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Commvault platform release 2023 (11.30) is a semi-annual release and introduces new data protection capabilities to help advance customer’s hybrid & multi-cloud strategies.

The release 2023 is generally available (GA) since Feb 15th, 2023.

What is a Platform Release?

Commvault platform releases (formerly called “Feature Releases”) could have two different types:

  • Platform release with a frequency of once every six months and a lifecycle if 1 year (from the Technology Preview).
  • Long-term support (LTS) platform release with a frequency of once every year and a lifecycle of 3 or 5 years.

Commvault Platform

Deliver intelligent data services across Commvault enterprise software and storage offerings

Note: Metallic SaaS offerings are released separately and are not part of Commvault platform releases.

Why upgrade to the platform release 2023?

Also, if is not a Long-term support platform release, this new version includes a lot of interesting new capabilities.

First to all it gives a proper balance between the innovation requirements and the efficiency of the solution that must support on-premises, hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios (60% of all IT spending on application software will be cloud related).

It includes added enhanced data security and protection to improve security posture and to help mitigate ransomware attacks, considering that the average cost for rectifying a ransomware attack is estimated around $1.4M (Sophos: The State of Ransomware 2022).

Also included are new features to improve cost savings and operational efficiency as data grows, considering that the annual data growth reported by organizations is estimated around 35%.

Hybrid and multi-cloud features

Commvault Complete Data Protection and Commvault Disaster Recovery provides data management capabilities to support organizations’ multi-cloud strategy and has several improvements for cloud environments:

  • Google Cloud regional snapshot support.
    • Protect data sovereignty by keeping snapshots within the same region.
    • 30% Cost savings with single region snapshots compared to multi-region offerings.
      Prior to Oct 1, 2022, pricing for Regional and Multi-Regional snapshots was the same. After that date, multi-regional snapshots increased in cost by a larger amount than did regional snapshots.
  • Enhanced Data Protection for Azure with Azure Restore Points.
    • Provide application-level consistency with easier & more complete recoverability.
    • Reduce costs for protecting Azure VMs by utilizing lower cost storage for Restore Point Collections.
    • Commvault is the first partner to develop this capability with Microsoft, through a Microsoft-provided API.
  • Azure database backup and restore using DacFx.
  • Amazon VPC Protection.
  • Oracle Compute Infrastructure (OCI) Storage tiering.
    • Extends storage options with multiple tiers of storage to help reduce costs on storage.
    • Enabled advanced security & configuration options inside of OCI.
  • Oracle Compute Infrastructure (OCI) VM protection
    • Provides enhanced protection for compute workloads.
    • Provides parity for compute (VM) protection.

The most interesting and unique is the OCI support. Actually, only few data protection products fully support OCI offering (for example storage is not a 100% S3 compatible storage) and still is interesting for several Oracle’s customers.

Security features

Commvault Complete Data Protection and Commvault Disaster Recovery includes enhanced data security and protection to improve security posture and help mitigate ransomware attacks:

  • Enhanced Security Integrations with Security information and event management (SIEM) platforms.
    • Easily allow exporting of data sets across platforms via frameworks using standard protocols and APIs.
    • Broad support for virtually any SIEM or Event management platform.
    • Stream alerts, audit, and events to a third party SIEM or Event management system using Webhooks or Syslog.
  • Compliance Lock – Protect critical data with immutable storage.
    • Easily create immutable storage via Compliance lock and WORM storage controls from Command Center.
    • Remain compliant with industry regulations including SEC Rule 17a(f) and FINRA 4511(c).
    • Integrate Multi-Person Authentication (MPA) to increase platform security & prevent destructive attacks.

Commvault HyperScale X includes:

  • New security enhancements & certifications help improve security posture and compliance.
    • Centralized Update Management simplifies upgrades & security patches.
    • Immutable storage certifications for SEC Rule 17a(f) and FINRA 4511(c) supports your compliance requirements.

SIEM integration is probably the most innovative and required feature because interoperability with event management systems and security platforms is crucial for establishing stickiness and extrinsic value for every data protection solution.

Cost optimization and other integration features

Increased cost savings and operational efficiency to address data growth and IT cost optimization challenges, including new type of workloads and applications and infrastructure.

With Commvault Complete Data Protection and Commvault Disaster Recovery is possible support Azure DevOps:

  • New Data Protection support for DevOps Protection.
    • Full-service protection for Azure DevOps, back administrators, & development teams.
    • Includes coverage for repos, pipelines, boards, test plans, and artifacts.

