George Crump

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The shared responsibility of data protection requires collaboration between infrastructure software and backup software. Both systems must work together to ensure data resiliency, protection, and recovery. Relying solely on one or the other can leave gaps, creating vulnerabilities that put critical data and operations at risk.

Learn why data protection requires shared responsibility.

In this shared responsibility model, infrastructure software (including hypervisors, storage, and networking) handles hardware failures and maintains uptime. Meanwhile, backup software safeguards against user errors and cyberattacks and ensures long-term data retention. This balanced approach ensures complete protection across all potential points of failure.

The Complexity of Modern IT Environments

Data centers today are more intricate than ever before. Enterprises rely on a combination of hypervisors, bare-metal systems, containers, and cloud services across various platforms and environments. The traditional single-backup-system approach is no longer sufficient. Businesses must implement solutions that address the unique challenges of each infrastructure component.

Infrastructure software, which manages virtual machines, networking, and storage, should provide data resilience, ensuring that workloads continue running despite multiple simultaneous hardware failures. Meanwhile, backup software protects data from soft errors—such as accidental deletions, ransomware attacks, or software bugs—and provides long-term data retention and compliance.

The shared responsibility model creates a structured way for infrastructure and backup systems to complement each other, ensuring no gaps in data protection.

On Thursday, October 3rd, at 11:00 AM ET, we will explore the shared responsibility model in greater depth and demonstrate how its two components can work together to deliver unprecedented levels of resilience, protection, and recovery.

Register here to secure your spot!

VergeOS and Storware: A Shared Responsibility for Data Protection

The collaboration between infrastructure and backup solutions is at the heart of the shared responsibility model. The integration of VergeOS and Storware provides an excellent example of an end-to-end solution for data resilience, protection, and recovery.

VergeOS: The Role of Infrastructure in Data Resiliency

VergeOS is more than just a VMware alternative. It’s an ultraconverged infrastructure consolidating the hypervisor, storage, and networking into a single piece of software. In addition to delivering a more efficient infrastructure software solution, this approach allows VergeOS to provide superior protection against hardware failures, ensuring superior uptime and resiliency.

One of VergeOS’s standout features is its IOclone technology, which creates fully independent snapshots of selected objects, such as virtual data centers, instances, or virtual machines. Unlike traditional snapshots that rely on the redirect-on-write method, VergeOS’s IOclone ensures that snapshots are independent of the original object. If the original object is deleted, the snapshot remains intact and can be restored.

VergeOS also incorporates integrated deduplication, making snapshots highly efficient in terms of storage capacity consumption. This enables businesses to keep thousands of snapshots over long periods without any performance degradation.

In addition, VergeOS features ioGuardian, a real-time recovery solution that activates during multiple hardware failures. With inline recovery, ioGuardian provides missing data segments to virtual machines in real time, preventing downtime even during catastrophic failures. This ensures infrastructure resiliency, addressing gaps that often occur when infrastructure systems rely too heavily on backup systems for recovery.

Storware: The Role of Backup in Data Protection and Recovery

While VergeOS handles hardware-level protection and resiliency, Storware ensures data is safeguarded from user errors, accidental deletions, and ransomware attacks. Storware’s backup solution supports KVM-based hypervisors (including VergeOS), bare-metal systems, containers, and cloud environments such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Storware’s two-stage backup architecture offers scalability and flexibility in data protection. In the first stage, Storware collects data from multiple sources and stores it temporarily in Storware nodes. These nodes can scale to meet increasing capacity or performance demands.

In the second stage, the data is transferred to a final repository, which could include object storage, file systems (NFS or SMB), enterprise-grade storage (such as Dell EMC Data Domain or HPE StoreOnce), or even tape libraries for organizations that need offline data storage.

Storware’s support for incremental forever backups captures only changes after the initial backup, reducing backup times and network strain. Additionally, Storware performs data consolidation in the staging area, ensuring that recoveries are full-speed, even when multiple incremental backups are involved.

When integrated with VergeOS, Storware leverages Change Block Tracking (CBT) technology to optimize backup efficiency by minimizing the amount of data transferred over the network.

Why the Shared Responsibility Model is Crucial for Modern Businesses

The partnership between VergeOS and Storware highlights the power of the shared responsibility model. Together, they provide comprehensive protection across all failure points—whether hardware-related or human error.

Organizations relying solely on backup software for all data protection risk gaps in infrastructure resiliency. Conversely, relying only on infrastructure software without a dedicated backup strategy can make meeting compliance or data protection best practices demands challenging. The shared responsibility model ensures that both systems—infrastructure and backup—work together harmoniously.

