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The truly great duos are few and far between. Ruth and Gehrig, Jordan and Pippen, Montana and Rice, Gretsky and Messier, Shaq and Kobe—these tandems endured and propelled their teams to the pinnacle of their respective sports. Pure Storage® FlashArray™ and Veeam Backup software can be thought of in a similar way.

FlashArray is the industry’s first all-QLC flash array, delivering NVMe performance, efficient global data reduction, and mitigation against ransomware. Veeam Backup & Replication is an industry-leading backup software solution. Together, they deliver a powerful, scalable backup platform that’s easy to deploy and manage. And it’s all delivered with the cost per gigabyte advantages of QLC flash media and future-proofed with an Evergreen Storage™  subscription and a resiliency architecture.

Together, FlashArray and Veeam create an unbeatable combination that is simple, powerful, and robust enough to withstand the data protection challenges impacting today’s modern data center.

High-capacity Data Storage

FlashArray//C delivers flash performance to workloads that need high capacity more than lowest latency.

FlashArray//C optimizes data density through features, such as DirectFlash®-managed QLC, inline data reduction, and global deduplication. This makes it an ideal choice for high-performance backup storage. With integrated SMB and NFS file services, FlashArray//C can serve multiple use cases in a very small footprint. And with Pure Evergreen Storage, you can ensure your environment stays simple and modern. Non-disruptive upgrades of controllers and storage mean the end of forklift refreshes and risky data migrations.

SafeMode™ Snapshots 

FlashArray protects volumes, snapshots, protection groups, and other array objects from accidental deletion for 24 hours by default. FlashArray retains deleted objects in an “eradication-pending” bin. At the end of the eradication period, objects and any related content in the bin are removed.

SafeMode is a data protection feature that is built into FlashArray. It extends the core immutability protection that snapshots provide to help in scenarios where array admin credentials have been compromised. When SafeMode is enabled, it triggers three changes to array behavior for admins. SafeMode:

  • Disables the ability to eradicate volumes and snapshots from the destroyed items bucket.
  • Introduces an adjustable eradication timer from 24 hours up to 30 days.
  • Disables the ability to shorten the protection group retention period.

FlashArray snapshots and SafeMode protection provide a copy of the data before the point of encryption. Once an attacker starts encrypting, organizations usually quickly notice as applications start to go offline and can spring into action.

Veeam V11

Veeam Backup & Replication is a comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery solution known for easy deployment, broad compatibility, and high performance. Veeam V11 continues to evolve the platform with improvements to performance and scale, enhanced instant recovery, and hardening for ransomware protection.

Pure and Veeam: Better Together

When Veeam Backup & Replication is deployed with FlashArray//C as its storage, the resulting solution is a powerful combination with many winning advantages. FlashArray//C amplifies the performance of Veeam, delivering backup and recovery at the speed of flash. Always-on data reduction—across all Veeam repositories on FlashArray//C—enhances the efficiency of Veeam backups. It drives high storage density in a small footprint and reduces TCO without sacrificing performance.

SafeMode snapshots provide assurance against ransomware attacks destroying your backups. Applications can be deployed confidently with the knowledge that FlashArray//C is qualified as Veeam Ready.

You can pair the solution with FlashArray//X for primary storage for even better results. VMware datastores become extremely fast without complexity. The Veeam Universal Storage API seamlessly incorporates hardware snapshots into backups to prevent VM stun, and Veeam Explorers let you easily restore data from FlashArray snapshots for lower recovery time objective (RTO).

We tested the solution and shared the results in two new technical white papers:

Here are some highlights from the testing:

  • When using physical proxies in tests, FlashArray//C removed the traditional restore penalty, with data protection and recovery rates close to 10TiB/hr. This can reduce downtime, and the costs associated with it, due to ransomware or other data events.
  • FlashArray//C compresses and deduplicates data across the entire array, so it’s able to remove commonalities both within and between Veeam backup files. As a result, backups to FlashArray//C can add significant data reduction to a Veeam environment.
  • Data reduction with Veeam, synthetic full backups, and FlashArray//C need to be considered holistically. Using active full backups, or synthetic full backups with a repository on NTFS, will show a DRR on the FlashArray several times higher over the backup life cycle. However, the overall reduction and final footprint are the same, and you’ll need more processing time and peak storage to get there.
  • When FlashArray//C protection groups are used to schedule periodic snapshots of the repository volumes, they create immutable point-in-time snapshots. They’re retained for a configurable retention period that’s determined by the protection group.
  • When SafeMode is enabled, protection group snapshots are further protected from destruction, even from those with admin privileges. If ransomware strikes, data can quickly be restored using the SafeMode-protected repository snapshots. This drastically reduces RTOs and enables immediate recovery of the protected volumes.

Summary

FlashArray and Veeam make a great combination for fast, efficient backup and recovery. The solution is simple to deploy and manage for lower TCO. FlashArray//C adds global data reduction to Veeam backups, and the shared storage platform eliminates inefficient data silos. With the performance and density of QLC flash, you can protect petabytes of data quickly, in as little as 3U, without the traditional “restore tax.” And with economics that rival hybrid storage solutions. FlashArray SafeMode snapshots add an extra layer of protection against malicious and accidental destruction of your backup data, helping you get back online faster.

See how FlashArray//C and Veeam V11 can improve data protection for your organization. Visit Pure’s Veeam solutions page, and reach out to your Pure account team.

Additional Resources