, and resiliency

by consolidating multiple deduplication nodes under a single global reference pool.

• Simpana ContentStore. Simpana ContentStore functions as the back-end, hardware agnostic and

deduplicated virtual repository for all Simpana-managed information, consolidating protection

and archive data to eliminate inefficient data silos that waste resources. An intelligent index pro-

vides global awareness for data so users can quickly find what they need when they need it. Red

Hat Storage functions as a component of the Simpana ContentStore.

• Accelerate server virtualization. New application and virtualization compatibility provides

expanded snapshot integration, accelerating broad server virtualization by eliminating data pro-

tection roadblocks. Virtual machine backup operations are dramatically scaled with Virtual Server

Agent proxy teaming for failover, load balancing, and simplified management.

• Resilient Architecture. CommVault Simpana ensures that data can be protected and recov-

ered, even in the event of a hardware problem. The resilient architecture includes path flexibility

through GridStore and faster, more reliable data recovery with fewer points of failure thanks to

Simpana software’s distributed catalog structure.

RED HAT STORAGE—SMALLER AND SMARTER SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE

Red Hat Storage is a software-only open source solution that is designed to meet unstructured,

semi-structured, and big data storage requirements. At the heart of Red Hat Storage is GlusterFS,

an open source, massively scalable distributed file system that allows organizations to combine large

numbers of storage and compute resources into a high-performance, virtualized, and centrally-man-

aged storage pool (Figure 3). Red Hat Storage was designed to achieve several major goals.

• Elasticity. With Red Hat Storage, storage volumes are abstracted from the hardware and

managed independently. Volumes can grow or shrink by adding or removing systems from the

storage pool. Even as volumes change, data remains available with no application interruption.


• Petabyte scalability. Today’s organizations demand scalability from terabytes to multiple pet-

abytes. Red Hat Storage Server lets organizations start small and grow to support multi-pet-

abyte repositories as needed. Organizations that need very large amounts of storage can deploy

massive scale-out storage from the outset.

• High performance. Red Hat Storage provides fast file access by eliminating the typical centralized

metadata server. Files are spread evenly throughout the system, eliminating hot spots, I/O bottle-

necks, and high latency. Organizations can use commodity disk drives and 10 Gigabit Ethernet to

maximize performance.

• Reliability and high availability. Red Hat Storage provides automatic replication that helps ensure

high levels of data protection and resiliency. In addition to protecting from hardware failures, self-

healing capabilities restore data to the correct state following recovery.

• Industry standard compatibility. For any storage system to be useful, it must support a broad

range of file formats. Red Hat Storage provides native POSIX compatibility as well as support for

CIFS, NFS, and HTTP protocols. The software is readily supported by off-the-shelf storage man-

agement software.

• Unified global namespace. Red Hat Storage aggregates disk and memory resources into a single

common pool. This flexible approach simplifies management of the storage environment and elim-

inates data silos. Global namespaces may be grown and shrunk dynamically, with no interruption

to client acess.

• Rapid and random access. Unlike archival systems based on tape, Red Hat Storage offers fast

random access, and data can be both accessed and recovered rapidly.

Red Hat Storage volume

Figure 3. Red Hat Storage and the HP ProLiant SL4540 Gen8 server can be deployed to serve as a large file and object store.

From a technical perspective, Red Hat Storage provides distinct advantages over other technologies.

• Software-defined storage. Red Hat believes that storage is a software problem that cannot be

solved by locking organizations into a particular storage hardware vendor or a particular hard-

ware configuration. Instead, Red Hat Storage is designed to work with a wide variety of industry-

standard storage, networking, and compute server solutions.


• Open source. Red Hat believes that the best way to deliver functionality is by embracing the open

source model. As a result, Red Hat Storage users benefit from a worldwide community of thou-

sands of developers who are constantly testing the product in a wide range of environments and

workloads, providing continuous feedback, and providing unbiased feedback to other users.

• Complete storage operating system stack. Red Hat Storage delivers more than just a distributed

file system. The complete storage solution adds distributed memory management, I/O scheduling,

software RAID, self-healing, local N-way synchronous replication, and asynchronous long-distance

replication via Red Hat Geo-Replication.

• User space. Unlike traditional file systems, Red Hat Storage operates in user space, rather than

kernel space. This innovation makes installing and upgrading Red Hat Storage significantly easier,

and greatly simplifies development efforts since specialized kernel experience is not required.

