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Nutanix Reimagines Business Continuity for Hybrid Multicloud Users

New Multicloud Snapshot Technology™ Launched at .Next

By Ed Collins and Sneha Chaturvedula

May 9, 2023 | min

Nutanix Multicloud Snapshot Technology™ (MST) reimagines how application-centric storage snapshots can be distributed, managed, and restored across hybrid multicloud endpoints.  

This new technology, which is under development, will allow snapshots to be intelligently offloaded from Nutanix primary storage, be written directly to S3-compatible object storage, including hyperscaler offerings such as Amazon AWS S3 and Microsoft Azure Blobs, and finally be restored anywhere the Nutanix Cloud Platform is running.

Introducing Hybrid Multicloud to Snapshot Management

Every primary storage system faces the challenge of maintaining performance as the number of snapshots increases. The Nutanix Multicloud Snapshot Technology (MST) will recognize that many snapshots are not regularly accessed and could be offloaded to free up performance and capacity from the primary storage infrastructure. Nutanix MST will present a global unified object storage snapshot target so that snapshots can be moved to lower cost S3-compatible storage for long-term retention. 

One of the most interesting aspects of MST will be the ability to subsequently recover to any location where Nutanix Cloud Platform is running.  This will open up new DR and Business Continuity models that can be delivered across edge, data center, hosted provider, or even public cloud endpoints.  

MST opens up new hybrid cloud use cases

This new technology will create exciting new use cases for Nutanix customers.

  • Offload Primary Storage: Create snapshots  and replicate to any S3-compatible object store to offload primary storage.
  • Introduce Cross-cloud recovery of apps and data: Replicate to cloud-native S3 targets and then recover to Nutanix Cloud Platform endpoints
  • Reduce long-term snapshot storage costs: Leverage low-cost S3-compatible storage for snapshots not in active use.
  • Extend snapshot retention for ransomware protection or to meet regulatory compliance: Archive snapshots safely, securely, and indefinitely to meet business and regulatory policies.
  • Collaboration: Share snapshots across test and development teams to support agile development workflows. 
Nutanix Data Services for Kubernetes (NDK)

Not All Data Is Created Equal

Snapshots are a critical part of a business continuity strategy. Ransomware threats, increased regulatory requirements, and agile development processes are all  placing performance, capacity, and cost strains on traditional business continuity procedures. 

MST will open up new hybrid cloud snapshot management, storage, and recovery use cases that can help businesses solve for longer retention of more snapshots.  Object storage, often up to four times cheaper than files or blocks, is ideally suited  for storing long snapshot chains.

Lower TCO with Efficient Compute Utilization

A key use case of Nutanix MST, which separates it from traditional long-term storage solutions, will be tight coupling with the Nutanix Disaster Recovery engine which speeds the rehydration of data from object storage to primary infrastructure. When a user needs access to application data stored in a snapshot in long-term storage, Nutanix MST will quickly orchestrate the rehydration of that data into a live cluster, whether on-prem or in the public cloud. This tight integration provides recovery in a few hours instead of days as compared to traditional S3 backup.

Nutanix MST will also leverage the rentable cloud for DR so that compute instances are only required in the case of an actual disaster event.  Because it will only spin up compute resources as required, users will be able to store snapshots in object stores on public cloud providers while timing the spin up of a Nutanix Cloud Cluster (NC2) and rehydration of data to an event.  This will provide compute savings on top of the storage cost savings realized from using lower cost object storage. 

Breathe a Sigh of Relief - Hybrid Multicloud Snapshots are the Future

For customers wrestling with the cost and performance challenges of managing more snapshots with longer retention time, Nutanix MST will introduce new hybrid multicloud use cases for replicating, offloading, and recovering from snapshots with a single consistent operating model across hybrid multicloud endpoints.  

Learn more about Nutanix Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery here

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