Convirture Backs Up OpenStack Cloud

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Convirture is now out with a new backup solution for OpenStack cloud environments using the KVM hypervisor.

The software-based Convirture Backup offers the promise of a policy-based, automated backup system for OpenStack cloud users. OpenStack itself has multiple storage projects that Convirture can plug into. Arsalan Farooq, CEO of Convirture explained to Datamation that backup destinations can be an OpenStack Swift object store, OpenStack Cinder block storage or the OpenStack Glance image service.

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“In addition, we also support traditional storage destinations like NAS and SAN,” Farooq said. “The customers can also choose an SSH accessible server location, this gives them full freedom to design their own backup storage.”

Farooq emphasized that one of the key aspects of the solution is that it is policy based. He noted that each policy can perform backup for one or multiple tenants and is associated with a backup storage destination. Additionally an administrator can leverage technologies like gluster or ceph, to create a cluster that can handle large amount of storage suitable for use as a backup storage.

“This scheme allows the administrator to create a distributed architecture that can scale,” Farooq said. “The policy also supports specifying secondary storage, which allows for replication to a remote location if desired.”

The Convirture Backup solution also offer the promise of efficiency, with the ability to do both incremental as well as completed backups. Data compression and de-deplication serve to further optimize the backup process.

From a recovery perspective, there is a quick restore option that will let a user start a virtual machine right from the backup location. There is also a file level recovery option that enables users to get their files back as needed.

Currently all of the Convirture backup solution is proprietary code, though Farooq said that his company is likely going to make contributions to OpenStack’s code base over time.

From a competitive perspective, Farooq said that backup is a sorely under-addressed area in the OpenStack and KVM ecosystem, and as such there aren’t many competitive solutions. “Veeam and Acronis may be the closest to us in this space, but neither of them are particularly good at KVM/Linux, where we have deep expertise. They are more focused on commercial platforms VMware and Microsoft/Hyper-V,” he said.

“The most likely competition will be from home-grown solutions cobbled together using scripting and various storage backend capabilities,” Farooq said. Other than that, we would expect the traditional backup players such as PUnitrends and Veeam to eventually field products in this area.”

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Datamation and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist

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