With VergeOS managing uptime and resiliency during hardware failures and Storware protecting against soft errors and enabling long-term retention, businesses can be confident that their data is fully protected. This holistic approach is particularly crucial for organizations managing multi-tenant environments, hybrid cloud infrastructures, or complex virtualized systems, where any failure can lead to severe consequences.

Conclusion: Shared Responsibility Equals Stronger Protection

Modern IT environments are vital to an organization’s success and demand a comprehensive approach to data protection. By adopting the shared responsibility model, organizations can ensure that infrastructure and backup systems work together to provide seamless data resiliency, protection, and recovery.

The collaboration between VergeOS and Storware exemplifies this model in action. VergeOS protects infrastructure from hardware failures and ensures uptime, while Storware safeguards data against soft errors and provides long-term retention. Together, they offer a turnkey solution that helps businesses of all sizes protect their most valuable asset—their data.

Join Our Webinar: How to Protect VMware Alternatives with VergeIO and Storware
Interested in learning more about how infrastructure and backup software can work together to safeguard your data? Join us for a live webinar, “How to Protect VMware Alternatives with VergeIO and Storware,” where we’ll explore these concepts further and demonstrate how the two solutions integrate seamlessly.

  • Date: Thursday, October 3rd, 2024

  • Time: 11:00 AM ET / 8:00 AM PT

  • Duration: 30 minutes + Q&A
    Register here~ to secure your spot!

Filed Under: Blog, Protection Tagged With: , ,

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Warsaw, Poland – September 24, 2024 – Storware, a European leader in enterprise data backup and recovery, renowned for its stability and seamless integration capabilities, has announced a strategic partnership with VergeIO, the leading provider of ultraconverged infrastructure. This collaboration addresses the growing market demand for turnkey solutions that deliver an integrated data center operating environment with end-to-end backup, disaster recovery, and robust protection against ransomware.

VergeIO, a pioneer in VMware alternatives, offers effortless solutions for deploying powerful platforms using existing hardware while enhancing data resiliency and performance. The VergeOS software is more than just a VMware alternative—it provides superior efficiency, leading to better performance, scalability, hardware resiliency, upfront cost savings, and significant long-term reductions in total cost of ownership (TCO). The flexible, hardware-agnostic approach simplifies project launches with minimal technical setup while maintaining high availability and workload scalability.

The collaboration between Storware and VergeIO strengthens data security, ensuring confidentiality and business continuity. This partnership offers significant benefits for businesses of all types and sizes, enabling them to build robust infrastructures for a wide range of environments, including secure research (HPC), hyperconverged data centers, and multi-tenant private clouds.

Key Benefits of the Partnership:

  • A unified solution for simplifying data center virtualization and infrastructure management.
  • Enables organizations to build or scale IT environments using end-to-end software rapidly, minimizing costs and deployment times.
  • Storware Backup and Recovery integrates seamlessly with VergeOS, offering a centralized console for managing backup tasks while supporting the creation of fully encapsulated virtual data centers.
  • The hardware-agnostic infrastructure supports evolving business demands and accelerates growth.
  • Significant reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) as environments scale.

“The Storware-VergeIO partnership is not just about collaboration; it’s about creating synergy between innovation and expertise to accelerate technological transformation,” said Jan Sobieszczanski, CEO of Storware. “We’re excited to offer a joint solution that combines VergeOS’ unique ultraconverged infrastructure with Storware’s powerful Backup and Recovery capabilities. Together, we’re ready to tackle emerging market challenges head-on.”

Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO, added, “Integrating Storware Backup and Recovery with VergeOS provides customers with confidence as they transition from VMware. The combined solution enhances cybersecurity with rapid backups, including incremental and differential backups, granular recovery options, and automated backup scheduling. This partnership makes virtualization and moving to fully functional, resilient virtual data centers a turnkey solution.”

About VergeIO

VergeIO is the future of virtualization and the leading VMware alternative. Unlike hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), VergeIO’s ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) collapses the traditional IT stack (compute, storage, and networking) into a single, integrated data center operating environment: VergeOS. This approach allows organizations to achieve greater workload density, improved data resiliency and simplified IT management using their existing hardware—resulting in lower costs and higher availability. VergeOS delivers better performance, scalability, hardware resiliency, and significant upfront and long-term cost savings.

For more information, visit www.verge.io.

About Storware

Storware is a European enterprise data backup and recovery solutions provider recognized for its stability and comprehensive platform integration. Storware secures data across virtual machines, containers, cloud environments, and applications, including Microsoft 365. It supports a variety of backup destinations, such as file systems and object storage, and acts as a proxy for enterprise backup providers. Established in 2013 in Warsaw, Poland, Storware continues expanding its reach through a robust global distribution and partner network.

