As hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platforms get more widely deployed within IT environments, the need to back up and then recover data from a platform that tightly couples compute and storage presents new challenges. To address that issue, Comtrade Software has developed data protection software specifically designed for HCI platforms from Nutanix.
Subbiah Sundaram, head of data protection for Comtrade Software, says HYCU is the first purpose-built backup and recovery software for the Nutanix platform running the software Nutanix developed as an alternative to VMware. Because of that approach, Sundaram says, HYCU can autodetect all the applications running across the virtual machines installed on the Nutanix platform. That capability, adds Sundaram, speeds the overall application recovery process.
“Everybody else concentrates in the VMs rather than the applications,” says Sundaram.
Designed to be deployed in under three minutes, Sundaram says HYCU is intended to especially appeal to administrators that are now responsible for both compute and storage. In contrast, platforms that have a clearer line of demarcation between compute and storage generally make data protection the responsibility of a dedicated storage administrator, says Sundaram.
It’s too early to say how much demand there is for a platform-specific approach to backup and recovery on a Nutanix platform. Clearly, a precedent has been set by the prevalence of backup and recovery software for VMware. The issue now is how many instances of Nutanix HCI will be running software developed by Nutantix versus VMware that also runs on the same platform.
