Over time IT professionals have seen the technology we most need change dramatically. Though seemingly small and simple, backup appliances in the data center can be added to our lives with little or no effort, perform with little outside intervention needed, provide significant time savings and generally require no configuration. Because of the simplicity they provide, appliances can free-up resources in your enterprise in ways you may not even imagine.
ROLE OF APPLIANCES
So what role do these small but mighty backup appliances play in a data center? The answer isn’t simple as there are many. A Purpose Built Backup Appliance (PBBA) can help enable application availability, provide dynamic backup, and assist in rapid data recovery, all integrated into a single appliance. Although their uses are many, their true strength lies in appliances’ ability to merge separate, independent components, simplifying the world of the data center and eliminating multiple legacy systems and mitigating data center sprawl, which can be the source of increasingly burdensome operating expenses.
SIMPLE AND NIMBLE
The ability to bring simplicity to a data center is the appliance’s biggest advantage. In much the same way that multiple virtual machines can now exist on a single piece of hardware, so too can an appliance integrate multiple hardware components in one physical box, freeing up IT resources and infrastructure for other purposes. This function becomes even more valuable when you consider that more than 50% of IT departments within enterprise are keeping their staff levels flat. Simplified management frees IT departments to focus on other critical tasks like managing their information or supporting strategic business initiatives.
Simplified management of information can also make networks more nimble. For example, consider a backup appliance such as the NetBackup 5230. By utilizing deduplication and consolidating the backup of cloud, virtual, and physical systems, this appliance makes the data backup more nimble. This in turn leads to a more flexible data center capable of spinning up applications and virtual machines with secure backup more rapidly.
Simplicity is just one of the primary benefits of adding an appliance to a data center. In our next post, we’ll explore the second primary benefit: cost savings. If you’re considering adding an appliance to your data center, both of these benefits are going to be crucial to your research. Make sure you’re following along.
