Comparison

Product
Specification

NetApp FAS

HP EVA

2050 / 3140

4400 / 6400 / 8400

Redundant HA

Controllers

Yes

Yes

Snapshots

Yes

low impact

Yes

licensed, high CoFW impact

Replication

Yes, any FAS to FAS

No, EVA to EVA only

Deduplication

Yes

No

Thin Provisioning

Yes

No (DCM; has 2TB limit)

SnapManager Functionality

Yes

Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, SharePoint, VMware

Yes

Exchange, Oracle, SAP, SQL Server (requires DataProtector)

Upgradeable Across Product Families

Yes

No

Management

Console

FilerView, DFM

CommandView EVA

Max Raw Capacity

104 / 420

96 / 216 / 324

Supported Protocols

FC, iSCSI, CIFS, NFS

FC only

iSCSI with extra cost bridge

Industry Benchmarks

Yes

SAN; SPC, NAS; SpecSFS

No

HP Competitive Analysis

Overview

· HP is one of the world's largest IT companies

· Products range from printing, personal computing, servers, software and services to IT infrastructure.

· Storage plays a relatively small part of HP's revenues (less than 1%)

· EVA one of six incompatible storage families (AiO, MSA, LHN, EVA, XP, PolyServe)

Strengths

· Many channel partners and broad range of offerings

· Can provide a one-stop-shop for the small to mid-sized IT organization with blades, servers, networking infrastructure

· HP’s offerings now include consulting & outsourcing with the purchase of EDS

· Innovative RAID virtualization technology

· Vraid technology allows for LUNs to be virtualized over pooled disks

· Demand-allocated virtual capacity free snapshots

· Ability to mix FC and “FATA” disks in the same enclosure, now with SSD

· Integrated management and configuration tools

Weaknesses

• Workmanlike but uninspiring storage
• Low and mid range arrays all suffer from a lack of application integration
• Limited connectivity and upgradeability, poor software offerings, and lack-luster performance; SSD limited to max of 8 72GB drives
• High maintenance and service charges
• No upgrade path from previous EVAx100 range or to or from any other HP array family
• Requires double the spare disk space using “distributed sparing” technique
• No QoS workload prioritization (such as FlexShare)
• Vraid best-practices defeat built-in disk load-balancing abilities
• Inefficient, complex and inflexible remote replication (CAVA)
• Disruptive write-cache disablement required for consistent snapshots
• Ffast restore capability for snapshots requires MirrorClone
• Demand-allocated snapshots silently dropped when out of space
• No native multi-protocol support.
• Command View EVA cannot manage any other HP storage array
• Distributed sparing requires 2 – 4 times the space of a physical disk

Positioning

• Simplicity: Starter Kits are a robust, highly available small to medium SAN solutions that are easy to install, use and scale at an affordable price.
• Agility: Virtualization ensures all the disks in the array are used more efficiently, with no stranded capacity, keeping them all busier and eliminating bottlenecks that lower performance.
• Virtually instantaneous: Snapclone and capacity-free Snapshot (Vsnap) and Delta Resync (Mirrorclone) – Allows immediate use of the clone copy. Saves disk space and improves disk efficiency and utilization.
• Improved performance over previous range; claims of up to 20%

   

   

Why NetApp vs. HP EVA

• Greater data integrity without performance impact via RAID-DP & Maintenance Center
• Lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
• o NetApp easier to install, configure, and deploy
• o Flex and Snap-suite dramatically simplify administration and allocation of storage
• o Staff only needs trained in one technology
• Greater versatility
• o Integrated multi-protocol SAN/NAS in one box
• o Simultaneous FCP & iSCSI in one box
• Common compatible architecture across the entire product range
• Full interoperability and upgradeability across entire range product range
• Staff only needs to be trained in one technology
• Superior host and application SW support
• Greater NetApp scalability; top of range EVA8400 to XP is a large gap
• Superior solution completeness; includes NAS out of the box

Questions To Ask

Reliability

· How much disk overhead does distributed sparing require and what level of protection do I get for it?

· Availability

· What RTO and RPO do my EVA snapshots provide?

· How long does it take me to fully restore from a snapshot?

· How many snapshots can I keep online?

· What happens if I run out of physical capacity for my demand-allocated snapshots?

· Can I replicate my snapshots?

· Is one-to-many replication possible? Over which protocols?

Performance

· What impact do snapshots have on performance?