Connect with Storware on Facebook, LinkedIn, or visit storware. eu for more information.

Media Contacts:

Tasha Kobzarenko
Product Marketing Manager, Storware
[email protected]

Judy Smith
JPR Communications, representing VergeIO
[email protected]
(818) 522-9673

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With:

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September 17, 2024 — Ann Arbor, Michigan — VergeIO, the leader in ultraconverged infrastructure, has partnered with TechAccelerator to deliver a suite of hands-on labs designed for IT professionals looking to migrate from VMware to VergeOS. These self-paced labs provide a comprehensive, interactive experience to help organizations transition smoothly to VergeOS, offering an invaluable learning opportunity without needing hardware.

The migration process is often a key concern for businesses exploring VMware alternatives. VergeIO’s hands-on labs are available 24/7 and can be completed in just 15 to 20 minutes. Each lab showcases VergeOS’ integrated virtualization, storage, and networking capabilities, giving participants a deep understanding of how VergeOS operates and how it can enhance their current processes.

David Hekimian, CEO of TechAccelerator, commented, “Our partnership with VergeIO is a game changer for IT professionals. These labs provide an immersive and practical experience, enabling users to get comfortable with VergeOS in a risk-free environment. This is essential for anyone considering a shift from VMware or looking to optimize their virtualization strategy.”

Become a VMware Migration Expert—No Hardware Required

The VMware Migration Lab provides IT professionals with a fully functional environment. It allows them to connect to a VMware infrastructure, migrate virtual machines into VergeOS, and boot them seamlessly. This lab guides participants through each step of the migration process, equipping them with the knowledge needed to execute their migrations confidently.

Enhance Data Protection with VergeOS

VergeOS is not just a VMware alternative—it offers superior efficiency, performance, and data resiliency. In the Snapshot Lab, participants can explore VergeOS’ ioClone-powered snapshot technology, learning to create and protect VMs with both scheduled and manual snapshots. The lab also demonstrates how to recover files from deleted VMs, providing IT teams with the tools to refine their data protection and disaster recovery strategies.

Ensure Workload Resiliency

VergeIO’s multi-tenant Virtual Data Center (VDC) technology provides an extra layer of security and resiliency by isolating workloads, ensuring that issues like ransomware attacks in one tenant do not affect others. The Virtual Data Center Lab allows participants to create tenants and sub-tenants, test workload isolation, and experience firsthand VergeOS’ advanced protection features.

“These hands-on labs give prospective customers and partners the ability to explore VergeOS before committing to a proof of concept or purchase,” said Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO. “This allows them to understand how VergeOS can improve their infrastructure and operations fully.”

The VergeIO Labs are available for potential customers to try today. Please register here.

About VergeIO

VergeIO is the future of virtualization and the leading VMware alternative. Its ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) collapses the traditional IT stack—compute, storage, and networking—into a unified data center operating environment: VergeOS. This efficiency enables higher workload density on existing hardware while improving data resiliency and lowering costs. VergeOS simplifies IT, delivering improved availability and substantial savings for businesses of all sizes.

About TechAccelerator

TechAccelerator is a cutting-edge SaaS platform and professional services company designed to accelerate revenue opportunities for technology clients. It allows its clients to focus on their core competencies while letting the TechAccelerator team create solution environments that will drive more leads and sales. TechAccelerator reduces costs, shortens sales cycles, increases qualified leads, and improves profitability.

Media Contact:
Judy Smith, JPR Communications
818-522-9673
[email protected]

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: ,

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Evaluating new technology solutions is a crucial but often daunting task for IT professionals, especially when considering the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. As organizations seek more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable alternatives, testing VMware alternatives often presents significant obstacles, particularly when IT teams are limited by time and lack the necessary hardware resources to test new platforms properly.

Overcome the Challenges of Testing VMware Alternatives
Overcome the Challenges of Testing VMware Alternatives

At VergeIO, we understand these challenges, so we’ve introduced self-paced, hands-on labs that enable IT professionals to explore VergeOS without the typical barriers. These labs give users a practical, real-world experience with our ultraconverged infrastructure, helping them understand how it can simplify their operations and provide a robust alternative to VMware.

Key Challenge 1: Lack of Time

One of the biggest challenges of testing VMware alternatives is finding the time to evaluate new platforms thoroughly. IT teams are already stretched too thin, managing existing infrastructure, troubleshooting day-to-day issues, and running systems smoothly. Adding a product evaluation to their to-do list can seem impossible. Many IT professionals that we speak to have renewed VMware for one year in the hopes that they will have time to vet the growing cast of alternatives properly.

