HPE Signals Major Push Into Hybrid Cloud Data Protection With StoreOnce, Nimble, GreenLake Moves

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Monday expanded its hybrid cloud data protection and data management capabilities with the introduction of a new StoreOnce backup appliance and new integrations for its HPE GreenLake Backup-as-a-Service offering.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor also introduced a new version of its HPE Recovery Manager Central data protection and copy data management technology, and extended its reach to now include integration with HPE Nimble Storage.

This is all part of a move to help HPE channel partners capture a bigger part of the fast-growing market for secondary storage, particularly in the cloud, said Neil Fleming, team manager for worldwide product management for HPE's disk-based backup products.

[Related: HPE Brings Nimble Predictive Analytics To 3PAR Storage]

The headlines focus on a market shift in thinking from virtualization to all-flash storage, but the great upset in the storage market is a new focus on secondary storage, Fleming told CRN.

"Secondary storage has been an area of steady innovation, for example from tape to disk for backup appliances," he said. "But in the market today, we're seeing the evolution beyond simple backup and recovery to the idea that secondary workloads are moving from simple backup and recovery into a data management sphere."

HPE is responding by looking at moving backup workload data beyond simple backup and recovery in several ways, Fleming said.

HPE Monday introduced the next generation of its HPE StoreOnce backup appliances featuring improved scalability on the performance side and capacity side, as well as a new operating system and file system, Fleming said.

The new HPE StoreOnce backup appliances are able to better take advantage of the data, he said.

"We are positioning StoreOnce for using data in place," he said. "Secondary storage is not just simple backup and recovery. Customers can now use that data for disaster recovery testing, backup tests without recovering the data, test/dev, analytic, and archiving. These are all merging together in the customer mind-set."

HPE also enhanced its HPE StoreOnce VSA software-defined storage offering for secondary storage. The VSA virtualizes disk capacity on a server running VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V or Linux KVM to act as if it were attached storage.

TheStoreOnce VSA now scales to up to 500 TB per server, which is 10 times the original limit of 50 TB, Fleming said. Partners can also attach up to 1 Petabyte of local or cloud capacity to a VSA.

StoreOnce VSA also now includes all-inclusive licensing of every feature except for encryption for which a nominal $1 licensing fee applies due to Russia and China market requirements.

Customers can now manage up to 100 nodes of storage appliances including everything from StoreOnce VSA nodes to physical StoreOnce 5650 appliances as a single system, Fleming said. The previous limit was eight nodes.

HPE also introduced a new licensing model for StoreOnce VSA that allows partners to deploy a licensing server that includes a pool of pre-paid set of licenses. When a VSA is required, the license comes from that pool, and when the license is no longer needed it is returned to the pool. Previously, the VSA was licensed on a per-virtual machine basis.

HPE has also signed a new relationship with Tinton Falls, N.J.-based Commvault under which Commvault will integrate its data protection technology with HPE StoreOnce.

"We're the only data protection appliance Commvault integrates with," Fleming said. "This is a great opportunity for Commvault partners who like the appliance model and want integration with Commvault. And it's great for HPE channel partners who can resell Commvault software."

HPE has tied its StoreOnce offerings and its new Commvault integration to the HPE GreenLake hybrid cloud via HPE GreenLake Backup, which provides pay-as-you-go consumption-based IT, Fleming said. That makes them part of a flexible capacity planning strategy, he said.

Also new from HPE is the extension of Recovery Management Central 6.0, the company's centralized copy data management offering for HPE storage, to its Nimble Storage. RMC 6.0 has been available for other HPE storage offerings including its flagship 3PAR line.

HPE acquired Nimble Storage in early 2017.

RMC 6.0 integrates HPE 3Par all-flash arrays with HPE StoreOnce systems to leverage snapshots and backup performance to provide cloud-ready application performance. It is unique in that it manages application-consistent snapshots, backup and recovery from the application's native interface, Fleming said.

"Going forward, RMC 6.0 takes space-efficient snapshots from Nimble, stores them, and keeps them in their original format," he said. "Customers can use the copies as original data or move them to the cloud to use."

RMC 6.0 is slated to be extended to Nimble Storage in December.

With the new StoreOnce offerings, HPE looks like it’s ready to take on some of its startup competitors in the backup appliance market, said Chris Case, president of Sequel Data Systems, an Austin, Texas-based solution provider and longtime HPE channel partner.

"It's definitely a space where customers are going," Case told CRN.

The enhancements to GreenLake are timely as customers are finally understanding and adopting it as part of their hybrid cloud strategy, Case said.

"We see our customers all the time asking how to better tie their on-prem and cloud environments together," he said. "The more products HPE ties into GreenLake, the better."