The Essential Guide to Backup Appliances and Data Protection
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Table of Contents
3 4
Introduction History of  Backup
Appliances
5 8
Types of  Backup Threats to Backups
appliances and Backup Appliances
9 11
StoneFly Backup What You Should do Next
and Disaster Recovery
Appliances
Introduction
Increased data growth leads organizations can ensure better backup performance and 
to rely on multiple backup and disaster recovery times. 
recovery solutions. Even with their setup, 
they lack the confidence that their data will StoneFly’s innovative technology has 
always be recoverable and highly available. empowered IT environments to ensure 
effective recovery of  their enterprise 
According to a report by Veeam in 2017, workloads and reduce recovery times to 
Veeam Availability Report 2017, a majority less than 15 minutes. 
of  organizations (82%) are facing a gap 
between user demand and what IT can Our  purpose-built backup and disaster 
deliver; in other words, an Availability Gap. recovery appliances come equipped with 
This can result in unplanned downtime Veeam’s enterprise-level availability 
costs averaging up to $21.8M per year. software.
The availability challenges of  today are Veeam’s availability software, focuses on 
increasingly becoming difficult as user innovation and delivers Always-On 
demand varies and data grows Availability for enterprises. StoneFly and 
proportionally. In order to adapt and Veeam, when used together, provide the 
deliver, IT has to evolve and do more. This industry’s leading combination of   
is where Backup appliances come in. secondary storage and availability software, 
Initially nothing more than a bandage, offering a wide range of  benefits to 
backup appliances have now become an customers such as faster backups, reduced 
integral part of  every enterprise IT RTPOs, cost saving and ease of  use. 
environment. 
With backup appliances, IT environments
A Guide to Backup Appliances and Data Availability | www.stonefly.com 3
History Of Backup
Appliances
15 years ago, backup appliances came into Today’s backup-to-disk market is changing 
the market and were a product of  two as customers shift from simply using disks 
introductions to the storage industry: to send backups to learning how that disk 
SATA disk arrays and deduplication. can enable better functionality for the 
Before the integration of  SATA disks in enterprise IT environment.
disk arrays, arrays were more expensive 
and there wasn’t much sense in using them This is why StoneFly is always innovating 
as backup targets. SATA disks, on the and securing partnerships like with Veeam 
other hand, were more affordable, so Amazon, and Microsoft Azure; so that we 
companies introduced these products as a can deliver tightly integrated solutions that 
place to store older copies of  data offer optimized and reliable backup and 
(archiving) and backups. disaster recovery for the enterprise. 
Backup appliances started to gain 
popularity in the storage industry when the 
concept of  deduplication entered the 
market. The way backups were traditionally 
made created an excess of  duplicate data 
and the ability to identify and eliminate 
duplicate data significantly reduced the 
cost of  using disk as a backup target.
Backup technology has come a long way, 
orignating from expensive tape storage 
environments to cost effective and high 
performance disk environments.  
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Types of Backup
Appliances
There are two main types of  backup appliances to be more “plug and play” tend  
appliances: backup targets and backup to prefer backup systems over backup 
systems. Backup targets are those designed targets.
to accept backups from backup software. 
Backup systems, on the other hand, are Technically, any storage system accessible 
complete systems that contain the backup via NFS, SMB or other storage protocols 
software and sufficient storage to hold can be used as a backup target. But 
backups. typically, when we speak of  backup targets, 
we are referring to disk systems specifically 
Backup targets were designed initially for designed for backups. Being designed for 
IT environments that already had an backup means that these systems are 
existing backup product and wanted to designed to be cost-effective (at least more 
upgrade their storage hardware. Backup so than primary storage) and highly 
targets also provide the ability to refresh scalable - storing petabytes of  capacity - 
the computing side of  the backup equation and it means that they typically include 
at different rates than the storage side. deduplication as a core feature. 
Backup systems, on the other hand, tend to 
put both functions in one place so Deduplication  identifes and eliminates 
traditionally it’s not possible to upgrade data between backups, allowing a disk 
one and not the other. However, with our storage system to store much more backup 
disaggregated High Availability (HA) history in the same amount of  disk space. 
cluster configurations, users can 
individually add performance capabilities 
and storage capacities to their backup 
systems. 
