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Five Reasons Why Multicloud Snapshot Technology (MST) for Disaster Recovery is a Game Changer

By Pranesh Neelakrishnan (Sr. Product Manager MST, BCDR)

June 18, 2024 | min

The Nutanix Multicloud Snapshot Technology (MST) capability reimagines how application-centric storage snapshots can be distributed, managed, and restored across hybrid multicloud endpoints.  With MST, snapshots can be offloaded from Nutanix primary storage, and you will be able to store them directly to objects storage, such as AWS S3, Nutanix Objects Storage* solution, and others in the future, and then restore your workloads anywhere the Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) solution is running.

What truly separates MST from long-term legacy storage solutions is its tight coupling with the Nutanix Disaster Recovery (DR) engine, which speeds the rehydration of data from object storage to primary infrastructure.

MST diagram

When a user needs access to application data stored in a snapshot in long-term storage, Nutanix MST quickly orchestrates the rehydration of that data into a live cluster on-premises or in the public cloud. This ensures fully native recovery from object storage without a third party integration. 

Read on to find out about the top five compelling reasons why MST for DR will be a real game-changer:

1. Built-In UI workflows to craft protection policies and recovery plans*

Practical DR solutions must easily integrate with existing workflows, and with MST you will be able to utilize the built-in protection policy creation and recovery plan automation to meet this fundamental requirement. You can adopt MST with a minimal learning curve (as seen in the diagram below). You can simply choose a MST target (e.g. S3 bucket) as a protection policy target and start protecting entities on object storage. It’s as simple as that!

Once the MST target is paired with the primary location, you can establish protection policies effortlessly and direct snapshots to object stores using the existing DR UI workflows. This simplicity extends to recovery plans also, allowing you to easily configure failover workflows to ensure seamless rehydration of snapshots from MST targets during planned, unplanned, or test failover scenarios.

MST UI workflow

2. Optimizing TCO through perpetual node reductions*

With MST, you will be able to offload entity snapshots, which do not require steady-state perpetual compute nodes, to object storage (e.g. S3 bucket). MST protected workloads can be recovered using on-demand compute nodes, which are deployed only during DR events. 

With the MST solution, you’ll be able to achieve TCO savings through:

  • Reduced perpetual-node requirements 
  • Optimized node form factors (e.g. transitioning from storage heavy to compute heavy nodes)

You can also optimize TCO by offloading older snapshots from primary cluster storage to objects storage, such as the Nutanix Objects Storage solution or AWS S3.

3. Native solution that requires no additional integrations

Nutanix MST for DR is natively integrated with the Nutanix software stack. This distinctive feature empowers you to easily replicate snapshots directly to the object storage of your choice without the complexities of additional integrations.

Nutanix native integration minimizes the potential for surprises in the following ways:

  • Eliminate the need for third-party licensing and agents for snapshotting to object storage
  • Rehydrate snapshots wherever NCP runs without the need for entity format conversations to run workloads in various clouds

By subjecting new features to rigorous testing across the entire stack, Nutanix ensures robust performance and reliability.

4. Scale recovery sites as needed

Deploying MST with the Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) platform gives you the flexibility to scale up on-demand without the constraints of costly hardware commitments. The MST DR solution integrates with existing comprehensive end-to-end solutions which are strategically aligned with hyperscalers, and play a pivotal role in delivering the scalability you require, reducing your capital expenditures. Scaling up and scaling down nodes on your cloud cluster is very simple with built in NC2 UI workflows. 

MST with the Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) platform

5. Strategically aligned with the hybrid multicloud future

Nutanix MST for DR is a great opportunity for you to delve into the benefits of hybrid multicloud architectures. MST opens up new deployment options in conjunction with on-prem, cloud and the edge. MST will also make it easy to move snapshots between different clouds seamlessly with the Nutanix platform.

Questions? Please reach out to your account manager or mst-help@nutanix.com to learn more and request a demo!

*substrates/features that will be qualified in the upcoming releases

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