Cloud

HPE Discover 2020: Backup Is Still Key in the Big Data Revolution

As analytics continue to play a bigger role in a business’s key initiatives, efficiently and securely recalling that data is pivotal.

Brad Sowell

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Brad is associate executive editor for BizTech magazine and works closely with media relations and other professionals to develop articles for the magazine.

The arrival of the information age has led to explosive growth of data collection at the edge — anywhere people gather and work gets done, in factories and retail stores, on oil rigs at sea and countless other places. It’s hard to look anywhere these days and not see a device or sensor taking in information.

Data is not just important to business — in many ways, data is the businesses. “Data is the lifeblood of your organization,” said Ashish Prakash, vice president and general manager of cloud data services at HPE.

That’s why Prakash, speaking at the HPE Discover virtual conference, argued that when it comes to data storage, organizations must remain mindful of two things: effective recall and security.

Three Types of Data Backup and Recovery

Prakash made the case for HPE Cloud Volumes, which helps businesses access or recover their data at the edge or in their data center, and it can be activated to pull data to and from the cloud. More than a backup solution, Prakash said, Cloud Volumes allows businesses to quickly and securely get information into their cloud so that they can take advantage of data analytics.

“HPE Cloud Volumes instantly enables you to protect your data from anywhere and access it from anywhere,” said Prakash. “Cloud Volumes optimizes by allowing highly efficient data transfers between the data center and the cloud, or the edge and the cloud.”

Cloud Volumes comes in three tiers based on how quickly businesses need the data. Cloud Volumes Block delivers recovery time within seconds. Cloud Volumes Backup is perfect for nightly backups. And finally, Cloud Bank storage supports backups for compliance and archival purposes . A business can use these tiers interchangeably for whatever their data needs are at the time and do not need to decide how much of each tier they need up front.

“The two things you’re about are your network bandwidth and the storage capacity you consume,” said Prakash. So not only can a business access its data, it can store data quickly and securely through encryption.

WATCH: Dive deeper into the new normal of networking.

When Fast Data Recovery Is Critical

RainTech, a managed services provider based in Colorado Springs, Colo., has has a wide range of customers in different industries, but most of its customers are in the healthcare industry.

“We have a lot of customers that demand a ton of storage,” said Matt Bonfield, senior systems engineer at RainTech. “Our biggest challenge with them is offsite data protection.”

RainTech currently has two HPE Nimble Storage arrays — a CS300 used for older virtual machine storage, event logging management and security; and an HF40, which is used for all its production storage.

Since RainTech’s entire business is ensuring that its customers stay up and running, it needs to know it can recover in an instant if there is an outage. “We have about a half of a petabyte of data just in backup storage alone,” said Bonfield. “In case something would happen in our data center, having the ability to spin up into the cloud using Cloud Volumes is key. It’s great to have everything under one pane of glass where everyone can access it easily and securely.”

HPE InfoSight is the AI engine built into HPE Nimble Storage. It’s a cloud-based intelligence engine that can resolve data storage issues on its own. Bonfield really enjoys the simplicity of having HPE Nimble Storage, Cloud Volumes and InfoSight all together. “It’s great to have everything in that one avenue or one pane of glass where everyone can access it from one place easily and securely. That’s awesome.”

To keep up with our coverage of HPE Discover 2020, bookmark this page, follow us on Twitter at @BizTechMagazine or the official conference Twitter account, @HPE_Discover, and join the conversation using the hashtag #HPEDiscover.

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