Proxmox Backup Server and Storware Backup and Recovery are robust solutions for backing up Proxmox VE environments. However, they have distinct features, strengths, and target user bases.

Let’s delve into a comparison to help you make an informed decision:

Proxmox Backup Server

• Open-Source and Partly Free: This is its primary advantage, making it a cost-effective choice for many. However, the free version is recommended only for testing and non-production use.
• Simple and Intuitive: Offers a user-friendly web interface for easy management.
• Limited Features: While it provides essential backup and restore functionalities, it may lack advanced features like automated DR testing and granular recovery options.
• Community Support: Relies on a strong community for support and troubleshooting.

Storware Backup and Recovery

• Free, Trial, or Commercial License: This requires a license but offers professional support and regular updates. The free license comes with community support.
• Advanced Features: This product provides a comprehensive set of features, including automated DR testing, granular recovery, advanced backup policies, and robust security options against cyber threats. It’s also perfect for mixed virtual, cloud, and physical environments.
• Scalability: Designed to scale with your infrastructure needs, supporting multi-node deployments and large-scale environments.
• Enterprise-Grade Support: Offers professional support and maintenance services.
• Backup Strategies for Proxmox VE ↗
• YouTube ↗
• More ↗
• Solution PDF ↗

Key Differences

Here’s a detailed comparison between Proxmox Backup Server and Storware Backup and Recovery, focusing on key factors such as supported environments, backup functionality, scalability, security, and pricing considerations.

Supported Environments

• Proxmox Backup Server: Primarily designed to work within the Proxmox ecosystem, it is optimized for Proxmox VE (Virtual Environment) but can handle backup tasks for virtual machines, containers, and physical servers through API integration. It’s popular among Proxmox users for seamless compatibility.
• Storware Backup and Recovery: It’s a highly versatile solution that supports multiple environments, including virtual (e.g., VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV), physical, and containerized workloads. It also integrates with hybrid cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and offers comprehensive data protection for endpoints, databases, and applications.

Backup Functionality and Features

• Proxmox Backup Server: This server is known for efficient deduplication and compression to optimize storage. It provides full, incremental, and differential backup options for file- and VM-level backups. Proxmox emphasizes performance, leveraging open-source components for low-cost, high-speed backup.
• Storware Backup and Recovery: This product offers a wide range of advanced backup features, such as data deduplication, compression, and application-consistent backups. Its incremental-forever backup approach minimizes storage usage and ensures faster recovery times. Additionally, Storware supports role-based access control (RBAC), storage snapshot integrations, and granular recovery options for databases and applications.

Scalability and Flexibility

• Proxmox Backup Server: Designed to scale well within the Proxmox ecosystem, suitable for small to medium-sized environments or organizations heavily reliant on Proxmox VE. Its open-source nature provides flexibility but may require customizations or additional tools for large-scale or hybrid environments.
• Storware Backup and Recovery: Built with scalability in mind, Storware can handle small and enterprise-level deployments across diverse infrastructures, including multi-cloud and hybrid setups. Its centralized management interface makes it ideal for large-scale operations with complex backup requirements across varied environments.

Security and Compliance

• Proxmox Backup Server: This server includes data encryption (AES-256) for backups, both in transit and at rest. While it has essential security features, compliance with enterprise-level security or regulatory standards may require additional configurations or external tools.
• Storware Backup and Recovery emphasizes enterprise-grade security with end-to-end encryption (complying with FIPS 140-2), air-gap backup, multi-factor authentication, RBAC, and advanced compliance reporting. Its robust security features align well with industry compliance standards, often essential for regulated sectors.

Integration and Compatibility

• Proxmox Backup Server: Highly compatible with Proxmox products and offers some REST API integration for third-party tools. However, its ecosystem is primarily tailored for Proxmox VE and may need more compatibility with broader infrastructures.
• Storware Backup and Recovery: Provides extensive integrations, supporting a range of hypervisors, storage solutions, and cloud providers. This makes it ideal for organizations using mixed environments and those looking to adopt a unified backup solution across platforms.

Pricing and Licensing

• Proxmox Backup Server: It is open-source and offers optional subscription plans for enterprise support. This makes it highly cost-effective, especially for Proxmox environments, although support options are limited compared to commercial alternatives.
• Storware Backup and Recovery: Licenses are priced based on storage or endpoint counts, offering flexibility for various business needs. Storware’s model includes support and feature upgrades, which can benefit businesses needing high-level support and regular updates.

Which One is Right for You?

• Suppose you’re primarily using Proxmox VE and have limited backup needs. The Proxmox Backup Server may be a great fit due to its cost-effectiveness, seamless integration, and efficiency within the Proxmox ecosystem.
• If you require a more robust, scalable, and versatile solution with extensive integration across multiple environments and need enterprise-grade security and compliance, Storware Backup and Recovery would likely be a better choice. It’s particularly suited for businesses operating in complex, multi-environment setups.

