STORServer Unveils Hybrid Backup Appliance
March 19, 2013 Alex Woodie
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STORServer has traditionally required that customers purchase one of its IBM System x-based systems as the basis for their appliance. But with the unveiling of its new Hybrid Appliance (HA) last week, customers can now utilize their own hardware when rolling out their STORServer protection scheme. STORServer has built a business around making IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) backup software easier to use for midsized organizations. While TSM is regarded as a rock-solid, enterprise-strength backup and recovery tool for multi-platform environments, it can be complicated for smaller organizations to install and manage. STORServer addressed these issues by developing its own GUI management console, called the STORServer Console (SSC) and TSM installation routines. With last week’s announcement that STORServer is allowing customers to use its solutions on any X64 servers, the company is hoping to translate that ease-of-use mantra to a wider customer set. The challenge for STORServer will be to keep the installation as painless as possible. This was easier for the company to accomplish when it had full control over the hardware. But now that STORServer is divorcing itself from total reliance on appliances, it will need to ensure that TSM installations on customer-supplied X64 servers remain easy. STORServer president Bill Smoldt says the company will work directly with each new customer to configure their Hybrid Appliances. “We’ll take the customer’s hardware and build the system for them by adding Tivoli Storage Manager and all of its components, STORServer Console, and any other required software integration,” he says. The HA approach will be a good fit for customers with suitably large sets of data to protect (typically north of 100 TB), and who want to keep their data on site, but couldn’t justify the cost of a new STORServer appliance, especially with suitably sized X64 servers ready to be repurposed into a disk-to-disk backup machine. The new HA appliances will support IBM i data just as STORServer has always done: through the BRMS Application Client, a TSM client offered by IBM. This approach works, but it’s not ideal for several reasons. For more information on STORServer’s new HA approach, see the company’s website at www.storserver.com. RELATED STORIES STORServer Beefs Up its Backup Servers STORServer Launches Entry-Level Backup Appliance Wanted: Power 745 M3 For IBM i SMBs TSM and IBM i: Not What It Could Be STORServer Launches K6000 Line of D2D2T Appliances STORServer Unveils Backup Appliance for iSeries
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