 
Companies that prefer their backup 
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Types of Backup Appliances
Inline vs. Post Process
Backup targets deduplicate in one of  two A challenge with the inline approach diagnose and repair what caused the such as instant recovery that requires 
ways: inline or post-process (also referred appears with the consideration that some failure. Once the repair is affected, they constant random reads and writes. 
to as ayshnchronous). An inline system newer backup applications require random may initiate a full or partial restore and 
deduplicates backup data before it is even read/write access to the backup repository return the workload to the production The advantage of  post-process systems is 
written to disk. A post-process system first in order to facilitate features such as server at a convenient time. The difference that they typically have the most recent 
writes backup data to disk and then instant recovery. Instant recovery is a between the two recovery methods is backup stored in a native, not-yet-dedupli-
deduplicates it with a secondary process. feature that allows customers to mount a phenomenal - as long as the performance cated  format in a typical filesystem 
Sometimes, the secondary deduplication filesystem or start a VM directly from the of  the instant recovery is sufficient - but if  designed for random reads and writes. As 
process runs asychronously with the backup repository, rather than requiring a the storage it is running from has most recent backup is the one that’s going 
backups, and other times it occurs after all restore. This type of  restore is seen by performance challenges, it may not even be to be used for an instant recovery situation, 
backups have completed. many as the difference between next possible. being able to read and write from a typical 
generation backup systems and traditional file system that is optimized for random 
Each of  these two have their advantages backup systems. With the old way, one The reasons that inline appliances might reads and writes and does not have to be 
and disadvantages. The inline approach is must first repair the damaged server not be appropriate for such workloads rehydrated can yield significant 
more popular among vendors and appears and/or storage, after which a restore can starts with the fact that an inline appliance performance advantages. 
to occupy a greater percentage of  the then be initiated. Then only once that must be “re-duplicate” or rehydrate the 
backup target installed base. It is seen as a restore is complete can operations be data during a restore. The real problem This is not to say that it is not possible to 
cleaner approach since backups are resumed. The downtime required by this with this is that the deduplication read and use instant recovery with an inline 
deduplicated before being written, which method often forces IT personnel to do write processes were optimized for the approach but it is something that needs to 
means they can be immediately replicated quick fixes, which then must be replaced serial reads and writes typical of  traditional be taken into consideration when consider-
as well. This is in contrast to the post with the real repair at a later date - backup software since that is how all ing instant recovery. It is possible to 
process approach, where backups cannot requiring even more downtime. With backup applications behaved when most address these challenges in other ways as 
be replicated until they have been dedupli- instant recovery, one can immediately of  them were designed. The combination well. 
cated. Post-process systems also require a resume operations by running the VM of  the rehydration requirement and the 
disk staging area to hold the latest set of  from the backup system. Once operations fact that it was designed for serial work-
backups before they are deduplicated. are resumed, IT has the time to properly loads is not conducive to an application 
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Types of Backup appliances
Interfaces: NFS/SMB, 
iSCSI and Custom
Backup targets can further be divided into as the protocl only understands backing up 
how they can accept backup data. The to tape. 
most common interface is to accept data 
via NFS or SMB. The advantage to this In contrast to backup targets, backup 
approach is that any backup software that systems are easier to understand and 
can write a POSIX-compliant file system classify. They are complete appliances that 
can write to such an appliance. The contain backup software and enough 
disadvantage is that there is only a finite storage to hold the backups. In addition to 
amount of  performance enhancement that some security and performance 
can be done across such an interface. advantages, the main purpose of  these 
Simply writing data via NFS or SMB can systems is to be a turnkey system ready to 
lead to poor random I/O performance do backups as soon as they’re turned on. 
during instant recoveries and slow backup 
or restore performance during traditional 
operations. 
Backup targets can also present themselves 
as a virtual tape library or VTL. This 
interface was popular at the time when 
backup targets first came out and backup 
software products were not adept at 
writing to a file system interface. Today, 
such an interface is used primarily for 
those who need a high speed block 
interface. The most common use of  VTLs 
is when backing up a NAS filer via NDMP,
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Threats to Backups
and Backup 
Appliances
Besides the age-old threats of  failed media, Another technique is to use a protocol 
disasters taking out an entire server or between the backup software and backup 
storage array, or simply human error or appliance down their backup systems 
mischief, today’s backup servers have more tighter than any other system in the data 
threats to them than ever - especially if  center. The backup system should have a 
they are Windows-based systems. The different authentication system that is 
biggest threat today comes in the form of  seperate from anything like Active 
ransomware, insider attacks or other Directory. So that someone compromising 
malware that will delete or otherwise the corporate system would not be able to 
corrupt backups or the backup software’s compromise the backup system as well. 
configuration files. Finally, intrusion detection systems should 
treat the backup server as a high priority 
Regarding backup appliances, one of  the system from a security perspective, as it has 
biggest pitfalls that many of  them face is a copy of  everything in the environment. 
that any data stored on a typical backup 
appliance is simply available via an SMB or 
NFS mount. If  someone were to access 
that mount outside the backup process, 
they could encrypt or delete the backups 
along with the original data. For this 
reason, it is imperative that companies lock 
down access to that shared folder. This can 
be done via ACLs, VPNs and basic SMB 
and NFS controls that allow only the 
backup server to mount the directory in 
question. 
