Open source platforms are well established in the segment of virtualisation solutions. Projects such as Red Hat Virtualization, KVM, Proxmox or Oracle VM gain new supporters, whose needs are not always met by the proposals of leading manufacturers. With a view to alternative virtual machines, Polish VAD Veracomp has decided to distribute Storware vProtect backup software.
Storware is a Polish brand that has efficiently exploited a niche in the market of backup solutions and created a product dedicated to open source virtualisation. Availability of software protecting these machines is no longer a problem - vProtect provides universal and effective backups of virtual machines in a local disk subsystem, public clouds and central enterprise backup systems. With the support of Veracomp, the manufacturer will now have the opportunity to build a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
"The choice of Veracomp was natural for us. The company "feels" its territory perfectly and is strongly focused on specific areas of the market. In addition, and this is very important to us, the team identifies themselves with their activities. For Storware, it is a completely satisfying and energetic mix that will allow us to work actively with our partner channel and customers", says Jan Sobieszczański, CEO of Storware.
A comprehensive approach to alternative platforms
Veracomp, a leader in value-added distribution, sees vProtect as a tool that perfectly complements the offer of its trading partners and brings added value to its customers. Now they don't have to depend on a single VM vendor. Instead, each of them is able to take advantage of the full potential of niche solutions and optimise costs. Storware vProtect allows you to backup as many as 7 open source platforms: Nutanix Acropolis/AHV, Red Hat Virtualization/oVirt, KVM, Kubernetes/OpenShift, Citrix XenServer, Oracle VM and Proxmox.
"In Poland, the market of virtual environment backup solutions is worth many millions of zlotys. It is worth exploring. Is the role of so-called "open virtualisation" growing? It is hard to call it a huge growth, but we can see that oVirt, Red Hat Virtualisation and various KVM distributions, such as Proxmox or Acropolis (Nutanix AHV), are becoming increasingly important in Poland and worldwide. However, we can clearly see Gartner Red Hat rushing through the square, who is successfully chasing two leading players on the market", explains Jan Sobieszczański. The CEO of Storware recommends observing not only the changes in the segment of virtualisers, but also in the segment of containers (dockers), their orchestras (Kubernetes, Openshift) and OpenStack/CloudForms solutions and clouds of AWS, GCP, Azure and IBM Cloud class.
Broad application of commercial open source solutions
One of the key technology groups for Veracomp, the new distributor of vProtect software, is open source commercial solutions. Thanks to them, integrators enrich their offers with modern and innovative IT solutions, such as middleware platforms, DevOps solutions, defined software devices, Big Data, IoT, cloud or multicloud technologies. Among these systems, open source virtualisers occupy a special place.
For a long time Veracomp has been looking for a product that would ensure effective protection and backup of alternative virtualisers. There were several reasons for choosing vProtect: "The first was the wide range of virtual environments that can be protected. The second was the fact that the company is very flexible and easily adapts the product to the needs of customers. In addition, Storware is a Polish manufacturer, so it will be even easier for us to tailor solutions to the needs of the user. We will present soon vProtect in a series of meetings For the smart guys and also in our project All of Backup", explains Mirosław Chełmecki, Director of the Storage and Servers Department at Veracomp.
An additional advantage of vProtect is the fact that the manufacturer is constantly expanding the functionality of its software. Initially, it was dedicated to customers using Citrix XenServer in combination with Spectrum Protect, but the development of the market prompted Storware to provide support for other virtualisers as well: "currently, our goal is to close the hypervisor list and enable our customers to migrate between them and the clouds. We are also adding functionalities that provide deeper monitoring and analytics. It is worth noting that product development is not only a smart extension of its architecture, but also a work on simplifying processes and interfaces. The 21st century likes simple and intuitive solutions", explains Jan Sobieszczański.
Simple deployment and fast recovery of virtual machines
Protecting your virtual infrastructure with vProtect is done in three simple steps. First, you need to connect the software with the virtualizers you are using and the backup provider's solution. Then, using a convenient interface, we plan to create backups or select the option of "on-demand" backup. The last step is to restore a full backup of the virtual machine, if necessary.
The advantages of vProtect can be checked using the trial version. It allows you to backup up to 10 VMs, giving your customers the chance to self-test.
"The vProtect solution is widely used. It is definitely worth testing this software in environments based on KVM, RHV, Proxmox, Citrix or Nutanix. The option of creating backups directly to the cloud is an interesting alternative to the traditional approach. An important feature of the solution is also the ability to use in cooperation with Veritas, NetBackup or IBM Spectrum Protect solutions, as well as the ability to backup Red Hat OpenShift or Kubernetes solutions. Storware is growing rapidly and I believe that soon it will also support VMware or Hyper-V-based infrastructure, which will allow for backups of virtually any hybrid environment using a single tool", admits Marcin Gwóźdź, Product Manager Veracomp.
Veracomp experts also pay attention to the excellent integration of Storware software with Red Hat Virtualization platform.
"In the case of RHV, vProtect is a complementary backup tool that is relatively easy to implement. It supports three backup strategies: storage domain export, snapshots and snapshots chains. In newer versions it also has a very aesthetic, transparent GUI, which makes it very easy to implement for new customers", explains Arkadiusz Galarowicz, Technical Support Engineer at Veracomp.
Additional features thanks to the latest update
The manufacturer recently announced an important update in the vProtect software. Version 3.8 (Nebula) brought support for Amazon EC2 backups with shutter management and file-level restoration. Other backup options have also been improved. Users can now view and restore backup files directly in the web interface or share files in RAW format. Other changes include improvements to the web interface and remote log sharing, as well as new language versions in German and Spanish. Finally, the manufacturer updated its application server by adding the option to automatically send logs to the Storware Insight team.