In the realm of IT, where precision meets innovation, Dell emerges as the first third-party storage platform to harmonize with the Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) solution. This is a symphony to the ears of IT administrators, yet to truly stir the soul, it requires the delicate notes of data protection. Enter HYCU, and behold, a ballet of technology unfolds, poetry in motion for those who safeguard our digital realms.

You might wonder how these products dance together, intertwining to create an elegant solution for the enterprise. In this blog, we will explore this graceful choreography, beginning with NCP's powerful platform for enterprise workloads, then delving into the art of protecting those workloads with HYCU utilizing Dell Data Domain for storing and retrieving backup data.

Dell PowerFlex with NCP

The Dell PowerFlex with NCP offers a robust and scalable solution for modern data centers. NCP integrates seamlessly with Dell PowerFlex, providing a unified cloud infrastructure that supports virtualized workloads. 

Together, the combination of Nutanix's software-defined architecture and Dell PowerFlex's high-performance storage delivers exceptional speed and reliability. It promotes easy scaling, accommodating growing data and application demands without compromising performance. Management is simplified through the Nutanix Prism hybrid multicloud manager, enabling efficient monitoring and control of resources.

The integration of Dell PowerFlex with NCP enables organizations to scale compute and storage resources independently. Nutanix AHV and AOS operate on Dell PowerFlex compute servers, utilizing external storage from a Dell PowerFlex Storage cluster in a disaggregated architecture. It supports data protection and disaster recovery while facilitating hybrid multicloud operations for scalable workloads.

In our lab setup, Dell PowerFlex with NCP is deployed using a two-layer architecture. The compute layer is a Nutanix cluster deployed on Dell PowerFlex compute nodes and the storage layer is a four-node PowerFlex storage cluster.

For more detailed information, see the Nutanix Cloud Platform Technical Overview.

HYCU

HYCU is data protection software designed to simplify backup, storage, and disaster recovery (DR) for businesses across on-premises, cloud, and SaaS environments. It offers backup as a service (BaaS), disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), and ransomware protection. It is also known for its user-friendly intuitive, user-friendly interface.

Key Uses of HYCU

HYCU enables data recovery and availability when needed with agentless, application-consistent backup and granular recovery. It provides efficient DR solutions that enable seamless failover. The software simplifies the complexity of managing data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with cross-platform capabilities. 
Additionally, it facilitates on-demand migrations and cross-platform data mobility without disruptions or data loss. HYCU also safeguards data and applications from cyber threats to minimize downtime and protect data without sacrificing security, data sovereignty, and privacy.

How HYCU Makes IT Management Easier

HYCU is designed to be simple and easy to use, allowing IT administrators to master data protection and recovery in minutes without complex installation, management, maintenance requirements, or plug-ins, drivers, and additional licenses. Its agentless architecture makes it easy to protect VMs, applications, and servers. 

HYCU easily scales up and down to meet business needs and scales out across hybrid and multicloud environments. It allows IT administrators to choose, both on-premises and in the cloud. It also provides customizable views of the entire data estate, helping administrators to quickly identify protection gaps and verify compliance.

The innovative approach and robust features of HYCU make it a valuable solution for IT administrators looking to streamline data protection and management across diverse IT environments.

Leveraging HYCU with NCP

With the solution assembled, let’s look at how it can be used to protect workloads. One of the most common ways to do this is with Dell Data Domain as the backup destination. In this case, the architecture of an NCP environment looks like this:

A Microsoft SQL Server cluster is deployed on the NCP compute nodes. The three VM’s are hosted on each of the AHV nodes and are clustered using Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) feature. The SQL Server database is configured as Failover Cluster Instance (FCI). Shared volumes are created and mapped from PowerFlex for SQL Server DATA, LOG and TEMP directories. A sample database consisting of 250 GB of HammerDB data is created.

HYCU is configured to take regular application-consistent backups of the database to Data Domain via the DDBoost protocol. Additionally, HYCU provides an easy-to-use interface to manage data protection operations, making quick work of routine activities like backing up new workloads. This creates a well-protected environment where HYCU manages data protection between the VMs in NCP and the protected data stored on Data Domain. 

We see this easy-to-use but elegant interface below. It shows the protection status of a Microsoft SQL workload running in NCP.

This provides a powerful way for IT administrators who are interested in protecting their environment and creating a masterful fusion of technologies.

The collaboration among Dell, HYCU, and Nutanix enhances storage capabilities, optimizes performance for virtualized environments, and addresses key data protection challenges with the use of Data Domain. The partnership between Dell and Nutanix marks a significant innovation in the industry, providing customers with flexibility and choice for their cloud infrastructure solutions.

The PowerFlex solution team is in the process of creating a white paper for this architecture to provide the details needed for IT teams to enable poetry in motion for their workloads. If you would like to discover more about HYCU, Dell PowerFlex with NCP, or Dell PowerFlex, contact your Dell representative.

In the interest of full disclosure, this blog was created with the help of AI.