Greg White is a Senior Manager of Product Marketing, focusing on Data Management and Protection. He has worked in in the technology industry in brand and product marketing for the last nine years helping organizations of all sizes, verticals and geographies solve their IT challenges. Over the last five years, Greg has gained specific knowledge and experience in the enterprise application and storage areas where he has helped businesses find solutions for their data growth, data management, and data protection problems.

Jeff Dorr is a Senior Manager currently focused on data protection product marketing for CommVault. Over the past 10 years, Jeff has led efforts in several companies to develop, introduce, and manage market leading hardware, software, and services that really help users improve their data protection environment.

IntelliSnap™ Connect Program Broadens the Appeal of Array-Based Snapshots

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

By Jeff Dorr

The use of array-based snapshots is increasing in environments where data pools have grown too large or backup/recovery times have shrunk so small that traditional streaming techniques are no longer viable. However, not all snapshot tools are created equal and few actually tie into more comprehensive data management platforms. The result of this standalone approach is typically a point solution that works well for a narrow task, but still needs complex scripting and technical workarounds to get the desired results. CommVault established its SnapProtect® technology over two years ago to help customers take the guesswork out of snapshot management and overcome these barriers.

Today, CommVault introduced its IntelliSnap™ Connect Program. Program details can be found on our website. The primary goals of the program are to:

1. Make the benefits of SnapProtect and hardware based snapshot technology available to more users,
2. Make it easier for customers to fully realize the protection capabilities of their specific disk arrays, and
3. Enable our partners to rapidly develop innovative solutions, differentiate their storage platforms and gain advantages in a competitive marketplace

Growing array vendors like Nimble and XIO have joined this open development program so that they can more easily integrate their array-based snapshot solutions with CommVault's SnapProtect technology and provide a differentiated product to the market faster, while vendors like Dell, HDS, and NetApp helped establish the foundation for the IntelliSnap Connect Program through their earlier SnapProtect integration efforts.

But what will the IntelliSnap Connect Program really mean to the average customer concerned with data protection? Simpana software already offers the industry's most comprehensive compatibility matrix for hardware snapshot management without custom scripting or solution modifications. In fact, SnapProtect technology has supported 9 of the top 10 selling snapshot enabled storage arrays over the past 18 months. And has supported all 10 when you consider the IBM DS8000 supported by their SVC virtualization appliance in an Open Systems environment.

Anecdotal feedback from customers and prospects indicates that IT leaders do recognize the benefits of using snapshot technologies for backup/ recovery of data, but that adoption by mainstream customers is evolving. Opportunities exist for IT vendors to make the benefits of snapshot technology and modern data protection accessible to more customers and practical for mainstream environments. Are you using or considering snapshot technology for your data protection needs? If not, what is holding you back?

Jeff Dorr is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at CommVault.

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