World Backup Day is a timely reminder that data loss is still a threat—and that most IT environments still rely on traditional backup software to stay safe. But what if your IT infrastructure didn’t need conventional backup strategies?
What if your virtual infrastructure could natively withstand drive failures, server outages, ransomware attacks, or even a complete site loss—without relying on third-party backup applications or complex recovery workflows?
That’s the promise of VergeOS, a replacement for legacy hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platforms. It is designed for resilience from the ground up. With VergeOS, backup software becomes optional, not essential. Traditional backups shift from a daily requirement to a long-term archival tool.
Resilience Begins at the Core
VergeOS integrates data protection, storage, virtualization, and networking, unlike legacy infrastructure, into a unified platform. Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) is a new architectural model that consolidates core IT functions into a single, self-protecting platform. It requires no external backup tools and no add-on orchestration layers. VergeOS delivers resilience by design.
VergeOS runs like firmware and injects a read-write operating environment only, when Virtual Data Centers (VDCs) are deployed. This approach hardens the entire platform and reduces the attack surface for ransomware and malware.
Protection from Drive Failures
Protection continues at the storage layer with distributed mirroring. VergeOS ensures that every write is simultaneously committed to multiple physical drives across various nodes. This eliminates the need for expensive RAID hardware and slow RAID rebuilds. It also avoids the bottlenecks associated with parity-based protection while providing seamless recovery from individual drive failures without user intervention.
Protection from Multiple Simultaneous Failures
For environments that demand an even higher level of resilience, VergeOS includes ioGuardian, a built-in mechanism designed to protect against multiple simultaneous failures. Whether it’s multiple drives failing within a node, across nodes, or losing multiple nodes, ioGuardian dynamically distributes data and metadata with added fault isolation to preserve availability. It continually evaluates health status across the cluster and adjusts real-time data placement and mirroring to maintain complete protection. With ioGuardian, VergeOS doesn’t just survive failure—it adapts to it, maintaining integrity and uptime in even the most extreme scenarios.
Protection from Accidental Deletion
Sometimes, users make mistakes, or applications corrupt data. World Backup Day proponents will suggest that protection from accidental deletion is where backup software shines, but a well-protected infrastructure software solution should protect against more than hardware failures. VergeOS includes a powerful snapshot mechanism based on its ioClone technology. Unlike legacy snapshot technologies that introduce latency or consume excessive storage, ioClone leverages VergeOS’ Global Inline Deduplication, which is fully integrated with the file system.
Administrators can take VM-level, Virtual Data Center-level, or entire instance-wide snapshots multiple times per hour and retain them indefinitely without impacting performance. VergeOS also includes an integrated scheduling tool that allows snapshots to be created and retained according to organizational policies or regulatory requirements. These snapshots can all be drilled into to provide granular recovery—entire VDCs, VMs, or even individual files—in seconds.
Our hands-on labs will show you exactly how VergeOS data protection works.
High Availability Without External Dependencies
VergeOS also handles compute resilience natively. High Availability is built into the platform, allowing workloads to automatically shift to healthy nodes in the event of server failure. There’s no need for external clustering software or external shared storage configurations.
Protection From Ransomware
Security events like ransomware are also addressed directly within the platform. VDCs limit the attack surface, preventing ransomware from spreading beyond the VDC it first enters. ioFortify alerts you to an attack within five to ten minutes of it starting, enabling you to identify the best known-good state snapshot for almost instant recovery from an attack.
Protection From Full-Site Failure
Despite what World Backup Day proponents suggest, backups alone are not DR. When you need to protect the organization from full-site failure, VergeOS includes ioReplicate. With Virtual Data Centers and the integrated VergeFabric networking, ioReplicate enables seamless failover to a secondary site. VergeOS handles IP failover via BGP and maintains workload isolation and configuration across sites. Disaster recovery doesn’t require a separate orchestration layer—it’s already part of the platform.
Eliminate Backup Software—and Its Costs
This level of built-in protection eliminates the need for traditional backup software and its licensing fees. It also allows organizations to eliminate the complexity of maintaining a separate backup infrastructure. When customers switch to VergeOS, they free themselves from VMware’s ever-increasing licensing fees—and from paying for backup software they no longer need.
Don’t Back Up. Build Differently.
This World Backup Day, it’s time to rethink what data protection should look like. Instead of building more backup infrastructure, consider building production infrastructure that doesn’t depend on it.
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