• Modular, stackable architecture. Red Hat Storage is designed using a modular and stackable

architecture approach. Configuring Red Hat Storage for highly-specialized environments is a

simple matter of including or excluding particular modules.

• Data stored in native formats. With Red Hat Storage, data is stored on disk using native formats

(i.e. XFS) with various self-healing processes established for data. As a result, the system is

extremely resilient and files will always stay naturally readable, even without the Red Hat Storage

software. There is no proprietary or closed format used for storing file data.

• No metadata with the elastic hash algorithm. Unlike other storage systems with a distributed file

system, Red Hat Storage does not create, store, or use a separate index of metadata in any way.

Instead, Red Hat Storage places and locates files algorithmically. The performance, availability,

and stability advantages of not using metadata are significant, and in some cases produce dra-

matic improvements.

A SUPERIOR ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH

While traditional NAS devices serve their intended purpose well, their use as a backup tier presents

limitations in terms of performance and scalablity. The combination of CommVault Simpana and Red

Hat Storage overcomes these limitations through an architecture that consolidates the storage tier.

PERFORMANCE LIMITATIONS OF TRADITIONAL NAS FOR BACKUP AND ARCHIVAL

Traditional NAS devices are a common choice for tier-1 backup and recovery solutions, and they

are fully supported as a part of the CommVault Simpana ContentStore. NAS devices are typically

exposed as shares over a network connection using protocols such as the Network Files System

(NFS) or Common Internet File System (CIFS). In a CommVault Simpana deployment, client systems

access the Simpana Media Agent, and the system running the media agent in turn mounts the NAS

device over the network as shown in Figure 4. Unfortunately, running media scans for backup and

indexing across network connections is slow, and can causes excess network traffic. Placing the

Comvault Simpana Media Agent on the NAS device itself would be ideal, but the proprietary nature

of most NAS devices prohibits this approach.


Simpana Media Agent Simpana Media Agent

NFS/CIFS NFS/CIFS

NAS Device NAS Device

Client #1 Client #2

Figure 4. Network-based access to traditional NAS devices can cause undesirable latency and network traffic.

CONSOLIDATING THE STORAGE TIER

As a software-only storage solution, Red Hat Storage enables a different approach that provides

considerable flexibility and increased performance. Because Red Hat Storage runs on a standard

Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system instance across a wide range of standard hardware, it is

a simple matter to co-locate the Simpana Media Agent directly on the same servers running Red Hat

Storage (Figure 5). The result is higher performance data protection, higher throughput, and lower

impact to networks—with scale-out storage and data protection that grows with additional servers.

Red Hat Storage GlusterFS Volume

Backup jobs

Nativeprotocol

Simpana Media Agent

Simpana Media Agent

10 GigabitEthernet Shared network

A separate folder for each SimpanaMedia Agent

CommVault Simpana deduplication and Red Hat Storage

Fast local ext3 �lesystem for Simpana DDB

Client #1 Client #2

Fast local ext3 �lesystem for Simpana Index Cache

Simpana backup storage (XFS �lesystem as GlusterFS brick)

Figure 5. The combination of CommVault Simpana and Red Hat Storage allows the consolidation of the Simpana Media agent on to the storage tier, improving performance and simplifying storage infrastructure.


This innovative approach serves to dramatically simplify the storage tier, removing an entire layer of

networking and latency, and consolidating compute and storage resources onto fewer servers.

• The network is shared by both back-end communication between Red Hat Storage servers and

traffic between the clients and media agents

• The GlusterFS volume is configured in distribute-only mode with a single volume using separate

folders for each media agent.

• Simpana Media Agent instances perform deduplication, runing directly on the same physical

server as Red Hat Storage and accessing the GlusterFS volume using its native protocol.

• Direct-attached storage is divided between the Simpana Index Cache, the Simpana Media agent,

and Red Hat Storage, with local drives dedicated to each purpose.

With the Simpana Media Agent running on the same physical system as Red Hat Storage, media

scans are often able to act on local data rather than accessing all of the data over the network—

accelerating media scans, reducing latency, and avoiding unnecessary network traffic. The Simpana

Media Agent is able to interact directly with the Red Hat Storage GlusterFS volume utilizing its open

native protocol, further accelerating the process. In this manner, backups communicate directly

with Red Hat Storage volumes, dramatically increasing throughput and reducing backup windows.

