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If anybody doubts that Nutanix is steadily building its own IT market niche and ecosystem in the hyperconverged data center space, that doubt should be dispelled immediately, if not sooner.
One after another, IT companies old and new have announced support and/or partnerships with the trendy datacenter operating system provider, before and following its highly successful $238 million IPO last September. Some of the more familiar names include IBM and HPE, which have announced full server support; Cisco Systems, for networking support; and NetApp for storage support. There are others.
The latest news in this context involves Boston-based Comtrade Software, a provider of monitoring and data protection solutions specifically for hyperconverged infrastructures, which on June 20 launched something called HYCU (pronounced haiku and stands for hyperconverged uptime), the first purpose-built data protection package for Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud Platform. Job No.1 is to protect Nutanix’s Acropolis hypervisor virtual machines.
Heavy Competition in Hyperconverged Infrastructure Sector
This competes directly with conventional and relatively new data center management systems, such as those provided by VMware, Microsoft and others.
HYCU’s market differentiator is that it is built specifically for VMs that run on Nutanix’s native Acropolis hypervisor, a key part of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud platform. Commvault is the only storage software maker that supports open-source KVM-based Acropolis, which is used on about one-quarter of Nutanix instances.
DevOps types may be interested in this: Comtrade claims that HYCU deploys in less than three minutes and provides a service that auto-detects applications running in virtual machines (VM) and makes them transparent to the infrastructure teams. With this new level of visibility, HYCU makes sure that no critical applications are left unprotected. This is a key problem for enterprises planning for, or currently moving into, cloud and HCI architectures in data center upgrade initiatives.
“Companies have benefited tremendously from the latest hyperconverged architectures, yet have been constrained by legacy data protection solutions,” Comtrade President Simon Taylor said. “In developing HYCU, we are ushering in a new way of protecting in an HCI environment.”
Key benefits of HYCU are as follows, according to Comtrade:
- Automated and focused on application transparency: Using a patent-pending application-awareness approach, Comtrade said HYCU is the industry’s only automated application discovery solution that provides newfound visibility into VMs, pinpointing where each application is running. HYCU also creates application-specific recovery workflows so IT administrators are able to back up applications with a single click; an automated self-service portal enables business users to manage their own data.
- Deploys and recovers in minutes with little to no disruption: With almost no learning curve for IT administrators since the usability and terminology aligns with Nutanix technology, HYCU takes about four minutes of ramp-up learning, three minutes to deploy and two minutes to recover identified data. Because this API-driven solution is tightly integrated with Nutanix, HYCU provides an automated application recovery of workflows and tasks that can be implemented without the need for professional services.
- Aids existing infrastructure investments: HYCU complements the Nutanix platform with full data protection capabilities, allowing enterprises to use Nutanix AHV to eliminate the need for a hypervisor license and greatly improving the ROI of investments in Nutanix.
Pricing, Availability
HYCU is currently available worldwide through Comtrade partners. Pricing starts at $999 per socket.
For more information, go here.
Comtrade will be demonstrating products at the Nutanix .NEXT Conference 2017 in Washington, D.C., June 28 to 30.