· What impact does adding storage have on performance?

· What impact does mixing Vraid1 with Vraid5 have on performance?

· What impact does asynchronous replication have on performance when the write buffer fills up?

· Is the effective I/O cache really 4GB? Please break down how that is actually used.

· Why no industry benchmarks, like SPC?

Upgradeability and Manageability

· How can I upgrade to or from other HP storage arrays?

· How many native protocols does an EVA support?

· Can I manage the EVA series with the same management framework as my other HP arrays?

· Can I upgrade from the EVAx100 range to the EVAx400 range?

• Many Physical Servers – in this case you get a standard host running dual-quad core cpu’s and 128 GB of RAM
• Need 4 of these servers @ ~ $13k each (Dell) = $52k
• Pro’s – multiple hosts gives you a wide spread choice in terms of your DRS and HA in events of either contention or failures.
• Con’s – multiple hosts could cause an issue where you are limited by available resources on each box making a VM not able to fit on any host.
• Few Large Physical Servers – in this case you get a large 8u or 10u host running dual-8 core cpu’s and 256 GB of RAM
• Need 2 of these boxes @ ~ $26k each (Dell) = $52k
• Pro’s – larger server gives a broader set of hardware in terms of cpu and RAM per host allowing for less chance of a VM not having resources; the communication of the VM’s talking to each other will be much faster if within the same physical box; power consumption would be even lower making the ‘go green’ and VMware more cost effective.
• Con’s – “putting all your eggs in one basket” may not be the wisest of decisions; for HA to work these boxes would need to be large enough to run all on one.
• Blade Servers – in this case you run a blade server with multiple blades
• Need 1 Enclosure ~ $6k (Dell) and 4 Blades running with match configuration as above in physical servers @ ~$10k each (Dell) = $46k
• Pro’s – Blade servers run as well as individual physical servers with the lowered power consumption vs. individual; blades are centrally managed with internal switching so you also gain the faster talk time from VM to VM across servers as with the large server internal talk time vs. the individual servers; increased flexibility, expansion, and diversity, you can put blades in with different processors and/or RAM so as your company grows you can as well with only minor changes.
• Con’s – As with large servers, if the enclosure has an issue all of your internal blades may suffer, again with the “putting all your eggs in one basket”.

     This is only part of the battle.  You still have to weigh out your Disaster Recovery plan, your capital, your anticipated growth, and your storage; however, the decision on which host platform to go with could end up making or breaking you in the long run.

• If you are making a RAID group that will result in a single iSCSI LUN when done then do the following
• Start at 20 for the RAID group ID, use the same number in the LUN ID and in the HOST ID (all of which is explained on the link below)
• If you are making a RAID group that will result in multiple iSCSI LUN’s when done then do the following
• Start at 100 for the RAID group ID, use the same number in the LUN ID and in the HOST ID (all of which is explained on the link below)
• Before creating you next RAID group find out what the last iSCSI LUN number used from the step(5.1) below in this post and start at the next interval of 10.  Example if step(5.1) below in this post ended at 108 then start this next group at 110, if it ended at 114 then start the next group at 120 and so on.

http://corpusweb130.corp.emc.com/ns/common/post_install/Config_storage_FC_NaviManager.htm

Ok, you’re back.  So now you have rescanned the Celerra which will result in your defined storage pools now having the available space you just configured in Navisphere.  A few more steps and you will have a functioning datastore(s).