In preliminary testing conducted by Red Hat and CommVault, rates of as much as 800 GB/hour

were observed. Moreover, the shared CPU, memory, and storage resources of consolidated storage

servers are more effectively utilized. Both storage and data protection can be scaled together in a

modular and greatly simplified manner, simply by adding additional consolidated storage servers.

CHOOSING STORAGE SERVER BUILDING BLOCKS

Organizations need to be able to deploy solutions quickly and easily, and tailored to their specific

needs. To facilitate rapid deployment, CommVault, Red Hat, and Supermicro have worked together

to describe a useful set of servers that can be deployed as as scale-out storage building blocks for a

consolidated storage and data protection solution.

SUPPORTING A FLEXIBLE RANGE OF STORAGE SERVER HARDWARE

One of the strengths of the software-only CommVault and Red Hat Storage approach is that it runs

across an extremely broad range of storage server hardware. Supporting a choice of industry-stan-

dard hardware lets organizations choose the CPU, memory, storage, and networking that best suits

their needs, focusing designs on cost, performance, capacity, or related factors. This approach also

lets organizations build small or large systems to meet specific storage needs, growing scale-out

storage and data protection together incrementally as dictated by storage demand.

SUPERMICRO SUPERSUPERSTORAGE STORAGE SERVERS

Supermicro provides enterprise-class server and storage solutions that simplify scale-out deploy-

ments for critical data. A number of Supermicro’s SuperStorage storage servers provide high-

capacity application-optimized platforms that are ideal for consolidated CommVault Simpana and

Red Hat Storage deployments. Supermicro’s extensive range of rackmount storage server solutions

offer high storage density while employing high-efficiency power to maximize performance-per-watt

savings to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).

Supermicro’s SuperStorage storage server product line includes 2 rack unit (RU), 3 RU, and

4 RU form factors, with each server capable of supporting up to seven PCI expansion slots and

Supermicro’s extensive line of dual-processor and uniprocessor motherboards. Offering up to 93%


power efficiency, redundant power and cooling, and hot-swappable drive bays and fans, Supermicro

storage servers are designed to meet the requirements of today’s sophisticated data centers and

high performance applications with new levels of storage performance, scalability, and reliability

(Figure 6).

SSG-6027R-E1R12N

SSG-2027R-E1R24N

SSG-6047R-E1R36N

Figure 6. Supermicro SuperStorage storage servers make ideal building blocks for deploying consolidated scale-out storage with Red Hat Storage and CommVault Simpana data protection.

More information on Supermicro SuperStorage storage servers can be found at

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/storage.cfm

BUILDING BLOCKS FOR SCALE-OUT STORAGE WITH COMMVAULT DATA PROTECTION

With a consolidated storage tier, designing scale-out storage building blocks to host both Red Hat

Storage and CommVault Simpana data protection is a relatively straightforward exercise. As dis-

cussed, multiple consolidated storage server building blocks can be combined to create a GlusterFS

volume of virtually any size, simultaneously scaling storage and capacity for backup and archive.

Critical components for CommVault Simpana performance include provisioning for the Index Cache

and the Simpana deduplication database (DDB). Storage for these elements needs to be sized cor-

rectly and located on fast storage for optimal backup performance. Table 1 provides guidelines for

sizing the Index Cache for small, medium, and large deployments

Table 1. Index Cache sizing guidelines.

Size Estimated Weekly Backup

(File and E-Mail Data)

Estimated Index

Cache

Recommended IOPS with Eight

Worker Threads

Small Up to 20 TB 200 GB 250

Medium 20-40 TB 500 GB 300

Large 40-60 TB 1 TB 400

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/storage.cfm


Based on these values, Table 2 provides example scale-out storage building blocks for co-hosting

Red Hat Storage and CommVault Simpana for a range of storage capacities. For the purposes of the

table, front-end size is the total size of the application data backed up in the first full backup. Back-

end size is the total data footprint on the disk library.

Table 2. Small, medium, and large configurations Supermicro SuperStorage storage servers.