Each solution has its strengths, so the choice depends on the complexity of your infrastructure, regulatory requirements, and budget.

You can test Storware Backup and Recovery for free or book a one-on-one demo session with our engineer who will be happy to answer all your questions and concerns.

The new EU regulation, DORA, is set to significantly enhance the protection of customer funds and data within financial institutions.

DORA officially entered into force on January 16, 2023. Since then, financial institutions have begun preparing to meet the new requirements, although compliance was not initially mandatory. However, the regulation will become fully enforceable on January 17, 2025.

DORA consolidates various initiatives from different European regulatory authorities, including the European Central Bank (ECB), into a single document. Essentially, DORA impacts every participant in the financial market, including banks, investment firms, asset management companies, digital asset providers, insurance companies, and others.

In Poland alone, the regulation will apply to 29 commercial banks, nearly 500 cooperative banks, over 40 payment institutions, and notably, dozens of IT solution providers.

Under DORA, financial institutions are obligated to manage information and communication technology (ICT) risks, report incidents, test operational resilience, manage third-party (ICT service providers) risks, and share information with other entities in the financial sector.

Steeper Penalties and Greater Order

While banks are accustomed to regulations, DORA introduces several new elements. It all began in 2002 with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which increased the responsibility of boards in financial reporting and internal controls. Then came Basel I, II, and III, PCI DSS, and numerous other regulations. So, what new aspects does DORA bring to regulations for financial institutions?

Three factors are worth highlighting:

• DORA unifies digital security regulations in the financial sector. Regulations for the industry are scattered across various legal acts, and sometimes they simply do not align well with one another.
• The introduction of individual penalties for board members ensures that compliance cannot be ignored. The penalties are quite severe, with maximum fines reaching up to €10 million. In the case of serious or repeated violations, the fine can be doubled, and in extreme situations, imprisonment is not excluded. This personal risk emphasizes the need for top-level managers to be actively involved in ensuring compliance with DORA.
• For the first time, regulations include IT system providers. DORA changes the game, as financial institutions are now obligated to impose requirements on IT infrastructure providers. In practice, this means financial entities can only contract external ICT service providers that meet high and up-to-date information security standards. Moreover, certain oversights may result in penalties for infrastructure providers.

The regulation sets the bar quite high—not only for IT hardware and software manufacturers but also for cloud service providers and MSSPs (Managed Security Service Providers).

DORA and Data Protection

According to data from Check Point, banks operating in Poland must fend off more than 1,600 attacks daily. Hackers target only the military and public institutions more frequently in the country. A similar situation exists in the United States, where the financial sector ranks second in the frequency of cyberattacks.

Attackers have straightforward goals—they want money or data, and financial institutions have both. Banks and insurers handle vast amounts of personal and financial data, including bank accounts, transaction details, investment information, and credit histories. These organizations manage highly sensitive data, and breaches can result in severe consequences for both customers and the institutions themselves. For this reason, the financial sector pays close attention to the ever-growing body of privacy and data protection regulations.

The latest of these is the aforementioned DORA, which clearly defines requirements for financial institutions regarding data backup and recovery. Their obligations include configuring backup systems capable of withstanding cyber incidents, system failures, and disruptions. Notably, DORA emphasizes that creating backups is not just an IT issue but a management responsibility requiring oversight and approval from executive leadership.

Article 12 – Data Protection Guidelines

Article 12 of the DORA regulation provides detailed guidelines on the principles, procedures, and methods for data backup, restoration, and recovery. According to these provisions, financial entities are required to develop and document rules and procedures for backing up and recovering data.

The document must specify the scope of data to be backed up and the frequency of backups. When determining RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) for each function, it is essential to consider its criticality and the extent to which disruptions would harm the entity’s financial performance and service continuity.

In addition to regular backups of critical systems and data, DORA mandates periodic testing of backup procedures and recovery methods. Financial institutions are also required to establish clear procedures for both internal and external communication during incidents. This ensures timely and effective responses, including notifying relevant authorities and customers.

Financial institutions must conduct post-incident reviews to maintain the highest levels of data integrity. These reviews should also be carried out during the reconstruction of data from clients and partners to ensure the consistency of all data transferred between systems.

DORA also specifies requirements for central securities depositories, which must maintain at least one secondary data processing site:

a) A safe distance from the primary processing site to prevent the same event from affecting both locations.
b) Capability to ensure continuity of critical functions at the same level as the primary site or at a service level sufficient to carry out recovery processes.
c) Immediate access for financial entity personnel to ensure the continuity of critical functions if the primary site becomes unavailable.

Data Protection for SaaS

Cloud applications are the largest source of data breaches, according to 60% of respondents in The 2024 State of SaaS Resilience survey.

