StarWind Backup Appliance (BA)

StarWind launched the new product All-NVMe StarWind Backup Appliance (BA) that allows the organizations to have a near-instantaneous backup and recovery.

Typical backup repositories performance is now dramatically improved since the Backup Appliance leverages the NVMe storage technology. Backup operations can be performed at any time with no impact on production with a RTO close to zero.

Key features

• Fast backups - backups are processed leveraging the NVMe-based storage speed that enable flexible backup window planning.
• Instant recovery - restore of VMs or files is performed near-instantaneous (RTO close to zero) from a large backup container.
• Green solution - less power is consumed to cool the system due to less heat generated.
• Data protection - the storage space is segregated from the backup application layer improving the data protection. Backups are encrypted and target connected only when required.
• Easy to Start - StarWind Backup Appliance is a ready-to-backup solution.

StarWind Backup Appliance

Delivered as fully pre-configured solution for an easier and better integration, StarWind BA is a ready-to-go storage appliance that achieves best efficiency when combined with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) solution. Backup data are compressed and deduplicated to provide better performance due to less data to be transferred optimizing the space consumption.

Primary backup data can be stored locally for faster restores and cold data can be migrated to public cloud service providers such as Amazon S3 or Azure. To reduce costs for long-term data retention, backups can also be moved to services such as Glacier.

StarWind Backup Appliance is Veeam Backup and Replication (v10 and v11) certified and can be used without issues as a fast Backup Repository for Veeam backup infrastructures. To provide monitoring, reporting, and capacity planning operations, StarWind BA can be combined with Veeam ONE (v10 and v11).

The management of the StarWind Backup Appliance can be performed through the StarWind Web UI and the StarWind vCenter Plugin.

Supported hypervisors and protocols

StarWind Backup Appliance can be used in both Hyper-V and VMware environments as backup repository and supports multiple storage protocols:

• Hypervisors: Microsoft Hyper-V 2016, 2019, 2022; VMware vSphere 6.5, 6.7, 7.0
• Storage protocols: iSCSI, SMB3, NFSv4.1, NVMe-oF

Available models

Based on DELL PowerEdge server technology with Intel Xeon E5-2609 / E5-2620 processors, the hardware can provide up to 164 TB raw space, more than 330 TB after deduplication and compression.

• H: 8.73 cm (3.44 in.) x W: 44.40 cm (17.49 in.) x D: 68.40 cm (26.92 in.)
• Maximum weight: 36.5 Kg

StarWind Backup Appliance is available in three different configurations to meet all requirements:

• Short - 6 TB usable capacity
• Regular - 12-18 TB usable capacity
• Long - 18-24 TB usable capacity

Available features

• Scale up and scale out - the appliance can be scaled-up to expand the capacity while adding multiple controller nodes, capacity, bandwidth and performance can be expanded at scale.
• Virtual Tape Library (VTL) - VTL is an included feature that allows to store backups on fast and cost-effective high capacity drives reducing the backup windows.
• Deduplication and compression - to reduce data to be transferred and processed, backups are compressed and deduplicated (inline deduplication) improving performance and reducing space requirements.
• Snapshots and backup data tiering - utilizing snapshots and asynchronous replication, the appliance is compliant with the 3-2-1 backup rule providing three copies of data in two formats and one in a remote site (data is offloaded to the public cloud).

• Asynchronous replication - to replicate storage pools or individual objects, such as VMs or files, StarWind BA supports asynchronous replication using Veeam Backup & Replication as optional backup solution.
• StarWind Swordfish provider - this plugin allows an easier management of infrastructures based on StarWind Virtual SAN.
• Unified storage - StarWind BA supports iSCSI, SMB and NFS storage protocols making easier the integration with any architecture and virtual environments.

Additional information can be found at StarWind website.