Deployment

Size (Nodes)

Supermicro

System

Index

Cache

DDB Front-End

Size

Back-End

Size

Small

(2 servers)

SSG-6027R-E1R12N

(2 RU, 64 GB of RAM)

200 GB 400 GB Up to 20 TB Up to 30 TB

Medium

(2-4 servers)

SSG-2027R-E1R24N


500 GB 600 GB 20-30 TB 30-60 TB

Large

(2-4 servers)

SSG-6047R-E1R36N


1 TB 800 GB - 1 TB Up to 60 TB Up to 120 TB

For each of the building blocks detailed in the table, two or more servers are deployed to implement

the GlusterFS volume and distribute both the storage and backup loads. The available disk drives on

each storage server are allocated to the Simpana Index Cache, the Simpana deduplication database

(DDB), and Red Hat Storage GlusterFS volumes.

• For best performance, the CommVault Index Cache can be placed on the fast local disk of the

Supermicro server using a RAID 0 volume to span multiple drives if necessary.

• The deduplication database is configured to use a separate RAID 10 volume that is formatted as a

Linux ext3 filesystem.

• The GlusterFS “brick” is comprised of the remaining drives.The GlusterFS volume is configured in

a “distribute only” mode for performance, and the system utilizes Simpana’s deduplication and

replication capabilities for high performance.

Individual servers for the small, medium, and large building blocks would be configured as described

in Table 2. Boot support is provided via additional 2.5-inch SATA drives or SATA DOMs.

Table 2. Individual node configuration details for small, medium, and large building blocks.

Size Drive

Capacity

Index Cache

(RAID 0)

Simpana DDB

(RAID 10)

GlusterFS Data Volume(s)

(RAID 6)

Small Twelve

3.5-inch drives

One 300 GB 15K

RPM SAS drive

Four 300 GB

15K RPM SAS

drives

Seven-drive RAID 6 volume with

SAS/SATA drives of desired

capacity

Medium Twenty-four

2.5-inch drives

Two 300 GB 15K

RPM SAS Drives

(RAID 0 volume)

Six 300 GB 15K

RPM SAS drives

16 data drives configured in two

RAID 6 volumes with SAS/SATA

drives of desired capacity

Large Thirty-six

3.5-inch drives

Four 300 GB 15K

RPM SAS drives

(RAID 0 volume)

Eight 300 GB

15K RPM SAS

drives

24 data drives configured in two

RAID 6 volumes with SAS/SATA

drives of desired capacity

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To scale to larger configurations, additional consolidated storage nodes can easily be added to

any of the above configurations, resulting in a larger Red Hat Storage volume and additional

computation capacity. This modular approach facilitates scalability of both Red Hat Storage

as well as backup capacity and compute resources for both Red Hat Storage and CommVault

Simpana.

CONCLUSION

With the dramatic and ongoing growth of unstructured data, storage needs have entered a new

era and promise only to escalate into the future. Conventional and legacy piecemeal storage

solutions simply no longer represent a viable strategy, adding complexity in best-case scenarios,

and inviting disaster under the worst of circumstances. Red Hat Storage offers a real and com-

pelling solution that lets organizations deploy scale-out storage solutions on their own terms.

The combination of Comvault Simpana and Red Hat Storage provides a unique solution that lets

organizations replicate, archive, search, and analyze their data from anywhere, without concern

for the location of the data, while restoring data without fail.

Capitalizing on the software-only strengths of both Red Hat Storage and CommVault Simpana

and consolidating the Simpana Media Agent onto the storage tier provides a unique approach.

The resulting performance and scalability advantages help minimize backup windows and let

organizations build storage solutions that follow commodity cost curves for storage and server

hardware. In comparison to other solutions with a single point of access, Red Hat Storage offers

the unique ability to address more device-streams, since each and every storage node within

the Red Hat Storage cluster acts as a storage head. Decreased backup windows result since

back-end storage can handle the data input more efficiently. Using the CommVault and Red Hat

Storage solution, organizations can easily scale both storage and backup capacity simultane-

ously, providing reliable and performant storage and data protection that precisely fit the needs

and growth patterns of dynamic organizations.

REFERENCES

To learn more about CommVault Simpana 10, visit:

http://www.commvault.com/introducing-simpana-10

To learn more about Red Hat Storage, visit:

http://www.redhat.com/products/storage-server/

TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalablity

www.redhat.com/promo/liberate

https://engage.redhat.com/forms/storage-poc%3Fintcmp%3D70160000000bQx2AAE

http://www.commvault.com/introducing-simpana-10

http://www.redhat.com/products/storage-server/

Technology

Red Hat Storage combined with Commvault Simpana