Storage firm Vast Data Inc. said today it’s partnering with the data protection and management provider Commvault Systems Inc. on a modern, integrated backup service for organizations worried about looming cybersecurity threats, disasters or rogue employees.

The new service combines Vast Data’s all-flash Universal Storage platform with Commvault’s Complete Data Protection offering to create rapid backups and restores for instant recovery at low cost.

Vast Data’s Universal Storage platform is designed to replace customer’s existing flash and disk systems. Those arrays traditionally have a dual role, storing data while performing low-level operations such as compressing that information. Universal Storage splits these responsibilities between two distinct components, with flash storage storing the actual data, and a cluster of servers used to perform more computationally intensive data operations faster than traditional arrays can.

This unique architecture, consisting of hardware and management software, means storage and compute capacity can be added separately, enabling the platform to scale up to support multiple petabytes of information. The company claims it can reduce the amount of capacity needed to store corporate data by up to 90%, while ensuring the integrity of those records is maintained.

As for Commvault, it primarily sells data protection software that enables companies to recover business records in the event of technical issues or cyberattacks. It also sells data management tools that help enterprises manage the storage infrastructure used by their applications more efficiently.

Vast Data will work with Commvault to offer its customers more protection while still providing the high performance to drive data insights and analytics that it’s known for. As of today, it is now a Commvault Technology Alliances Partner, meaning its Universal Storage platform has been certified to work with Commvault’s Complete Data Protection Suite.

The company said the combination of Universal Storage with Commvault enables a backup restore performance increase of eight times, with 40% lower costs than legacy, purpose-built backup appliances. It also provides greater efficiency, Vast Data said, bringing the effective cost of flash storage in line with that of older hard-drive disk storage. The company further claims a lower total cost of ownership, with a 10-year warranty on its platform compared to the industry average of a three- to five-year refresh cycle for backup systems.

Universal Storage users will also be able to tap Commvault’s analytics offerings around data compliance and governance, enabling e-discovery and audits of sensitive data, as well as anomaly detection to mitigate cyber threats, Vast Data said.

As part of the partnership, Vast Data and Commvault have also created a joint reference architecture customers can follow to implement their combined offering.

George Axberg, Vast Data’s vice president of data protection, said data protection is no longer about just checking a few boxes to say individual files and systems can be recovered. “Organizations now must plan to recover all of their critical systems if they want to resume normal business operations after a large-scale cyber attack, natural disaster or rogue actor,” he said.

Image: Vast Data