If you haven’t heard about Datadobi before, they were founded in 2010 by former EMC Centerra engineers and are based out of Belgium. Datadobi focuses on unstructured data management software with two solutions: DobiMigrate (data migration) and DobiProtect (data protection).
I reckon those two topics may not be the sexiest things to talk about on planet Earth. The thought of data migration might give you the shivers because of having had to do that in your past professional life, and you might be as well glad not to have to do it anymore. If you’re still in that space, well you might at least be interested to know that Datadobi seems to excel at this.
DobiProtect: Adding Object-to-Object Support
But today’s talk isn’t related to data migration: unstructured data protection is the talk. Until today, DobiProtect supported NAS-to-NAS and NAS-to-Object data protection. A new Object-to-Object data protection capability has now been added to the product, supporting sources and targets that can be either cloud-based or on-premises.
Supported object storage types include AWS S3, Cloudian HyperStore, Dell ECS, IBM Cloud Object Storage, NetApp StorageGRID, Scality Zenko. Other S3-compatible systems should also be supported, and Wasabi / Backblaze are currently being evaluated.
Object-to-Object Data Protection
Datadobi has identified five scenarios for Object-to-Object data protection:
- Selective Data Protection
- Selective Data Restore (to any object store)
- Read-only Failover
- Read-write Failover and Failback
- Air-gap or cloud
Here’s an excerpt of the press release:
” DobiProtect helps enterprises quickly identify mission-critical unstructured data and isolate it as a golden copy in a location of their choice—whether a physical ‘bunker,’ in the cloud, or behind an air gap. In the event of an interruption, companies can easily restore the data at a granular level to any NAS or object system or point their applications to the golden copy while they are getting their primary systems back online. DobiProtect simplifies the data copy and recovery process and is built on Datadobi’s tried-and-true architecture that is used in many of the world’s largest and most complex environments.”
TECHunplugged’s Opinion
Due to time constraints and prior agreed engagement we haven’t been able to fully follow the Datadobi announcement. Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge two things.
First of all, there is value in using an agnostic piece of software that allows data migration or protection activities to be carried over not only across locations (on-premises, cloud) and platforms (different vendors involved), but also across data types. For example, migrating file to object or its opposite may bring value to certain customers.
Secondly, while those topics may not as exciting as the latest Turbo Encabulator enabled by AI/ML, IoT and 5G, the ugly truth of IT is that large, boring and unthankful activities are often hidden behind shiny infrastructure projects.
When it comes to unstructured data, moving things over requires all sorts of attributes to be looked at such as scheduling, throttling bandwidth, making sure the right data set sor subsets are selected, etc.
All that glitters is not gold, and the green Datadobi folks may have much more value to offer that what can be initially seen. All you have to do is to try and peel the layers.