Riverbed Whitewater

The Riverbed Whitewater device is intended for acceleration of work of the cloud storage systems used for the purposes of backup and archiving of data. Having provided instruments of optimization and deduplication of data for a cloud environment, the Riverbed company provides to the organizations the fast, protected and cost-efficient method of integration of cloud storage systems with the existing infrastructure of backup and the strategy of disaster recovery, without prejudice to security.

For the modern enterprises with constantly growing amounts of data existence of reliable infrastructure of backup and the strategy of disaster recovery is crucial. The operating strategy usually combine backup on local disks and other systems of long-term storage, for example, on virtual tape libraries (VTL) and tape drives. Though these strategy provide required result, they are rather difficult in management and require big capital investments. The enterprises aim to improve the strategy of data protection due to use of cloud storage systems which allow in the safe mode to move data out of limits of the enterprise without the need for investments into creation of a reserve data processing center, at the same time to reduce system recovery time, to reduce expenses on backup and to pay data storage in process of service use. The Whitewater device provides an easy and effective way of data movement out of limits of the enterprise in the cloud storage systems placed on the resources EMC Atmos, AT&T Synaptic Storage as a ServiceSM, and Amazon S3.

Whitewater allows to work with services of Niranix company, service provider of "cloud" data storage of a corporate class. Besides, with implementation of support of the solutions EMC NetWorker, Quest vRanger and CA ARCserve Backup the Whitewater platform allows to work with the majority of the main backup tools of data now.

Due to support of the services of storage offered by service providers in different regions, Whitewater provides to the enterprises a possibility of the choice of "cloud" service of storage which would fully conform to their requirements to procedures of disaster recovery, to placement of storage systems, to agreements on the service level and to the price, noted in Riverbed. So, support of Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network (SDN), along with EMC Atmos and Amazon S3 services, will allow customers of Whitewater to be connected to Nirvanix SDN and to use locally available "cloud" storage systems placed in the USA, Germany, Ireland, Japan or in Switzerland.

The Nirvanix SDN service represents "cloud" storage system of a corporate class where for the fixed monthly payment unlimited opportunities for loading and unloading of big files are provided. The solution is constructed based on a cluster of seven data processing centers of an operator class — a global network of the interconnected nodes which constantly exchange data with each other. The combination of Nirvanix SDN services and the Whitewater platform creates the protected direct system of backup providing to customers replication with high availability and with a possibility of instant data access from any region of the world. If necessary the capacity of a direct system can be increased or reduced, with optimization depending on available space (capacity optimized) and the improved access rate, at the same time customers pay only for the used resources.

As it was noted above, the Whitewater platform, along with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec, now also provides support of solutions EMC NetWorker, Quest vRanger and CA ARCserve Backup. Thus, Whitewater supports about three quarters of all global market of backup systems. According to the company, Whitewater is integrated with the storage systems placed in public "cloud" infrastructure thanks to what the enterprises can use such systems without change of already debugged softwares and backup procedures.

The solution Whitewater acts as a direct system for the backup existing at the software enterprise and does not require expensive integration or a difficult configuration. The organizations have an opportunity to use different tools for backup implementation, and these tools for operational disaster recovery can replace in need of any the moment, working in the conditions of "cloud" infrastructure. The Whitewater setup for data transfer in "cloud" takes no more than an hour, providing fast return of investments, claim in Riverbed. Besides, the extensive ecosystem of Whitewater allows the organizations at emergence of new requirements with ease to change service providers of cloud data storage.

In October, 2011 Riverbed Technology announced expansion of an ecosystem Riverbed Whitewater, family of gateways for protection of infrastructure of cloud data storage. Now the gateways Riverbed support more than fifteen cloud storage systems, software products and solutions for protection of crucial databases – thus for the last six months of Riverbed expanded the ecosystem three times.

Now solutions for cloud data storage Windows Azure, Rackspace Cloud Files and OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) were added to an ecosystem of Whitewater; the software for backup CommVault Simpana for Backup and Recovery, HP Data Protector and Veeam Backup & Replication; and also solutions for protection of crucial databases Microsoft SQL Server backup and restore and Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN). Having offered the customers a bigger choice and additional flexibility, Riverbed provides them confidence upon transition to cloud storage systems. Now customers have an opportunity to improve the strategy of data protection in the best way to meet requirements of the organization wherever there were data and whatever solutions for their protection were used.

"The organizations try to develop effective strategies of data protection, mainly, because of the impetuous growth of amounts of data and in connection with expansion of the global structure. The appeared not so long ago cloud storage systems are the next logical stage in development of means of protecting of data and allow the organizations to reduce costs and to move a burden of management on third-party service providers, – Bob Laliberte, the senior analyst in Enterprise Strategy Group says. – Increase in amounts of data toughens requirements to backup window parameters. With this announcement of Riverbed represents the new level of support of third-party service providers of cloud data storage and decision makers for data backup. All this facilitates to the organizations work with cloud storage systems and allows them to achieve scalability, flexibility and cost efficiency without making changes in the existing processes and solutions of backup. In turn, it allows the organizations to execute and even to exceed corporate agreements on the service level".