VergeIO’s Solution

Our hands-on labs are designed to fit into the busiest schedules. Each lab takes just 15 to 20 minutes to complete, giving IT professionals a focused, detailed look at VergeOS without demanding significant time. During a break or after hours, you can explore VergeOS on your terms, gaining valuable insights without sacrificing your daily responsibilities.

Key Challenge 2: Lack of Available Test Hardware

Another common hurdle in testing VMware alternatives is the need for dedicated test hardware. Setting up a lab environment with multiple servers, storage devices, and networking equipment to mirror a VMware setup is costly and time-consuming, and many organizations simply don’t have the budget or resources to create this kind of environment.

VergeIO’s Solution

Overcome the Challenges of Testing VMware Alternatives

With VergeIO’s hands-on labs, you don’t need any additional hardware. Our labs provide an environment that mirrors real-world conditions, allowing you to experience VergeOS without needing physical infrastructure. This eliminates the financial and logistical barriers to testing VMware alternatives and lets you evaluate our solution wherever and whenever you’re ready.

How VergeIO’s Hands-On Labs Help Overcome These Challenges

VergeIO’s self-paced, hands-on labs are specifically designed to overcome the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. These labs provide a seamless, immersive experience without complex setups or additional hardware. Here’s what you can explore:

  • VMware Migration Lab: This lab walks you through connecting to a VMware environment, migrating virtual machines into VergeOS, using ioMigrate, and launching them. You’ll learn how VergeOS simplifies the migration process, making it clear what to expect when transitioning from VMware.
  • Data Protection and Recovery Lab: Learn how VergeOS’ ioClone-powered snapshot technology helps protect virtual machines and recover even to a single file. You’ll create VMs, take snapshots, and recover lost data, giving you firsthand experience with just one of VergeOS’ advanced data protection features.
  • Virtual Data Centers Lab: In this lab, you will learn how to build multi-tenant virtual data centers, deploy multiple virtual machines, and isolate workloads for enhanced security. This lab demonstrates VergeOS’ secure multi-tenant capabilities, which are crucial for businesses managing diverse workloads and requiring workload isolation.
  • More Labs Coming Soon: We’re continually expanding our lab offerings. Upcoming labs will cover the following:
    • Networking deep dive: exploring micro-segmentation, firewalls, and routers
    • NAS lab: learn how to use VergeOS’ built-in NAS capabilities
    • Ransomware Protection and Recovery Lab: to teach you how to configure VergeOS to defend against and recover from ransomware attacks with an infrastructure-wide approach
[icon name=”car” prefix=”fas”] Register to Access the Hands-On-Lab

Why These Labs Matter

VergeIO’s hands-on labs remove the typical roadblocks that IT professionals face, by addressing the challenges of testing VMware alternatives. These labs offer a real-world look at VergeOS’ ultraconverged infrastructure, which integrates virtualization, storage, and networking into a single piece of software. You’ll quickly see how VergeOS is the future of virtualization that can optimize your operations, lower costs, and improve data resiliency—without additional hardware or extensive setup.

As you progress through the labs, you’ll gain practical experience that will give you a head start when you’re ready to conduct a full Proof of Concept (PoC) with your virtual machines in your data center. The hands-on labs provide the confidence to confirm that VergeOS is the right solution for your environment. By the time you begin the PoC, you’ll already be familiar with the platform, which can significantly reduce your testing time and help you move forward with VergeOS more efficiently.

Start Exploring Today

If the challenges of testing VMware alternatives have held you back, VergeIO’s hands-on labs are your solution. These labs allow you to explore VergeOS at your own pace without requiring complex setup or additional equipment.

Ready to see for yourself? Register now to access VergeIO’s hands-on labs and explore how easy it is to migrate, protect, and manage your virtual infrastructure with VergeOS.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: ,

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Seasoned IT professionals frequently advise against using snapshots to protect VMs because of the limitations in the snapshot methodology common in today’s storage systems and software solutions. However, VergeOS has a unique approach, thanks to its integrated, cohesive operating environment that redefines the role of snapshots in data protection, making them the go-to option when administrators need to recover data.

The Challenges of Using Snapshots to Protect VMs

Despite their potential to address up to 90% of non-hardware-related recovery scenarios, snapshots are one of the most underutilized features in data protection. The core issue with today’s snapshot technologies lies in the widespread use of the redirect-on-write snapshot management method. While an improvement over the outdated copy-on-write technique, redirect-on-write still has significant challenges, particularly in modern data frameworks.