A Guide to Backup Appliances and Data Availability | www.stonefly.com 8
StoneFly Backup and 
Disaster Recovery 
Systems
StoneFly offers purpose-built backup and our backup & DR appliances deliver highly 
disaster recovery (DR) appliances built to secure data protection for terabytes to 
withstand cyber-security threats like petabytes of  enterprise data.
ransomware and deliver RTOs and RPOs 
of  less than 15 minutes. With our backup & DR appliances users 
can backup Windows and Linux servers, 
Our range of  backup and DR systems relational databases (MySQL, NoSQL, 
include: PostGreSQL, etc.) and CRM, EHR/EMR 
applications as well. 
- DR365V™ - Veeam-Ready Backup &  
  DR Appliance To simplify our customer experience, we 
- DR365™ - Backup & DR Solution (DR  offer a one-stop-shop for all data 
  Site in a Box) protection needs, including: Purpose-Built Enterprise Backup & DR Systems
- DR365U™ - Universal Backup & DR 
  Appliance - Backup software licenses
- Hypervisor licenses
Configured with high-end processors, - Storage Operating System 
robust storage drives, and built-in cloud - Enterprise Server
connect to public and private clouds, our 
backup and DR appliances enable users to 
protect business-critical NAS and SAN 
volumes and Virtual Machines (VMs) 
running on VMware, Hyper-V, KVM and 
Citrix (formerly XenServer) hypervisors.
The robust combination of  enterprise 
backup software, our patented storage 
operating system and enterprise servers 
A Guide to Backup Appliances and Data Availability | www.stonefly.com 9
StoneFly Backup and Disaster 
Recovery Appliances
Appliance Configurations: 
Integrated, HA Cluster & Scale Out
Integrated Configuration HA Cluster Configuration Scale-out Node Configuration 
The integrated hardware delivers backup & The HA Cluster configuration is a Best suited for large enterprises and large 
DR in a box experience. It’s a single disaggregated hardware system and a volumes of  big data, this configuration 
aggregated harwdare chassis with the perfect fit for IT environments that require starts with three nodes and can scale out to 
storage controller, RAID controller, and high availability and instant recovery. virtually unlimited number of  appliance 
storage operating system. nodes. 
Our HA cluster appliances comprise of  
The appliance supports our storage three hardware chassis: The addition of  each appliance node in the 
operating system, backup software,  system adds more processors, more system 
hypervisors, cloud connect to Azure cloud - Two Storage Controllers (SCs) memory, and more storage drives; 
and AWS (Amazon Web Services)  along - One or More HA RAID Expansion  consequently this delivers a proportional 
with the ability to scale up by adding   Arrays increase in performance as storage 
JBODs or EBODs and scale out by adding capacities grow to petabytes in scale. This 
virtually unlimited number of  appliace The two SCs provide multi-path access and makes it a good fit for organizations with 
nodes for additional performance ensure data availability even in the event of  continuously growing volumes of  data and 
capabilities and petabytes of  storage hardware failure. And with two processors, instant recovery needs. 
capacities. the compute capabilities are doubled; 
making it a good fit for the most With increased performance capabilities, 
demanding workloads and RTPO no matter the volume, enterprises instantly 
requirements. recover mission-critical VMs to reduce 
downtime and enhance business continuity. 
 
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What You Should Do Next
To effectively protect your mission-critical 
enterprise workloads, backup and disaster 
recovery appliances are necessary. 
If  you’re looking for an innovative backup 
and disaster recovery system that delivers 
everything within a single box, is easy to 
setup and deploy and delivers reduced 
RTPOs while keeping costs in check, 
contact us today and let us offer you 
purpose-built and customized solutions.
StoneFly’s enterprise-level backup and 
disaster recovery solutions facilitate 
businesses around the globe including 
corporate and government clients. 
To explore StoneFly’s partial list of  
customers, click here:  hPattrpti:a/l /Cbuistt.olmy/er2 Li6stc 2 7r
A Guide to Backup Appliances and Data Availability | www.stonefly.com 11
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