Support of Cloud Object Storage HP service

On September 3, 2012 the Riverbed Technology company announced that the family of gateways of cloud data storage Whitewater supports Cloud Object Storage HP service, one of cloud services of HP of Cloud Services now. Now the organizations implementing the gateways Whitewater can as the solution for cloud data storage select Cloud Object Storage HP service that will allow to meet their requirements to the procedure of disaster recovery (DR, disaster recovery). Emergence of support of HP of Cloud Object Storage in the growing ecosystem of the gateways Whitewater expands possibilities of Riverbed and allows to provide to the organizations unsurpassed flexibility and the choice at upgrade of infrastructure of data protection and when replacing tape drives with the fast, protected and cost-efficient cloud services of data storage.

Created especially for data protection, the gateways Whitewater perform deduplication, compression and data encryption that allows to cut down the expenses connected with use of the systems of cloud data storage. Using the gateways Whitewater of the organization can easily and safely take advantage of cloud computing: economy of scale, flexibility, scalability, convenient options of tariffing with payment for the used resources, without the need for change of the existing infrastructure. All this allows to exempt data protection specialists from accomplishment of labor-intensive backup procedures of data on tape drives and from management of tape infrastructure, without stopping at the same time work of the organization.

"Implementation of the gateways Whitewater and cloud services of HP of Cloud Services allows the organizations to remove excess administrative loading and to avoid the costs connected with use of tape technologies. Now Cloud Services HP services can be used as the budget solution for backup data storage, – Ray Villeneuve, the general manager of division of Whitewater in Riverbed® says. – Real-time replication which is performed by the gateways Whitewater considerably improves readiness of the organization for disaster recovery, simplifies work of IT infrastructure and allows to ensure the high level of performance, safety and reliability which is required to customers. The companies unrolling the gateways Whitewater together with cloud services of HP of Cloud Services get advantages of rapid and simple implementation, without making changes in the existing infrastructure and also technical support and world-class service".

The gateways Whitewater are connected directly to the software products, most popular in the industry, for data protection and also to application programming interfaces (API) of the leading suppliers of cloud computing, and at the same time do not require expensive integration or a difficult configuration. In certain cases the organizations can install the gateways Whitewater and begin data transfer in a cloud less than for an hour. The extensive ecosystem of Whitewater provides to the organizations high flexibility in the choice of suppliers of cloud services. The organizations which implemented the gateways Whitewater together with a cloud service of HP of Cloud Object Storage receive a high-performance, uniform, flexible and safe solution for cloud data storage.

Whitewater Operating System (WWOS) of version 2.0

The Riverbed Technology company provided in the fall of 2012 the new Whitewater model – the hardware gateway for cloud data storage which allows to process still large volumes of data of backup. In comparison with the previous models the new device has four times big disk space and is equipped twice with the large volume of RAM.

Besides, Riverbed released OS of new generation Whitewater Operating System (WWOS) of version 2.0 for all models of Whitewater devices which is designed to provide performance of the corporate level, high scalability and the simplified administration.

Gateways of cloud data storage, similar Whitewater, allow the organizations to involve quickly all potential and flexibility of cloud computing, providing them a possibility of safe management and protection of business information and personal data of clients.

Whitewater devices eliminate the need for tape drives, raise degree of readiness for transactions of disaster recovery (disaster recovery, DR) and are integrated with the existing software applications for data protection, allowing to cut down expenses on 30–50% in comparison with solutions based on tape drives or a replitsirovaniye of disks. The model of remote tapeless data backup allows administrators to get rid of routine operations on creation of backup copies. To implement the Whitewater device and to begin data transfer in a cloud, less than an hour then the organizations can connect the most popular applications for data protection with services from suppliers of cloud computing – without change of the existing infrastructure, regulations or the politician is required.

In upgraded version of WWOS 2.0 there was a number of the new features increasing efficiency and reliability of backup and data recovery and also providing the centralized administration and remote support:

• The increased capacity – complete backup copies of a bigger size are supported. During the work with the Whitewater 3010 structure of the enterprise receive up to 32 Tbyte of deduplitsirovanny local space and up to 160 Tbyte of deduplitsirovanny space in a cloud that allows to reserve initial data with a capacity from 1.6 to 4.8 PBytes.
• The increased capacity (Ingest Performance) – that backup procedures kept within the taken-away backup windows, the WWOS 2.0 operating system provides the increased data transmission performance – in certain cases for 50% in comparison with the previous models.
• Control panel – in the new version monitors in real time and expanded tools for the reporting are available.
• Remote control – the technology of remote control allows to reboot, switch off and control operation of one or several Whitewater devices.
• The pro-active notification – it is possible to customize the system notifying administrators on expected achievement of critical values.
• Integration into Windows Active Directory – perhaps centralized operation by access for users to Whitewater devices using existing the politician and the Windows Active Directory systems.