1. Click on File Systems and click on NEW
2. Check Storage Pool in the create from, then type in a file system name (anything you want, some people type what it will be for “SQL Logs” some like what it is “RAID5”, other like the location “Bus 1 Enclosure 1 Disks 0-4”), choose the pool that has the disks you just created, type in the size of the storage (should be 100%), choose your options of Auto Extend; Virtual Provisioning; Deduplication if you choose to, leave Slice checked, choose your data mover, and leave mount point at Default.
3. Click OK if you are only doing 1, if you have multiple click Apply and then repeat step 2 as much as needed.
4. Click on iSCSI and click on NEW
5. Choose your data mover, choose your target (would be the target you created for your ESX environment), type in a LUN number (this should match the number you choose in the above steps during the RAID group setup, see note below before proceeding), choose your file system (the one you just created), type in the size you want it to be, choose the option of read only; virtual provisioning if you choose to.
1. NOTE: if you are creating a single iSCSI LUN from the file system then make the number match should be a number between 20 and 99 if you followed from above.  If you are going to make multiple iSCSI LUNS from the single file system then start creating the iSCSI LUN’s with the number you choose (should be between 100 and 999) moving up in increments of 1 for each additional defined iSCSI LUN.
1. example of multiple LUN’s: First iSCSI LUN from a file system on RAID group 100 is 100, the next iSCSI LUN is 101 and the next is 102 and so on.
6. Click OK if you are only doing 1, if you have multiple click Apply and then repeat step 5 as much as needed.
7. When done click on the Targets tab on the top of the iSCSI screen
8. Right click on your ESX target and choose Properties
9. Click on the tab LUN Mask
10. Right click the initiator for the ESX host you want to see the new LUN(s) and choose Properties
11. In the line Grant LUNs type in the new LUN(s) you have defined above in step 5
1. You can use a comma between LUN numbers or a dash between a range
1. example 20, 22, 30, 100-107, etc..
12. Click OK
13. Repeat from step 10 for each host that needs to see the new defined LUN(s)
14. Open vSphere Client and navigate to the datastores view
15. Right click on your datacenter and choose Rescan for Datastores
16. At the Rescan screen uncheck Scan for new storage devices and click OK
17. When that completes right click on your datacenter and choose Add Datastore
18. Choose a host and click NEXT
19. Choose Disk/LUN and click NEXT
20. Click on the iSCSI LUN your are trying to configure (if there is more than one pick one to start with) and click NEXT
21. Click NEXT at the Current Disk Layout screen
22. Enter a name for your datastore (this can be whatever you like) and click NEXT
23. Choose your block size and capacity and click NEXT
24. Verify the information and click FINISH
25. Repeat from step 17 as many times as needed
26. You are done!

If you look at the following article and compare the two versions you will see that the functionality is the same, even some of the administration is the same from a "’can I’ stand point you are just missing the console port; they even created some API’s to counter the loss of the console port.  The question becomes now is security and base size enough to overcome the fact that you have to go back to the command line days?

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1023990 

Some CIM and API stuff from VMware:

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/cim-sdk/ 

Company Overview

• Headquarters: Campbell, CA
• Type: Privately Held
• Company Size: 201 employees
• Founded: 2002
• Revenue: $70.7M (2007)
• Products: Security appliances for email, Internet, Website, and IM protection
• Primary Industries: Financial services, manufacturing, technology, consumer goods, utilities, and retail
• Related News:
• Acquired BitLeap in November 2008
• Acquired Yosemite Technologies in January 2009

Key Products/ Services

• Barracuda Backup Service – A hybrid approach with a local appliance and offsite cloud-based backup and storage
• Yosemite Server Backup – A software solution for protecting data on Windows, Linux and Netware servers
• Yosemite Desktop/Laptop Backup – A software solution for protecting data on your Windows-based PC

Their Positioning and Messaging

• Strong competitor in spam filtering and virus
• Known for their spam filtering / virus firewalls
• Disruptive pricing strategy to quickly gain market share
• Focus on appliance-based solutions

Pricing

• There is an upfront charge for the appliance, and then the monthly subscription fee:
• Backup Server Appliance: $1000 – $45,000
• Monthly Subscription Fee: $0.50/GB in Tiers
• (No overage fees, No agent fees, and No per fees)

Their Strengths

• All-in-one solution for easy deployment
• BMR included at no extra charge
• Easy-to-use Web interface with reporting and statistics
• Replication to two locations within the cloud

Their Weaknesses

• New to backup space.  Barracuda’s main focus is the security space.  Entered backup space in 2008 with acquisition of BitLeap
• Limited references. Only one customer reference for backup service on their website.   
• Security. Barracuda data centers aren’t SAS70 certified.  Barracuda does not provide end-to-end encryption, only encrypts from the appliance to their data center
• Requires an appliance. There needs to be at least one appliance at each of the customer’s physical locations.
• No BMR integration.  Barracuda supports BMR with Yosemite BMR, which not integrated with BBS, meaning more complexity.
• No DR option.  Barracuda does not provide a DR solution – cannot help customers that have a complete site outage.
• Technology efficiency. Barracuda only supports bandwidth throttling from the appliance to the cloud.  This could cause a bandwidth bottleneck when backups are running, disrupting business.
• Limited platform and application support.  Barracuda does not support virtual machines or desktops.  It also does not support Oracle, SharePoint, Solaris, HPUX, IBM AIX, IBMi.

