Symantec unveils new backup and storage appliances

Symantec Corp. today introduced its NetBackup and FileStore appliances with an eye toward offering customers choices in whether they want to mix and match software- and hardware-based backup and storage products according to business needs.

The hardware-based offerings, NetBackup 5200 and FileStore N8300, come with pre-loaded software, according to Symantec. “Convenience is one factor,” points out Colin Davitian, director of product management in Symantec’s storage and availability management group, saying it reduces time and effort in initial set-up.

Symantec NetBackup 5200, based on the NetBackup 7 software, is a backup and deduplication appliance with a 32TB usable dedupe capacity with the option to dedupe at the source or target or post-processing dedupe, with up to 10.5 TB/hr throughput, according to Peter Elliman, senior manager of product marketing at Symantec.

“The dedupe engine and the disk are all sitting in one box,” he notes, adding it can be dropped into a site and managed from a single console as any NetBackup product might be and makes use of NetBackup agent software.

Symantec’s recent research into what enterprises tend to do with ever-massive amounts of data indicates that “75 per cent had infinite retention on their data,” said Elliman, saying there appears to be a strong preference to simply hold onto everything even when there is not a specific legal requirement to do so.

The Symantec FileStore N8300 appliance, for either cloud-based or on-premise storage use, is an enterprise-class network-attached (NAS) storage system that in this case has been designed to work out of the box in conjunction with Symantec’s Enterprise Vault. Besides making deployment easier, Symantec argues that any troubleshooting issues that come up are more easily managed by having one vendor. “You won’t be buying archiving from one vendor and storage from another,” Davitian says.

Another feature in the FileStore N8300, which has a capacity of up to 2 petabytes of data in a single cluster, is that Symantec’s anti-virus software has been embedded in it. The cost is covered for any maintenance-pay customer.

Over time, Symantec anticipates doing further work to integrate FileStore and Enterprise Vault, possibly merging them into one platform. But Symantec also made clear it intends to continue selling Enterprise Vault as a separate product, too.