Total transparency: I am an employee, but these are my own opinions. I was a sales engineer for 12 years, but now in our marketing group.
1). can the Veritas Access appliance be attached to any media server as MSDP pool? Or we have to buy Flex media as a gateway?
A: One can have optimized data movement from any media server, either build-your-own or NBU appliance. There are many ways to use the Access Appliance (3340), but the most popular setup: one or more media servers sending optimized dedup to 3340 for long term retenetion (LTR). The 3340 is much more storage dense than the other NBU appliances, and is designed to compete with on-site or off-site tape. Customers typically send data to a media server with some shorter-term retention (days to weeks), then copy to the 3340 for LTR.
2). will the Veritas access be used as advance disk pool or dedu pool? will any additional DDPO license be needed?
A: I can't remeber exactly, but probably a dedup pool type storage unit. Some customers need to send un-dedupable data and choose to use the 3340's ability to be an S3 target. But most commen is an LTR dedup pool. Remember, data must first be sent to a media server, either client-side or media server dedup, then it can be sent to 3340 for LTR.
Veritas NBU DDPO (or Capacity-based licensing) allows customers to make as many copies or movemets of the data as their business requires. As long as the orginial data was included into the DDPO capacity, then no addtional DDPO licensing is required.
3. Veritas proposed a option with media server, flex appliance and access appliance. Since we have enough media servers. can we only purchase flex and access appliance, or only add access appliance to our solutions?
A: I can't answer that question without knowing a lot more information about current and future state requirements. To use a 3340 as a secondary dedup target, you only need a NBU primary dedup target. There may be very good reasons for the proposal of other appliances in addtion to the 3340: total cost of ownership; performace requriements; infrastructure inprovements/modernization.
3. Can we set up flex and access appliances by ourself or need Veritas professional services? we are handy on NAS/SAN storage.
A: The 3340 (as with all appliacnes) come with basic rack/stack services and base network config. If this was your 3rd or 4th NBU appliance, then maybe addtional services are not as important. Again, there are many reasons for professional services: staff augmentation; time to value; knowledge transfer among others.
Regarding Access software-only option: this option is mostly for institutions that are building our thier own infrastructure, like large bank or telcos. For your use case, the 3340 appliance is definitly the best route.
For clarification: Flex appliances are just a particual kind of NBU appliance, where the NBU bits have been containerized. Too much to go into details here.
Hope that answers your questions.
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My customers spend the weekends at home with family, not in the datacenter.