With Commvault Complete Data Protection and Commvault Disaster Recovery also Big Data and Amazon FSx can be addressed properly:

  • Improved backup times for Hadoop File Systems (HDFS).
    • Leveraging HDFS snapshots significantly reduce scan times for backups.
    • Reduces the compute time compute time on Hadoop clusters.
  • Deep support for NetApp-AWS combination, bringing the on-prem NetApp experience to the cloud.
    • Accelerates application migration to the cloud.
    • Ensures policy-based protection of your hybrid NetApp ONTAP data landscape, using Commvault IntelliSnap.
    • Provides low-RTO application consistent recovery for your NetApp data located on Amazon FSx.

Final considerations

This new version add some unique capabilities like a comprehensive support for the different cloud services (not only the Big3), interesting verticals like the DevOps Protection or the BigData world, all with an high attention to security and compliance aspects.

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The possibility to backup VCSA using VAMI at file level is very powerfull and could be a good “plan-B” in case the backup at image level is not restorable (it happens in case of file/DB corruptions).

But, of course, is not perfect and still in latest version there are some issues, like the VAMI backup retention issue.

But can also happen that backup fails with no specific errors.

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Pure Storage sees strong customer adoption of its Evergreen Subscription Services, surpassing $1B in ARR for the first time.

Pure Storage announced continued growth of its subscription service offerings, including its Evergreen® portfolio, in addition to a new energy efficiency service level agreement (SLA) for Evergreen//One™. The introduction of the new SLA represents the first and only energy efficiency guarantee in the enterprise storage as a service market, and supports Pure Storage’s mission to provide customers with the most sustainable storage technology to meet their goals.

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In this article, we will review the application Stellar Repair for Exchange which is a very promising application for when disaster strikes on your Exchange Server or if you wish to recover Exchange database with minimal effort. The application is ideal as you can open easily open corrupt EDB file with no issues and recover data from it with this application whereas other application fail to do so. Let’s explore the application and see if it fits its description.

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VeeamON Update 2022 is only one day away!

It’s time to block your calendar and attend our must‑see, virtual event to get updates on products, talk to our solution experts and level up your skills. It’s a jam‑packed agenda you won’t want to miss on Nov. 3.

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According with Product Lifecycle Matrix and KB 89305, VMware has officially declared, vSphere 6.5.x and vSphere 6.7.x will be End of General Support by October 15th 2022.

To maintain your full level of Support and Subscription Services, VMware recommends upgrading to vSphere 7.

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What is Metallic?

Metallic DMaaS (data management as a service) was introduced by Commvault in late 2019 as part of its Intelligent Data Platform to provide SaaS delivered data protection and management.

Data management helps to build and maintain a data framework in order to store, ingest, transform, archive, transmit, and secure the data needed by the business.

Metallic provides:

  • Metallic DMaaS, offering protection for SaaS applications including Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce; protection for endpoints; and protection for hybrid cloud workloads including Virtual Machines, File Systems, Databases, and containers
  • Metallic eDiscovery, offering granular search and export capabilities for Office 365 and endpoint data to help satisfy regulatory compliance requirements
  • Metallic Recovery Reserve delivering secure, scalable, and air-gapped cloud storage for your backups
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Data Domain (or Power Protect if you prefer the new term) needs some free available space to manage its filesystem and all the mtree(s).

By default there is a critical alert if the used space exeed 90% of the total space.

The name of the alert is “SpaceExceedsCriticalThreshold” and cannot be changed from the GUI.

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The upgrade procedure for DellEMC PowerStore X from version 2.0 to version 2.1 is a little tricky. The Dell EMC PowerStore Software Upgrade Guide explains the steps, but still there are some issue that you should mange.

Because you have also to upgrade the ESXi from 6.7 to 7.0, but before this, you need also to resize the VMFS datastore.

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If you try to upgrade the PowerStore OS and you get this error message:

Prestage failed on appliance XXXX with the following message: The system encountered unexpected backend errors. Please contact support. (0xE04030010001)

Then you may don’t need to contact the support, because the solution could be easy.

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If you are using Veeam Backup & Replication (but also other backup solution) you can perform both backup and replication with the same tool.

But with latest version of vSphere you can probably notice a huge difference between backup and replication speed if you are using NBD transport mode.

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Do you need to understand SAN and NAS storage?

There are several resources available online, but I would like to suggest a free course by Neil Anderson.

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About Flowmon

Flowmon Networks was a global network intelligence company acquired by Kemp in November 2020.

The acquisition brings together application delivery and security services with deep network visibility and automated security incident response.

One year after (in September 2021), Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) announced the completion of the acquisition of Kemp and now Flowmon is one of the main company’s product, but still is keeping its own identity and also a dedicated web site (https://www.flowmon.com/en).

Why Flowmon?

Flowmon offers NetFlow based deep network visibility solution for network and security operations and try to solve one fundamental problem in the network world: the lack of visibility (or a limited visibility).

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