Hello, data archiving processes? It’s the 21st century calling. Gone are the days where you have to eject tapes from the finicky library, pack them in boxes and ship them off to a secure location. Beyond the cost of the vaulting service, you could spend considerable time and risk embarrassing data leakage by sending physical tapes on an uncertain journey. Not to mention recovering your data … call up the Mountain, ask for the tape, have it shipped, inject the tape into the library, and recover the data. All while the dour compliance officer drums their fingers on your desk.
Backup Exec and AWS Storage Gateway Virtual Tape Library (VTL) streamline this process: Storage Gateway replaces creaky tape infrastructure with durable, affordable online storage, and Backup Exec allows you to keep your workflows intact: use the same data sources, archiving schedules, and storage lifecycle policies. By eliminating error-prone tapes, it’s possible to reduce maintenance costs of aging, on premise hardware and save time and effort caused by manual processes. And the cherry on top: your data is more secure with no physical transport, double-encrypted storage and nine nines of availability.
Easiest way to see this working is watch the joint AWS-Veritas demonstration video here.
From BE’s perspective, Storage Gateway is an iSCSI-attached tape library, with the media changer (“robotic arm”) and one or more emulated tape drives visible. It’s a simple matter of configuring virtual “tapes” in the AWS Storage Gateway Console and making them available to the Backup Exec server. Up to 1500 tapes (or 1 PB of data) can be made immediately accessible on S3 storage in the VTL, and an unlimited number of tapes can be archived in Glacier for low-cost, long-term retention. Once Backup Exec sees the tapes via media scan, you can begin writing data immediately. Use your standard archiving schedule and storage lifecycle policies to make archive copies of your data, according to your organization’s data and regulatory policies.
Support for Storage Gateway and Backup Exec demonstrates the recent strategic relationship between Amazon and Veritas, which cements joint commitment to advanced storage management in the AWS universe.
With no additional license to purchase (VTL and tape drive access is included in the core Backup Exec license as well as the Capacity, Capacity Lite and V-Ray Editions), organizations only pay for actual S3 and Glacier storage and retrievals. Add this to Backup Exec’s trusted unified data protection across virtual, physical and cloud (“One Backup to Rule them All”), and you have a top-notch solution for protecting all your organization’s data, whether on-premise or in AWS cloud.
Amazon offers a generous trial program that allows new users to deploy a Storage Gateway instance. You can also download and install Backup Exec 16, which includes a free 60-day license.