Commvault Rolls Out IntelliSnap Support for Cisco HyperFlex

With Tuesday’s announcement that its IntelliSnap snapshot technology has been tested and validated to work with Cisco HyperFlex hyperconverged systems, Commvault says pairing HyperFlex and ScaleProtect with Cisco UCS provides a hyperconverged, scale-out solution that delivers comprehensive data protection for the intent-based data center.

The combined solution protects application workloads, file systems and virtual machines without the need for third-party software or hardware, or tools, making it easier for Cisco partners.

Commvault’s Carmen Sorice

“By Cisco and Commvault integrating these services, it makes it easier for the Cisco partner ecosystem to design, configure and quote these solutions in a more compelling manner for their customers,” Carmen Sorice, vice president of worldwide route services at Commvault, told Channel Futures.

The Commvault IntelliSnap component automates snapshot-assisted backups for Cisco HyperFlex.

“From our perspective, it deepens our relationship with Cisco and allows us to have a completely automated approach to snapshot assisted backups,” said Jonathan Howard, director of technology and engineering alliances at Commvault. “This is our first foray into that with Cisco.”

Traditionally, Cisco has partnered with many storage companies but hasn’t opened its own storage layer, he added. However, the new snapshot layer at a new storage layer can be controlled and automated through direct API and integration with Commvault’s IntelliSnap engine.

“We’ve done that linkage programming,” said Howard.

HyperFlex at Cisco’s Vijay Venugopal

“We continue to work with Commvault to help enterprise customers reduce IT and data-management costs and complexity by eliminating the need for multiple software and hardware products or single-purpose tools,” said Vijay Venugopal, senior director, product management, Cisco HyperFlex. “Achieving control and scale in a multicloud IT world is essential for infrastructure modernization and digital transformation. Commvault IntelliSnap aids in providing that control and extends the value of Cisco HyperFlex to help customers ensure data is available, moveable and recoverable across the entire IT landscape.”

Partners interested in this new capability include those on the compute side — say a partner who has been focused on positioning and selling Cisco UCS.

“This plays into the fold for these partners,” said Sorice.

Partners who focus less on the compute side and more on the hyperconverged side might also be interested.

“Partners who provide compute, storage and network solutions and they’re using Hyperflex. This new and integrated offer is going to play well with these partners,” he added.

Finally, partners who help customers with a multicloud strategy will be integrated in this new capability. And an increasing number of customers turn to multiple public cloud providers in addition to having one or more private clouds.

“The real power comes in Commvault’s ability to play across all those platforms and infrastructures, helping Cisco do what it wants to do, which is to deliver any app, to any cloud, on any infrastructure, and that’s what we’re enabling their partners to do,” said Sorice.

This new offer will be a play for both Cisco and Commvault partners, and, according to Sorice, many Commvault partners are also Cisco partners.

“As with other offers that we develop and deliver, as we tighten our relationships with the alliance partners we work with, including first and foremost Cisco, we develop solutions so that Cisco can offer those solutions to their partners on their paper with their SKUs. We can also offer solutions on Commvault paper as well,” he added.