VMware Backup Evolved.

Actifio’s pricing model is very simple and easy to understand. It’s based on the amount of source data protected. For example: If an enterprise wants to use Actifio to protect 5 VMware instances, each with 10 TB source database size, the enterprise would need Actifio license for 50 TB of source data. Enterprises can use this license in any public cloud or on-premises in VMs or physical servers.

Actifio VDP is the patented core Virtual Data Pipeline technology that can be consumed in multiple form factors.

Actifio Sky is a VM appliance that runs Actifio VDP engine and can be provisioned in a public cloud VM or on-premises in VMware, Hyper-V VMs.

Actifio CDS/CDX is a physical appliance cluster that runs Actifio VDP engine with High Availability and is typically used on-premises.

Yes. Actifio supports all major public cloud providers including  Azure, Oracle, AWS, IBM, and Google. It’s also available in the leading public cloud marketplaces.

Following are the key comparisons:

1. Full vs Incremental forever backup for VMware VMs: Legacy vendors perform recurring full backups while Actifio performs incremental forever backups. Legacy vendors integrating with native VADP APIs for incremental forever backup struggle with the problem of VM Stun with VMware VMs with databases.
2. Large vs Instant recovery time: RTO with legacy vendors is large because of restoring from their proprietary backup format. Compare this with Actifio’s instant recovery where it can recover even a 50+ TB VMware VM in just minutes.
3. Scalable Instant Recovery: Legacy vendors perform instant recovery of VMware VMs out of deduplicated storage which limits performance post recovery. Actifio uses native format for backup and scales very well post recovery.
4. No instant access from Object Storage in cloud: Legacy vendors can backup VMware to object storage in the cloud, but cannot provide instant access from object storage during restore. This causes large access time and uncertainty during restores and may lead to compliance failures.

Following are the key comparisons:

1. Low vs High Performance post instant recovery: While mounting backups from deduplication appliances might be instant, the deduplication format on commodity storage impacts the IO performance significantly. Compare this with Actifio which stores backups in its native VMware format on any storage tier, thus delivering the raw native performance of the underlying storage.
2. VMware backups direct to Object storage: For a lot of customers, protecting smaller/branch offices can be a challenge especially since smaller sites typically have limited IT expertise and footprint. These customers want the ability to protect and retain remote data while minimizing cost and management complexity. Deduplication appliance vendors cannot backup VMware VMs directly to cloud object storage and they require much more substantial compute, memory and storage footprint on prem. Actifio on the other hand, can directly write protected VM images directly to object storage to minimize on prem resource requirement.
3. One Click DR orchestration for VMware VMs: Large scale disaster recoveries require that IT practitioners provision tens, hundreds or even thousands of virtual machines in a specific order to ensure all applications come online correctly. This is a very complex process and as a result many DR tests fail and many companies have low confidence in their ability to recovery. Deduplication appliance vendors don’t offer one click DR orchestration for VMware VMs and so all DR recoveries are manual. Actifio on the other hand can deliver highly reliable and automated DR activities that can massively simplify the DR testing process.
4. None vs High flexibility for storage and storage protocols: With deduplication appliance vendors users are locked into whatever storage the vendor’s supply. Deduplication vendors typically only support NFS for back up and mount. Compare this with Actifio which allows users to specify any storage vendor with the right performance metrics, thus eliminating storage vendor lock-in. Moreover, users have complete flexibility to backup, mount, and recover over Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS protocols.
5. High vs Low Cloud TCO: The scaleout deduplication appliance vendors support very few public cloud providers. They also need a very large amount of compute to protect cloud resident workloads with a minimum of 3-4 node clusters, thus driving up 24×7 cloud costs. Compare this with Actifio which needs very small compute to protect cloud resident workloads, leverages cloud block and/or object storage and even delivers instant recovery from cloud object storage.

Yes, Actifio leverages VADP APIs to perform application consistent incremental forever backups. After incremental backup, it synthesizes a point-in-time virtual full backup by manipulating its metadata.

For more details on how Actifio works for VMware VMs, check out this solution brief.

Actifio stores the VMware backups in native VMware format. This ensures that, after instant mount and recovery, there is no performance overhead because of format conversion.

The other factor to consider is the storage on which the VMware backups are stored by Actifio.

Depending on the performance requirements after instant recovery or provisioning database clones to test/dev users, enterprises can specify the right storage tier to use with Actifio.

And lastly, Actifio also offers the flexibility to instantly mount and recover over Fibre Channel or iSCSI or NFS depending upon the user preference.

Thus the performance can be as good as the underlying storage and the protocol the user wants to use.