Things to watch out for

• They will tout that they are the lowest cost solution; They are aggressively competing on price
• They will state they provide six ways to Restore
• Barracuda says that software solutions are difficult to install and manage. What’s more, the hardware required is difficult to manage and support
• They say that appliance-based backup solutions put minimal burden on production servers
• They will state that they give you the opportunity to selectively replicate data offsite
• They promote the fact that they backup to two geographically dispersed data centers

Feature Comparisons 

• Encryption: They only encrypt data starting at the appliance. EVault offers end-to-end security with encryption starting from the agent and through the entire data transfer process and while the data is at rest
• Local backups: Keeping a local backup onsite is good for quick recoveries. This can be done from the Barracuda Backup Server. i365 also offers Express Recovery Appliance or Plug-n-Protect
• Delta-Processing & Deduplication: With an Agent, Barracuda uses similar delta-processing and backend dedupe techniques to EVault
• Platform Support: Barracuda offers support for Windows Server, Linux, Novell, Mac OS X. We offer support for Windows Server, Novell, Linux, Unix VMWare, Windows Desktop
• Bare Metal Restore: Barracuda includes Yosemite BMR, but it's not integrated into their BBS solution; customers must have locally attached storage.  Our BMR is sold separately, but it is integrated; customers can back up over the network
• Multiple restore methods: Barracuda offers similar restore methods: Over network or shipment of storage module
• Bandwidth Throttling: Barracuda touts bandwidth throttling, but it only offers bandwidth throttling from the appliance to cloud. EVault offers dynamic bandwidth throttling starting at the agent. EVault also offers compression starting at the agent. These two features minimize the impact to a customer's network and enable the customer to deploy agents in remote locations (without the need of an onsite appliance/vault
• Centralized Management: Both solutions offer centralized management via a web-based interface.

I365 Silver Bullets

• Has been a full service data protection company for over 12 years, with deep expertise and a range of DR products and services that extend way beyond backup.
  • DR Experts, Consulting and Tests (Barracuda doesn’t offer DR services or PS)
  • Over 25,000 customers doing millions of backups and tens of thousands of restores per year.
  • 100% success on declared recoveries and backup is no good without a recovery!
  • 96% satisfaction with customer service
  • Integrated DR with Remote Disaster Recovery (they don’t have it)
  • Integrated BMR (theirs is not)
• Offer a wider range of deployment options – on premise, edge, cloud, in any configuration. All based on the same technology platform – designed to grow and scale with you.
  • Long Term Investment
  • Offer a wider range of deployment options – on premise, edge, cloud, in any configuration.  All based on the same technology platform – designed to grow and scale with you.
  • D2D, D2C, D2D2C
  • SaaS, Appliances, Software, Managed Services
  • Scales to hundreds of TB
  • Barracuda is appliance to cloud only;  maxes out at 3TB
• Technology is designed from the ground up for WAN-based backups. You’ll get higher security, better performance, and greater bandwidth utilization
  • Cloud infrastructure (SAS 70 Type II certified, Barracuda is not)
• Bandwidth throttling – from agent to appliance AND from the appliance to our data center.  Save your bandwidth for your business, not your backups. (Barracuda does not support bandwidth throttling from agent to appliance)
• Has Barracuda provided you with information on how their backups impact bandwidth?
• Failover – If our ERA appliance goes down, you can backup and recover directly from our data center. (Barracuda’s is a single point of failure for file-based backups which are agentless.  If the appliance fails your file backups stop until the appliance is fixed.)
• Security – Offer 6 levels of encryption choices for your backup data AND encryption from agent to appliance (Barracuda does not support encryption from agent to appliance and only provides one option for encryption. Does this meet your security requirements?)

Questions to ask?

Company History/Experience

• Do you want an experienced company safeguarding your data or a relatively new entrant in backup?
• Has Barracuda provided you with any reference customers using their service?
• Can Barracuda provide you with a full array of professional services that provide you with advice on how to design a backup solution, implement one, validate one with DR testing, and assess it if your environment changes?

Security

• Do you want assurance and peace of mind knowing that your backup service uses the industry standard certification for security, redundancy, and production operations?
• Do your auditors demand SAS 70 certification?

