Upgrading to StorSight, StorSafe & StorGuard
FalconStor set a path years ago to transform on-premises data protection to capitalize on opportunities and address the challenges of the Cloud Era. Our core technologies, including our backup-to-disk target with cloud gateway software, StorSafe (was VTL), and our replication product, StorGuard (was CDP and NSS), are both managed across firewalls, sites and clouds with a new multi-tenant user experience and analytics console, StorSight. A new service – FalconStor Optimization Insights – ensures that each customer gets the most from their FalconStor instances today and advises them on how to benefit from innovations.
In May, Abdul Hashmi, our head of Professional Services and Customer Success, and Mark Delsman, our Head of Product, were able to host several customer and partner sessions to review each product, the upgrade process, and, most importantly, address essential questions about the current and future product capabilities and the process for capitalizing on them.
If you missed those sessions, you can still watch them on our website:
Watch the Session: StorSafe
Watch the Session: StorGuard
Here are some of the questions with answers from Abdul and Mark on how to get the most from your FalconStor investment today and into the future with the latest releases of StorSafe, StorGuard, and StorSight.
- What new capabilities does StorSight provide and what are the system requirements to enable it?
StorSight provides multi-tenant management and simple, capacity-based licensing for any number of StorSafe and StorGuard instances running across firewalls, sites, and clouds – from a web browser. The StorSight service can be run on a small server or a virtual machine. StorSight collects information, analyzes it, generates Smart Alerts, provides a real-time dashboard, and predicts, all secured by a multi-tenant RBAC architecture. A multitude of reports can be generated and distributed. Because StorSafe and StorGuard initiate a communication with the StorSight server every 10 seconds, there is no need to leave firewall ports open.
- What does StorSafe provide that the older VTL product does not?
The URL to the StorSafe Product Brief is https://www.falconstor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/StorSafe-Product-Brief.pdf.
StorSafe and StorSight add essential new capabilities for VTL customers. As the latest release of our VTL product, StorSafe continues to deliver 100% compatibility with existing backup software, industry-leading throughput of up to 160 TB per hour, up to 95 percent reduction of backup data over time in the single instance repository.
It scales easily as needs grow, avoids hardware vendor lock-In and forklift upgrades that occur with backup-to-disk appliances, and provides increased performance, compatibility, and security improvements throughout.
StorSight management is a big win for our customers because it provides the flexibility to use the total capacity purchased across any number of StorSafe or StorGuard instances across sites and clouds.
StorSight delivers secure Multi-Tenancy, Role-Based Administration, bill back for users of the system, a real-time dashboard, and the new license manager. Secure Data Containers ensure that StorSafe can deliver unlimited capacity on-premises to meet growing needs without ever having to perform a forklift upgrade, and they can be transmitted offsite for touch-free, tape-free, backup operations.
- With backup operations becoming a new target for digital theft, how does StorSafe protect the security of data?
When backup data arrives at the StorSafe backup to disk appliance, it is immediately AES-256 encrypted. Later, when backup data is exported, it remains encrypted. StorSafe manages the AES-256 encryption keys.
- With backups being used for long-term archival, how does StorSafe ensure data immutability?
Immutability means that nobody can delete or tamper with backup data. If the backup data is encrypted, it cannot be read or written, so it is protected from tampering. The SAN or Object storage system play a part as well, as they must authenticate and authorize access to the encrypted backup data that they are storing, and many vendors offer WORM object storage to provide customers a long-term immutable store. StorSafe tracks multiple copies of deduplicated, encrypted backup data across sites and clouds to ensure durability goals are met.
- What is your vision for Secure Data Containers? What can I do with them today and what do you see them providing in the future?
There are 3 ways to transmit copies of backup data offsite for protection: via tapes, via Secure Data Containers, or via asynchronous replication between twin instances of StorSafe. A single instance of StorSafe can be run on-premises that exports Secure Data Containers to local or cloud object storage directly. It’s a fast, secure, and easy way to get offsite protection accomplished for backup data. In the future, the user will be able to act upon the Secure Data Containers where they reside for advanced active archive capabilities.
- What’s involved in using StorSafe to migrate my second backup copy to the cloud, such as a Managed Service Provider, a colocation facility, or a public cloud like AWS, Azure or IBM?
Just set up a rule in StorSafe. When the rule is triggered, Secure Data Containers are exported directly to cloud object storage at the MSP or public cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, IBM, GCP, OCI, etc. StorSafe keeps track of all the transmissions and encryption keys.
- With so much focus on using the cloud as a backup destination, how does StorSafe support our on-going usage of tape in backup and archival?
Everyone has mountains of old tapes to consider. StorSafe can ingest old backup tapes by communicating directly to tape drives and libraries that have the old tapes loaded. Once ingested into the StorSafe backup-to-disk appliance, tapes are deduplicated up to 95% and stored on SAN storage. For offsite protection, StorSafe can export physical tapes using tape drives and libraries as well.
- What new software, hardware and cloud services are you adding to your certification matrix?
FalconStor continues to expand coverage of the IT ecosystem. Some featured integrations include Veeam in the backup software space, Pure Storage in on-premises all-flash SAN, IBM in on-premises equipment (specifically IBMi Power Systems), and Microsoft Azure in public cloud.
For the latest additions, visit our partner ecosystem area https://www.falconstor.com/partners/ and see our certification matrix.
- What is the Optimization Insights Service?
FalconStor introduced its new Optimization Insights Service to help you understand and improve – OPTIMIZE – your environment. A FalconStor expert will work with you to collect, visualize, and analyze the health of your environment and the steps you can take to make it better – more secure, faster, more data reduction, and ready for growth. Just contact your partner or FalconStor representative to get the process started.
- How will using StorGuard change my CDP and NSS deployment models?
Your topology can remain the same, and all the functionality you are depending on is present in StorGuard. Or support experts help our customers succeed in their upgrade initiatives every day.
- What are the biggest benefits of moving to StorGuard?
StorGuard and StorSight offer essential new capabilities for FalconStor’s CDP and NSS customers:
You can move data from an old disk array to a new one non-disruptively or you can move data from one datacenter to another, or from a datacenter to a cloud. StorGuard delivers performance, compatibility, and security improvements throughout.
StorSight management gives you the power to use the total capacity that you have licensed across any number of StorSafe and StorGuard servers across sites and clouds even if they are behind the firewall.
StorSight brings powerful new capabilities to help you modernize your data center including multi tenancy, Role-Based Administration, bill backs for users of the system, a real-time dashboard, management of optional client agents, and the new license manager.
The new IO Cluster configuration gives you synchronous data protection within a data center and delivers IO load balancing, as well as IO zoning, for isolation along with impressive performance.
The IO Multi-Cluster configuration uses two IO Clusters at separate sites within a metro-region to provide fault tolerance with automatic fail over and failback capability.
To learn more about StorGuard and StorSight, check here.