By Mathew Ericson

AWS re:Invent officially kicked off yesterday. There's a buzz in the air here in Las Vegas as the event officially kicks into gear today with the big keynote from AWS CEO Adam Selipsky. We're so excited to be here celebrating innovation, and our booth is armed with Vaulters ready to talk to you about your AWS data protection challenges.

In our last blog we talked about some of the recent features that help modernize how our customers protect and manage their data on AWS. We highlighted API-based backups with EBS Direct APIs, efficient management of AWS native snapshots, and support for Amazon EKS Distro to help extend support for Amazon EKS workloads to the edge.

In this blog we want to dive deeper into some of the newest features that we've added to our latest Feature Release (FR11.25 - made available November 15^th) - features that further help our customers in their modernization efforts and provide efficient management and cost-optimization for their cloud data.

Amazon EBS Direct APIs for restores

If you read that previous blog, linked above, you'll recall that we are able to leverage EBS Direct APIs to streamline how we backup EBS volumes, resulting in up to 85% quicker backups as measured in testing done in our labs. Use of EBS Direct APIs has now been extended to restore operations, simplifying and accelerating EBS volume data recovery.

Before EBS Direct APIs, the recovery process involved using the snapshot to create a volume, attaching that volume to an Amazon EC2 instance (which we call an "access node"), and recovering the data within that new EC2 instance. With this new API-driven capability introduced in Feature Release 11.25, you're able to recover data directly to where you need it, without the need for access nodes or additional infrastructure.

As you can imagine, recovering directly via API provides a lot of obvious advantages:

• Elimination of associated infrastructure costs - savings on creation of EBS volumes and EC2 instances can be significant for operations at scale (multi-region restores, for instance)
• Substantially faster restore times - without the need to wait on the infrastructure to be provisioned, the restore to be staged on the access node, and the data to be moved back to the original instance, recoveries are greatly accelerated
• Reduced complexity - fewer moving parts means less opportunity for the unexpected to happen

While it's clear that this feature has a great deal of value for the traditional application of recovering lost data, what if it was leveraged for other purposes? Could you utilize this feature to enhance other data mobility use cases, like migration of workloads or disaster recovery? You might be able to guess the answer, but be on the lookout for our next blog after re:Invent where we'll dive deeper into this topic..

Support for AWS Graviton2 Processors

AWS Graviton is a custom processor developed by AWS, based on a 64-bit ARM architecture, and is available as an option to power Amazon EC2 instances (as well as other supported AWS services, illustrated in the link above).

Per AWS, Graviton2 can "deliver up to 40% better price performance over comparable current generation x86-based instances for a broad spectrum of workloads…"

In Feature Release 11.25, Commvault introduced support for Graviton2 instances for access nodes, which offers our customers significant cost savings over the Intel or AMD-based offerings within Amazon EC2. This is just the latest example of Commvault investing in cost-optimization for our customers' cloud environment through modernized infrastructure.

If saving money wasn't enough, how about being more environmentally friendly? Graviton2 is AWS' most power-efficient processor, delivering 2-3.5 times better CPU performance per watt than any other processor in AWS. So beyond saving your company money, Commvault and AWS are also helping contribute to your organization's sustainability goals, as well. There's a lot to be proud of here.

AWS Marketplace to Find, Test, Buy, and Deploy…

AWS Marketplace isn't new, but with Feature Release 11.25 how you can buy and deploy Commvault through Marketplace is.

AWS Marketplace has modernized how customers purchase software, providing instant access to over 10,000 different products being offered by 1,600+ software vendors. Marketplace allows customers to quickly find, test, buy, and deploy software with flexible, subscription-based pricing.

• Find Commvault software on Marketplace with a simple search:

• Try Commvault free for 60 days by selecting the Bring Your Own License (BYOL) option
• Buy a Commvault subscription (non-BYOL version) with a single click
• Deploy Commvault software with just one more click

…using AWS CloudFormation

Deployment for both versions of the product is done through AWS CloudFormation. By utilizing this powerful tool, we can automate end-to-end deployment with best practices for AWS and Commvault automatically applied - including security settings with AWS Identity & Access Management. This is true infrastructure as code (IaC) and not only means simple, fast deployment and accelerated time to value - but also gives you complete confidence that your software is secure and ready to provide enterprise-class data protection and management for all your cloud data.

Summary

AWS re:Invent 2021 is finally upon us - and we couldn't be more excited to talk to you about all the innovative ways we are modernizing protection and management of your AWS data. Whether it's using API calls to recover data directly where it's needed, utilizing Graviton2-based EC2 instances to reduce compute costs by up to 40%, or accelerating purchase and deployment through AWS Marketplace and AWS CloudFormation - the end result is your organization benefitting from the efficiency, cost-optimization, and flexibility that Commvault can provide.

We'd love to talk with you more about it - so stop by booth #1202 or visit https://www.commvault.com/events/aws-reinvent to find out more about our sponsor sessions or how you can schedule a meeting. And enjoy the show!

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.