Free Kubernetes Protection, New Offerings to Hybrid Cloud BaaS

By Manoj Nair - General Manager, Metallic
November 17, 2020

You might be aware that today we announced a new Metallic offering for Kubernetes backup as one of the cornerstones of Commvault’s comprehensive protection strategy for containers and Kubernetes. What you may not know is that we’ve expanded our award-winning Metallic Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solutions as part of the next leap forward in Metallic’s goal to provide support for SaaS-delivered data protection solutions for the most critical of enterprise workloads.

For Metallic customers, we are proud of the speed with which we can deliver new innovation – bringing tried and proven enterprise capabilities to market as real, usable benefits – including protection for the full Kubernetes ecosystem. Customers should take note that some vendors tout “firsts” – like Kubernetes data protection – that they don’t have available today and might not have available until the middle of 2021. Our customers need enterprise grade BaaS solutions that can protect the full K8s ecosystem now – also protecting VMs, databases, object stores, and even developer workstations. Metallic has that today. It’s available. You can use it in production. Did I also mention Metallic Kubernetes support is available free and unlimited for the lifetime of a subscription?

And while others need to build from scratch, or look to acquisitions and complex integrations with disparate experiences, Metallic’s ability to leverage Commvault’s industry leading Intelligent Data Management IP, delivered as a cloud-native SaaS with deep strategic integrations with Microsoft Azure, allows us to deliver rapid innovations that match our customers’ accelerating cloud journey. Need another proof point beyond our game changing Kubernetes support that is generally available today? We also announced we are the first enterprise grade SaaS data protection provider to offer SAP HANA data protection as a service, on-premises or in the cloud, without compromise.

We’ve built on the foundation of our Metallic Core Backup & Recovery solution to launch a new Hybrid Cloud Data Protection portfolio, doubling our offerings with a set of unique BaaS solutions. Today, three new BaaS offerings join the Metallic roster: Metallic VM & Kubernetes Backup, Metallic Database Backup, and Metallic File & Object Backup.

A portfolio designed for a Hybrid Cloud world

We get that hybrid environments and containerized applications are not an interim state for our customers – rather, hybrid cloud is a way of life for IT organizations for the foreseeable future, with Kubernetes increasingly becoming mainstream for enterprise applications. We also know that each hybrid cloud journey is unique. Our customers have a mix of applications — some containerized but using unstructured, object or cloud-native storage; some VMs; some using enterprise-class databases, whether on-premises or on the leading public clouds. That’s why we offer the unique flexibility, breadth of coverage, ultimate security, and bottom-line savings to ensure our customers’ data is protected today – and tomorrow – through the simplicity of a single solution.

The first new addition to the portfolio is Metallic VM & Kubernetes backup, a single solution for protecting workloads in hybrid cloud environments. On-premises virtual machines running on Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere; to cloud-hosted workloads running on Microsoft Azure VMware Solution (AVS) or VMware Cloud on AWS; or native Azure VMs or cloud-native workloads running inside various Kubernetes variants, whether VMware Tanzu, Red Hat OpenShift, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), can all be protected with a single solution offered as BaaS. The best part is that for anyone who purchases Metallic VM & Kubernetes Backup for at least 10 VMs in the first 6 months, Kubernetes support is available free and unlimited for the lifetime of the subscription.

Kubernetes-based containers offer IT organizations the flexibility to scale and migrate workloads without end-user interruption. Distribution of business workloads and flexible scale becomes easier with the orchestration built into Kubernetes. Enterprise workloads moving to a Kubernetes containerized world also need data protection solutions that are uniquely built ground up for this cloud-native model. With Metallic, protecting them is now just as simple and natively works with the Kubernetes distribution or orchestrator that you prefer.

“Enterprise customers are looking for a consistent infrastructure operating model that extends to any application,” said Lee Caswell, vice president of Marketing, Cloud Platform Business Unit, VMware. “VMware Cloud Foundation uniquely allows customers to manage container and VM-based apps running in legacy or newer HCI architectures on-prem while extending that same management leverage to the public cloud. Metallic’s comprehensive data protection environment is a natural complement for customers needing data protection for every VMware environment, including VMware vSphere with Tanzu.”

Also new to the portfolio, Metallic File & Object backup provides fast, granular recovery for file systems and object storage with cost-effective options for long-term backup retention. It protects file systems and cloud native storage like Azure Blob and Azure File, as well as any Windows, Linux and Unix file systems, to give customers the flexibility to protect their unstructured data either on-prem or in the cloud.

Finally, Metallic Database Backup brings leading application databases, Microsoft SQL Server and SAP HANA, under protection quickly with a choice of storage that can grow with your solutions as needed, on-premises or in the cloud.

The power of collaboration

Microsoft has been integral to the Metallic hybrid cloud journey. This collaboration was further strengthened by our recent announcement of a strategic agreement that tightly integrates our GTM, engineering and sales of Metallic SaaS offerings with Azure. The new additions to the Metallic hybrid cloud portfolio tighten our alignment and ensure broader, more comprehensive protection for Azure customers with protection for native Azure VM, Microsoft Hyper-V, Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure VMware Solution, SAP HANA on Azure and more.

“Commvault’s new packaging model aligns well with how many customers choose to manage their cloud services and data-protection for resources in Microsoft Azure” said Vamshidhar Kommineni, Group Program Manager, Azure Storage. “Metallic is also aligned with Microsoft and Azure and is a unique BaaS offering that can protect tier-one workloads in Azure VMs, Azure VMware Solution and Azure Kubernetes Service. With these new additions to the portfolio, Metallic is a valuable solution for hybrid customers that want layer in additional security protocols to their Azure cloud-native workloads, Azure Blob and Azure File storage, as well as their on-premises workloads with a single SaaS solution.”

Cobbling is for repairing shoes, not for enterprise IT

One thing that is abundantly clear is cloud and on-prem must work better together – not cobbled together – and the right data protection solution is necessary to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption.

That’s exactly what Metallic delivers. It’s flexible, secure and inherently cost-optimized through BaaS delivery. Flexible in that our solutions provide hybrid data protection for a broad range of on premises and cloud-native workloads, especially with today’s new offerings. They are proven to scale seamlessly to protect petabytes of data and our unique SaaS plus model combines the leverage of the best of existing on-prem storage and cloud storage of your choice for rapid recovery while having a secure, air-gapped copy for ransomware protection.

Metallic provides layered security and compliance to deliver on your hybrid cloud strategy with confidence through secure access controls, air-gapped copies with cloud storage, encryption and certifications, and it leverages the monitoring and compliance of Azure.

Lastly, Metallic helps organizations make the most of their existing resources while lowering overall TCO. Backup-as-a-Service can eliminate on-premises backup infrastructure and management, thereby saving admin time and resources that can be put to better use in more strategic, business-oriented ways. Pricing is predictable: you can utilize your storage investments and you can take advantage of pricing options that are optimized for VMs, structured and unstructured data.

Hybrid IT is not an interim state; it is a way of life for modern IT organizations. That’s why we’re dedicated to providing our customers with trusted data protection for on-premises, SaaS, and cloud-native data. Metallic makes sure our customers get the best of all worlds, without compromise.