Appliances

• Do you have space at each of your locations to store an appliance?
• Do you have the IT resources to manage an onsite backup appliance at all of the locations?

Recovery Options

• What happens if your entire site goes down due to a disaster? 
• Can you meet your RTO with Barracuda? 
• Do you need offsite BMR protection? Have you thought about the complexity of doing 2 backups to protect an entire system – one for data/applications and another for the operating system?

Technology Efficiency

• Has Barracuda provided you with information on how it impacts network bandwidth during backup windows?

Platform/Application Support

• Are you using VMware or do you plan to use virtualization now and in the near future?
• Do you need to protect any of your employees’ desktops/laptops?
• Do you need to protect Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, IBMi, Oracle, or SharePoint?

1. Uninstall Tablet PC Components
2. In IE8, Remove Suggested Sites, and use Default settings
3. In IE8, Set Google as default seach provider
4. In IE8, Delete existing bookmarks
5. Visual Effects set to "Adjust for Best Performance"
6. Turn off System Protection
7. Delete all previous Restore Points
8. Set desktop Background to a solid blue
9. UnPin Windows Media Player from Taskbar
10. Launch Windows Media Player, Set recommended settings
11. Install Adobe Flash Player
12. Install Adobe Reader, launch Adobe Reader and accept license agreement.
13. Remove Adobe icons from desktop
14. Set Taskbar buttons to "Never Combine"
15. Disable "allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" for C: Drive, do it for all folders and sub folder
16. in msconfig, set "No GUI Boot"
17. in msconfig, uncheck Adobe startup items
18. in a cmd window running as administrator, set: fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1
19. turn off defragmentation schedule
20. Disable checking for Automatic Updates
21. Run all Windows updates
22. Delete "Games" start menu folder
23. Delete Start Menu Items shown in screen shot to right ->
24. Remove all Recently Used icons from Start Menu
25. Disable "Windows Search" service
26. Disable "Super Fetch" service
27. Disable "Themes" service
28. Disable "Windows Defender"
29. Install vSphere Client
30. Install VMware View Agent, accept all defaults
31. Install CCleaner (don't install Yahoo toolbar in the install of it)
32. Join Domain
33. Active Windows
34. Run CCleaner.

35. Shut down VM, take SnapShot for VMware View to run from

VMware vSphere is licensed based on the number of processors on the physical host.

Each processor in a socket may contain multiple cores. VMware customers may deploy VMware vSphere on physical processors that contain up to six processing cores at no additional charge.

VMware vSphere Advanced and VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus editions provide an expanded core entitlement and allow customers to deploy on processors that contain up to 12 processing cores.

Additional information may be found at http://www.vmware.com/download/eula/multicore.html

Reports To: VP of Technology

 

The following document outlines the job description and duties for the position above.

The Systems Administrator will primarily be responsible for the day to day operation and maintenance of the our Clients Desktop support and open systems.  The position will report into the VP of Technology.  The goal of the position is to maintain a high level of availability and end-user satisfaction that meets or exceeds the performance requirements.  Much of this work is currently spread across external vendors and internal staff.  This position also needs to be focused on making the most efficient use of time and the environment.  This should include all of the day to day hands on activities for desktop support, basic server administration and management and escalation of issues with vendors involved in the managed services.  As a part of the managed services offering Penn Treaty will leverage the call desk services provided by Contour.  Those services will augment and provide ready access and tracking for support issues.  This includes extended coverage and backfill for the onsite resource when that resource is not available due to illness or other absence.  This position will also function as an escalation tier for network operations issues.  This will help network operations fulfill their responsibilities in addition to the dedicated desktop support.

He/She will be responsible for the following on a day-to-day basis:

Manage current desktop environment

o   Resolve any hardware related issues

o   Alert and resolve any performance issues and notify end-users

o   Function as an escalation point and remote hands for the call center

o   Manage issues with the vendors

o   Work with the IT staff to respond to and resolve alerts related to systems and/or  integration with the managed services offering.

o   Monitor current environment usage, performance, and availability  

o   Install, configure, test, and implement software and components as necessary on a day to day basis.  Larger projects such as organization wide upgrades amy be identified as out of scope and defined as a separate project.

o   Applicable patch releases and maintenance are included in the day to day responsibilities of the resource.

o   Responsible for planning and coordination of any new systems installation as it relates to the overall offering from Contour

o   Perform any host-level tasks needed to access the systems

Application support

o   Work with application developers and Contour to assist in troubleshooting infrastructure related issues

