As secondary volumes continue to grow exponentially, backing up, managing, and gaining insights from that data has never been more important for enterprises as it is today — especially if you think about disaster recovery, compliance, security and using that data to drive better customer experiences. But, as secondary data volumes continue to grow, so does another problem, which is mass data fragmentation, where data is so siloed (on-prem, in the cloud, and at the edge) that it’s nearly impossible to manage or derive insights from long term.
Mohit Aron, CEO of Cohesity (formerly co-founder and CTO of Nutanix), saw this mass data fragmentation problem years ago (2013) and created a true hyperconverged platform to directly address this issue — where customers can get rid of these data silos and easily manage backups, archives, analytics, testing and development, file shares, and object stores from a single pane of glass. This hyperconverged solution—available today—has changed the game in data management for scores of customers globally who are ditching legacy solutions in droves, embracing this more modern approach.
However, now, multiple vendors are desperately trying to also solve this data fragmentation problem by cobbling together a solution that they claim is hyperconverged secondary storage. Of course we’re flattered that they are finally embracing Mohit’s vision of hyperconverged secondary storage, but what they’ve come up with is really a mishmash of legacy products with a “semi-functional” management interface that is closer to “convergence” (circa 2009) than anything else.
Mass data fragmentation didn’t begin yesterday, and in fact has become more and more of a critical challenge over an extended period of time. Such a complex problem requires an authentic platform that is built from the ground up to not only bring these data silos together, but to make backup data and applications more productive—again—all from a single pane of glass. As you look to solve your mass data fragmentation challenges, we thought it would be helpful to provide a list of the top 10 questions you should ask vendors as you evaluate their claims of a hyperconverged secondary storage solution for your data.
As you embark on your journey to get data proliferation under control, the above questions will help you find the right solution to solve mass data fragmentation in your data center.