Each redirected write increases storage system overhead, which leads to noticeable performance degradation as the number of active snapshots grows. To counteract this, storage systems often require additional memory and processing power, which drives up costs. Software-based solutions, such as those provided by VMware, lack this flexibility, resulting in significant performance impacts even with a few active snapshots.

Additionally, redirect-on-write snapshots heavily depend on the integrity of preceding snapshots and the original volume. If any of these elements fail, the entire snapshot becomes unusable. This limitation directly conflicts with the 3-2-1 backup rule, which mandates maintaining three separate copies of data on two storage systems, with one copy off-site.

Common Use Cases and the Untapped Potential of Snapshots

Due to traditional snapshots’ inherent limitations, organizations often limit their use, primarily utilizing them to feed backup software. Typically, a snapshot is taken, backed up, and then deleted. This restricted use prevents snapshots from reaching their full potential in data protection.

If the limitations of snapshots could be overcome, they could significantly enhance an organization’s ability to recover from minor data loss events and major disasters.
Snapshots offer several key advantages:

  1. Speed: Snapshots can be created in milliseconds.
  2. Minimal Capacity Impact: Snapshots can be retained almost indefinitely with negligible storage impact.
  3. Instant Recovery: Since data remains on the device, recovery is almost immediate.

VergeOS and ioClone Make Using Snapshots to Protect VMs a Reality

To unlock the full potential of snapshots, the technology must overcome traditional limitations and align with the 3-2-1 backup rule by providing:

  • Independence
  • Zero Performance Impact
  • Transportability
  • Long-Term Retention
  • Single File Recovery

Using snapshots to protect VMs

VergeOS has redefined snapshot technology with its innovative approach powered by IOclone. Unlike traditional snapshots that rely on the outdated redirect-on-write method, VergeOS uses IOclone technology to create complete, independent copies of selected objects (entire instances, virtual data centers, or virtual machines). VergeOS’s integrated deduplication ensures that these snapshots are instantly optimized, making the snapshot process as fast, if not faster, than traditional methods while consuming less overall capacity. VergeOS makes using snapshots to protect VMs a viable part of any data protection strategy.

This approach means VergeOS snapshots are independent of other snapshots and the original object being snapshotted. Even if the primary object is deleted, you can mount the snapshot of that object and continue operations without interruption. Additionally, you can maintain as many active snapshots as needed and keep them for years without impacting performance.

Using snapshots to protect VMs

VergeOS’s ioGuardian, known for its real-time recovery capabilities, further enhances snapshot transportability. Because ioGuardian and VergeOS share the same deduplication algorithm, they work seamlessly together, allowing snapshots to be automatically pushed to the ioGuardian server for rapid updates and storage on a secondary in-data-center device. While most data centers back up once per night, VergeIO customers leveraging ioGuardian can create a full backup every hour without full backup capacity requirements.

These advanced snapshots, combined with VergeOS’s deduplication, also power ioReplicate for off-site data transfer. Independent snapshot schedules are supported on both ioGuardian and ioReplicate storage systems.

Finally, VergeOS snapshots provide robust single-file recovery capabilities. IT can easily mount a snapshot as a drive within a VM and copy the required file back to the production VM without any downtime. It’s a fast and straightforward process, but you don’t have to take our word for it. You can register for our latest hands-on lab to experience creating a VM, taking a snapshot, and recovering a file in action.

Conclusion

VergeOS transforms how organizations use snapshots to protect VMs by overcoming the limitations of traditional redirect-on-write snapshot technology. With features like IOclone, ioGuardian, and ioReplicate, VergeOS provides an independent, high-performing, and versatile snapshot solution ideal for using snapshots to protect VMs. This allows businesses to recover quickly from data loss events and ensures that their data protection strategies are robust and cost-effective.

If you are exploring a VMware alternative or planning a storage refresh, snapshots are just one of the many powerful features offered by VergeIO’s storage capabilities. VergeOS delivers a comprehensive suite of storage services integrated into VergeOS that are not only advanced but also highly cost-effective. Its integrated approach ensures that your infrastructure remains resilient, flexible, and ready to meet the demands of modern IT environments. Set up a whiteboard deep dive with me to learn how VergeOS can be your VMware Alternative or your next storage platform.

Book a Session

By integrating VergeOS into your IT infrastructure, you can maximize the benefits of snapshots and elevate your data protection to new heights while optimizing your storage strategy with a solution designed for the future.

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: ,

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In this demo, 21 virtual machines with internal networks, NICs, and disks are created using Terraform commands, demonstrating the speed at which a workload, even dozens of VMs and intricate networking requirements, can be created and deployed.

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