Converged data protection appliance family for MSPs

As part of the Avnet Electronics Marketing division of Avnet, Inc., Avnet Embedded focuses on providing a full suite of embedded solutions – from storage, computing, software and networking products, to disk drives, flat panels and embedded boards from industry-leading suppliers. With a broad partner line card, a wealth of technical resources and a highly skilled team, Avnet Embedded provides customer guidance for OEM, embedded and commercial customers. Avnet Embedded will be packaging and shipping Asigra Appliances on behalf of the company and providing hardware-related support.

“Avnet Embedded is working with Asigra leadership to accelerate Converged Data Protection Appliance delivery by leveraging our unique position as a global solution provider,” said John Salemme, Vice President and General Manager, Avnet Embedded. “Through our relationship with Asigra, we are bringing together deep technology expertise to provide managed service providers globally with the advanced solution they need to quickly and reliably stand up their backup service infrastructure without undue complexity or costs.”

“The Asigra Converged Data Protection Appliance family disintermediates storage software stacks from expensive hardware, removing the cost and complexity of secondary storage systems,” said Eran Farajun, Executive Vice President, Asigra. “We have also engineered out the complications of storage system integration, troubleshooting, fixes, patches, installation, monitoring, maintenance and the requirements for skilled hardware and operating system staff. This is a backup/DR industry first that tackles the inflexible designs and costs of traditional storage systems, introducing a new approach to highly scalable and performant data protection storage. The approach enables IT service providers who want to offer cloud backup services for the first time a quick and easy way to get to market in days rather than months with all of the Asigra marketing and sales support provided through our Hybrid Partner Program.”

The new Asigra Converged Data Protection DS-System Appliance family is built for service delivery to provide end-to-end data protection for SMB and enterprise environments. The comprehensive solution eliminates the time and costs associated with sourcing, procuring and building data storage infrastructure while addressing the challenge of having to manage multiple data protection solutions to protect a broad range of data types, computing platforms and operating systems, thereby reducing management issues and the total cost of ownership. The multi-tenant agentless solution is available for Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS environments and includes a cloud license server for easy provisioning of licenses, billing module to support multiple currencies, LAN storage discovery tool and Web-based management console for single pane of glass management.

A significant advantage of the Asigra Appliance is the ability to support service providers looking to drive high-margin monthly recurring revenue with a newly minted cloud backup offering. The product features full integration of Asigra Cloud Backup and automatic configuration, helping service providers get to market quickly and enabling faster time to revenue. Compared to traditional approaches, the Asigra Appliance for Service Providers eliminates the need to research, source, procure and set up an infrastructure from scratch. The offering is plug-and-play and can be set up in days rather than weeks or months.

Three appliance models based on Supermicro servers running FreeBSD and ZFS will be available to Service Providers worldwide. The available systems include 1U, 2U and 4U models. The 4U Converged Data Protection Appliance features 96TB of billable capacity and includes Dual Intel E5-2630 v3, 2.4 GHz CPU with 8 Cores, 128GB DDR4 RAM, 36 X 4TB SATA 3.5” 7K2 (Data HDDs), Quad-Port 10GBaseT Ethernet, and FreeBSD 10.1 Operating System with ZFS File System. Specification data on the 1U Model (9.6TB billable capacity) and 2U Model (32TB billable capacity) is available upon request.

Key features include:
• Support for all cloud deployment models, including public, hybrid and private
• Maximum security, flexibility, manageability and affordability
• NIST FIPS 140-2 certified and AES 256 data encryption at rest and in flight
• Protection of all customer data to a single scalable repository – regardless of data source location
• Software and hardware platform agnostic to avoid compatibility issues
• Integrated VM replication and mobile endpoint geo-location/remote wipe capabilities

“MSPs and cloud service providers building or expanding backup infrastructure are often challenged with controlling costs as their storage requirements grow. These costs not only include hardware and software but also the management of complex heterogeneous backup systems and software,” said Brian Garrett, Vice President, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Asigra Converged Data Protection Appliances for Service Providers define purpose-built storage for data protection services with complete orchestration that speeds deployment and software-defined architecture to meet the scalability needs of service providers. With the availability of this solution, backup professionals are presented with a more uniform approach for the simplification of service deployment.”

Converged Data Protection shifts control of the backup environment from hardware to software to remove physical cost limitations. This creates a backup platform that is more flexible, efficient and application aware. Asigra’s converged data protection appliances complement the company’s popular cloud backup software platform which is production proven in more than a million customer environments. Asigra Converged Data Protection Appliances for Service Providers provide direct advantages that include:
• Reductions in backup vault integration time from months and weeks to days
• Faster time to market with auto-configuration and deployment
• Telco-level scalability
• Unified management for ease of administration
• Redundant architecture for high availability
• Full Asigra support including a three year hardware warranty

“Backup infrastructure costs continue to rise, putting significant financial pressure on IT service providers seeking to grow their operations. Without the right tools, the ability to expand can be limited by scalability and performance issues,” said Peter Helander, CEO, Heartland Business Systems. “The Asigra Appliances for Service Providers promise to reduce management overhead, remove the barriers to growth and contain costs. We commend Asigra in providing a new perspective in accommodating new and existing service providers with storage growth management.”