NOTE From DSA Editor:
Commvault is a company in a race to re-invent itself. We suspect the foundation of its revenue is still derived from traditional backup and archive product sales and associated professional services. However the product portfolio and messaging from Commvault is certainly heading in the right direction. We like the modern data management approach and the focus on cloud enablement that the company talks about. When looking at the product portfolio, the marketing and messaging is more than hype, Commvault have built a portfolio of technologies that genuinely advance the company towards truly being a "modern data management" company. This latest announcement  with Nutanix is a good move from Commvault. In itself it is not major, but as part of a general approach to being relevant in the software defined world it is a another good step in the right direction.

Commvault software integrations with Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor provide organizations easier, more flexible solutions to meet the needs of the most challenging workloads

Tinton Falls, N.J. and San Jose, Calif. – January 19, 2016 - Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT), a global leader in enterprise data protection and information management and Nutanix, the next-generation enterprise computing company, today announced Commvault integration and support of the Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor, including Commvault IntelliSnap®snapshot management capabilities to simplify protection and recovery for data and virtual machines running on Nutanix. These enhancements mark the latest step in thispartnership, enabling organizations to easily increase predictability, scalability and efficiency when deploying infrastructure in a virtualized environment while leveraging the flexibility to deliver customer-fit SLAs for recovery and easy data access from the Commvault Data Platform.

Today, organizations are looking for datacenter infrastructure for tier 1 applications that can make infrastructure truly invisible, so that IT can focus on the applications and services that power their business. There is also a growing need for modern data protection that aligns to this new infrastructure architecture with a single solution for all hypervisors that is easy, scalable and secure.

“Two of the most important trends that IT professionals should be focused on are – increasing their virtualization agility & assuring the reliability and recovery of that environment,” said Jason Buffington (@JBuff), senior analyst at ESG. “As organizations continue their virtualization journey, converged & hyperconverged systems make huge amounts of sense. And since ‘when modernizing production, you must modernize protection,’ it also makes a lot of sense to integrate agile snapshots, application-aware data protection and mature data management technologies into joint solutions that assure customers that their new infrastructure is not only highly performant, but also highly reliable and recoverable.”

By adding support for the Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor alongside capabilities already available for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, Commvault will be the only data protection software platform that provides hardware snapshot integration and agentless protection for all three hypervisors on Nutanix. This integration, leveraging Commvault IntelliSnap and Nutanix Acropolis Distributed Storage Fabric snapshot functionality, provides customers with the ability to optimize costs by seamlessly leveraging the most appropriate hypervisor, reducing risk and effort in scalable and high-performance solutions.

“Building on our industry-leading work with virtualized environments and snapshots, Commvault is uniquely positioned to bring enhanced data protection and recovery to hyperconverged customers using Nutanix Acropolis,” said Brian Allison, VP of Worldwide Alliances, Commvault. “This represents a significant milestone in our commitment to providing the holistic data management solutions organizations are demanding and is indicative of the close engineering relationship between Commvault and Nutanix.”  

With integration into Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor, Commvault adds to its pre-existing portfolio of managing and protecting hypervisors including VMware vSphere and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V.
“Commvault has been an early and strong supporter of the Acropolis hypervisor since its launch,” said Venugopal Pai, Vice President of Strategic Alliances and Business Development, Nutanix. “IT organizations need holistic data protection and management for their critical enterprise applications. We see Commvault as an ideal partner to provide these important capabilities. Today, Nutanix and Commvault are addressing a critical need in the datacenter.”

Basic support for Nutanix Acropolis is available now to select customers, with more advanced IntelliSnap technology integration coming later in the quarter. Key features of the Nutanix and Commvault integration include:

• Deploy the data protection solution that aligns to your applications’ unique needs with options for both streaming and snapshot-based backup for virtual machines
• Collapse backup windows and accelerate restores through easy to use snapshot management without scripting
• Ensure application consistency across a wide-range of enterprise applications including SAP, Oracle, Exchange, and SQL Server
• Eliminate the need for complex multiple point-solutions with a fully integrated solution across physical, virtual (VMware, Hyper-V, and Acropolis Hypervisors) and cloud-based data

“We’re hearing more and more from organizations that they need infrastructure – hardware as well as data management for what’s running on it – that is easier to manage, deploy, scale and protect,” said Chris Mierzwa, Senior Vice president of Infrastructure Strategy at Sirius Computer Solutions. “As a leading provider of solutions based on Commvault and Nutanix technologies, we believe that this enhanced integration will be an extremely attractive solution for our need of a data management and protection solution for hyperconverged environments.”