Backup

o   Maintain proper backup schedule

o   Restore and recover data as requested including the management of snaps and replication

o   Coordinate with off-site storage as necessary

Strategic Planning

o   Capacity planning and forecast growth

o   Identify processes and policies that will improve the overall performance of the project.   Work with management to implement these initiatives

o   Work with IT staff to identify upcoming needs and report back to management

o   Review tools regularly to identify abnormal growth

o   Provide input on vendor proposals

Network Operations

o   Escalation point for server and system related issues.

o   Second Tier advisory role to desktop support call center

o   Validation of tasks completed by the administrators as needed

o   Lead and/or participate in the creation and maintenance of system related policies

Qualified Candidates must have

o    At least 5 years experience in Windows desktop support and customer service

o    At least 1-2 years experience with basic Mac desktop functionality

o    At least 3 years windows server administration

o   Familiarity with basic concepts around Back-up maintenance and Disaster Recovery Procedures.

o   Experience with Help Desk software and ticket management procedures

o   Experience with Trouble ticket escalation and vendor management

o   Excellent interpersonal and communication skills

o   The ability to work independently and provide documentation in compliance with Contour and Customer needs.

Interested Candidates should provide their resume and cover letter to:

Att: Recruiting

640 Freedom Drive

King of Prussia, PA 19406

Or email to:           careers@contourds.com

• Launched Avamar 4.1 in December 2008
• Launched Avamar Data Store Gen 2 in May 2008

Key Products/ Services:
Software: Avamar 4.1

In late 2008, EMC introduced Avamar 4.1. This software‐only product deduplicates data globally and at the source for fast, secure backup and recovery across your enterprise—including VMware environments, remote offices, and data center LANs.

Software: Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware This product is an Avamar server deployed as a virtual
appliance—the industry’s first fully virtualized de‐duplication backup and recovery solution.
Hardware/Software: Avamar Data Store Avamar Data Store Gen 2 is a complete backup and recovery package — including de‐duplication software agents, backup software, (EMC‐certified) physical servers and disk storage, and high availability.

Avamar backup and recovery solutions utilize patented global data deduplication technology to identify redundant data at the source, minimizing backup data before it is sent over the LAN/WAN. With Avamar, you can achieve new levels of data reduction and enable fast, secure backup for your VMware environments, remote offices, and data center LANs. In the process, you’ll reduce backup time, growth of secondary storage, and network utilization.

Supported Platforms:

Client Operating Systems
Supported Application Modules
1) Windows Server 2003: Standard and Enterprise Microsoft Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007 Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server
2) Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, 2000, 2005 Windows XP, XP Professional, Vista

3) Oracle 9i, 10g, 10gR2
4) Red Hat Linux 9.0
5) IBM DB2 8.2.x, 9.5
6) Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 3.0, 4.0, 5.0
7) NDMP (EMC Celerra) DART 5.5, 5.6 NDMP

8)  (NetApp) Data ONTAP 6.5, 7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.6, 7.1x. 7.2

9)Solaris 8, 9, 10
10) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.2, 9, 10

11) VMware Infrastructure  VMware ESX Server versions 3.0.x, 3.5, 3i

12) IBM 5.2, 5.3, 6.1
13) HP‐UX 11.0, 11iV1, 11iV2, 11iV3
14) Mac OS X 10.4x, 10.5x
15) NetWare 6.5
16) Free BSD 6.2
17) Novell Storage Services (NSS) OES 2

Strengths

• Global deduplication at the source and the target minimizes storage footprint
• Granular — Small, variable‐length sub‐file segments guarantee effective de‐duplication
• Broad platform and application support
• High availability and reliability – Fault tolerance across nodes with RAIN architecture improves reliability
• Centralized management allowing users to control multisite backups from a single location and automate policy based management Weaknesses
• Avamar software agents can negatively impact application and server performance (Up to 15%)

Weaknesses

• Must use Avamar branded or EMC‐certified hardware
• The technology was not designed to meet the high performance requirements of enterprises
• Difficult to restore an entire RAIN architecture after a disaster. (lots of deduplicated data scattered)
• Dependent of the node: before backing up / restoring a check is made to verify the deduplicated blocks available.  This can lengthen the time for backup and restores
• Permanent activity on Nodes: Data is permanently moved from node to other