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Application performance specialist Riverbed Technology announced the release of the latest product in its Granite product family, designed to provide a solution for server and data consolidation. The Granite 2.5 and Steelhead EX 1360 model appliances are expected to be generally available in Q3 2013.
The update includes Granite 2.5 software that adds support for Fibre Channel to its existing iSCSI support, enabling Granite solutions to now support more than 90 percent of the current enterprise-class storage array market. Granite 2.5 also improves data protection with automated snapshots and simplified support for existing data-center class backup and recovery software.
“Data growth and infrastructure shifts continue to hamper IT’s ability to meet all protection, retention and compliance requirements. Addressing all these data protection challenges requires a holistic approach,” Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at ESG, said in a statement. “Silos in technology add to the cost and complexity while reducing productivity and increasing risk of data loss. IT needs to give end users the tools they need to be successful while IT keeps oversight and control.”
The release builds upon EMC E-Lab qualifying Granite with EMC VMAX in 2012 and the recently completed EMC E-Lab qualification of Granite with EMC VNX in June 2013. The performance of Granite 2.5 can be further enhanced with the addition of the purpose-built Steelhead EX 1360 model appliance, on which Granite can be hosted. The Steelhead EX 1360 model appliance is designed to offer businesses greater capacity and performance for consolidating larger data stores back to the data center.
The release is further designed to simplify data protection through support of backup and recovery software solutions such as Symantec NetBackup. Granite 2.5 also offers an enhanced centralized management user interface and simplified scheduling of hourly, daily or weekly application snapshots executed in the branch office and captured in the data center.
In essence, by consolidating data out of the branch and into the data center, Granite helps enable businesses to eliminate branch backup and recovery systems, shifting data protection operations to the secure data center and leaving data protection to skilled storage personnel.
“We see the expanded flexibility of Granite 2.5 in the data center as a big win – both from a storage and a data protection standpoint,” Mike Rinken, director of IT at Mazzetti, an engineering design and consulting firm, said in a statement. “In our business where large CAD files have been moving toward a more collaborative parametric modeling data set, more resources for Granite Edge appliances make perfect sense. We can consolidate even more data and still make sure branch users get the local performance they need to be effective. We’re excited to have the flexibility of utilizing Fibre Channel storage and how Riverbed is extending their storage footprint by offering more robust devices.”