HP StoreOnce VSA - An introduction
A side effect of data growth is the growth of the amount of data that must be backed up. The path of least resistance is buying more disks and/ or tapes. Another possible solution is data deplucation. With data deduplication you can’t reduce the amount of data that must be backed up, but you can reduce the amount of data that must be stored. HP StoreOnce Backup is HPs solution to address this problem.
HP StoreOnce Backup is a software-based solution. It’s included in hardware appliances and in HP Data Protector (as part of the Advanced Backup-to-Disk option). But you can buy it also as a Virtual Store Appliance. This the HP StoreOnce VSA. This article will focus on the HP StoreOnce VSA.
Delivery format & requirements
The HP StoreOnce VSA is delivered as VMware virtual appliance (OVF format). You can start with 1 TB of usable capacity and you can increment this capacity in 1 TB steps up to 10 TB. The capacity is provides in form of thick provisioned 1 TB VMDKs. Raw devices are not supported. You can use a NFS datastore if you like. Because the HP StoreOnce VSA is a VM, it allocates processor, memory, storage and networking resources from the hypervisor. To ensure sufficient performance, it’s recommended to meet some requirements.
| Capacity | RAID | RAM | CPU | Networking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 5 TB | min. 3 disks as RAID 5 | min. 16 GB | min. 4 vCPUs | min. 2x 1 GbE |
| 6 to 10 TB | min. 3 disks as RAID 5 | min. 32 GB | min. 4 vCPUs | min. 2x 1 GbE |
Yes, the StoreOnce VSA is not a tiny, resource-saving VM. But because it’s a VM, it can benefit from several VMware features, like VMware HA, vMotion or SRM. For customers with AMD hosts the Quick Specs contain a interesting need:
If the VMware host has AMD CPUs some configuration is needed to run the StoreOnce VSA. It is necessary to create a single host cluster witht the EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibiity) mode set to AMD generation 3 or earlier.
Licensing
The license provides by HP is a three-year license, so it has to be renewed after three years. The license includes the whole capacity, so there is no need to aquire additional liceses. The license also includes replication functionality and StoreOnce Catalyst. The downside is: When you need to backup ony 1 TB, you need to purchase a 10 TB license.
Connectivity
HP StoreOnce VSA can be configured in ethernet environments with StoreOnce Catalyst, VTL and as NAS (CIFS) backup targets. Fibre-Channel isn’t supported. If you want to use StoreOnce with Fibre-Channel, you have to use a harwdare-based StoreOnce appliance. You can also use it as a replication target (max. 1 source appliance). HP StoreOnce Catalyst allows you to transfer deduplicated data between StoreOnce devices without the need of rehydrate the data. All devices use the same dedulication algorithm. So StoreOnce Catalyst allows you to deduplicate data on a application server and then transfer it (still deduplicated) to a remote StoreOnce device.
Management
HP StoreOnce Enterprise Manager (SEM) is a centralized management solution for physical and virtual StoreOnce devices. It can manage up to 400 physical and virtual StoreOnce devices across multiple sites. It provides monitoring, reporting and it integrates with the StoreOnce GUI for single pane-of-glass management. You can also deploy StoreOnce VSA through SEM.
Try it!
HP offers a 60 day evaluation. Simply download and try it. If you enter a valid license key during the trial period, you can continue using it without the need of a reinstallation.