However, half of the respondents mistakenly believe that cloud service providers (CSPs) are solely responsible for data protection. In reality, CSPs operate under a shared responsibility model, meaning they are responsible for the security of the cloud infrastructure and the solutions they offer, while users are responsible for securing their own data and applications within the cloud.

Unfortunately, misunderstanding this principle often results in data loss caused by employee errors or cyberattacks. This issue affects banks, insurance companies, and fintech organizations alike. However, with the implementation of DORA, the situation is set to change. Financial institutions, when signing contracts with SaaS providers, will now inquire about the ability to obtain a complete copy of their data—questions that will be raised as early as the procurement stage.

If the service provider does not offer backup services, the responsibility will fall on the user. In such cases, backups must be stored in a separate local system or in the cloud of another provider.

How does Storware Backup and Recovery support Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)?

Storware Backup and Recovery software aligns with the principles of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) by providing robust data protection, ensuring operational continuity, and supporting compliance with regulatory requirements. Here’s how Storware helps companies meet DORA’s key principles:

1. ICT Risk Management Framework

• Centralized management console to monitor backup and recovery activities.
• Reporting and alerts for backup failures
• Supports enterprise-wide implementation of ICT risk strategies.

2. Incident Reporting

• Logs and audit trails for all backup and restore operations, facilitating incident detection and reporting.
• Detailed insights into data integrity issues or failures.
• Automated reporting features to notify of anomalies or recovery scenarios.

3. Digital Operational Resilience Testing

• Built-in recovery testing features ensure backup data is recoverable and operational.
• Non-disruptive testing capabilities to verify disaster recovery plans without impacting live environments.
• Tools to simulate different failure scenarios and measure recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs).

4. Third-Party Risk Management

• Supports backup of data across diverse environments, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid setups, ensuring resilience against third-party failures.
• Vendor-neutral architecture minimizes dependency on any single third-party provider.
• Data encryption and access controls to secure data managed by external service providers.

5. Information Sharing

• Facilitates collaboration with IT and security teams by providing clear reports and analytics on backup-related events.
• Promotes a unified approach to managing cybersecurity threats through visibility into data protection workflows.

6. Governance and Oversight

• Role-based access controls (RBAC) and user activity tracking ensure accountability within the organization.
• Simplifies audits with detailed documentation of backup configurations and recovery processes.

7. Critical ICT Providers Oversight

• Works seamlessly with major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and ensures their data protection meets compliance requirements.
• Encrypts backups and ensures secure data transfer, reducing risks from third-party vulnerabilities.

8. Adaptation and Compliance

• Regular updates to the software ensure compatibility with evolving cybersecurity threats and regulations.
• Flexible deployment options enable organizations to adapt their data protection strategy as needed.
• Compliance-friendly features such as encryption, immutability, and detailed reporting support adherence to regulatory standards like DORA.

By delivering resilient, secure, and adaptive backup and recovery solutions, Storware enables financial entities to meet the stringent requirements of DORA, ensuring business continuity and safeguarding critical data in an increasingly digital and regulated environment.

Businesses and organizations need to store, back up, and protect data. The data and information generated must be backed up and protected from loss and cyber threats. Hence, every organization strives to find the best method for protecting and backing up data.

Over the years, organizations have employed several conventional methods to back up data. One common issue they pose is the backup window–the time frame in which a backup is scheduled. Since these methods preschedule backups, there could be a significant data loss if a data-loss incident occurs between two back-ups.

The best way to reduce data loss is through continuous data protection. Continuous data protection (CDP) backs up data in real-time, ensuring that there is little to no loss of information in the face of a failure or disaster. This post delves into continuous data protection, how it works, its advantages and disadvantages, including how it differs from other backup methods.

What is Continuous Data Protection?

Continuous data protection, also known as continuous backup, is a backup method that stores data in real-time. It immediately saves every change to the original backup, reducing the backup window.

As a result, you won’t lose your data if there is a failure or natural disaster. You can restore your data to where it was before the failure occurred. Hence, there is little to no loss of information.

How Does Continuous Data Protection Work?

Continuous data protection, patented by British entrepreneur Pete Malcolm, provided a solution to the problem of shrinking backup windows in previous backup methods.

Former backup software only allowed users to store data in a strict backup window. Thus, backing up large data amounts was challenging, even with the available ways of speeding up tape backup. There was a limit to how much data you could back up within a specified period.

CDP sought to correct this problem by backing up data in real time. After it backs up the initial, the server runs in the background. Once there are changes to the information, it immediately backs it up, syncing it to the original backup file. It keeps monitoring changes made and new data created and backs them up.

This method reduces the amount of data backed up at a time as storage occurs almost every minute. At the same time, traditional methods do backups once a day. Thus, once there is a failure or disaster, like powering off your computer, you will lose the day’s data. However, CDP preserves every data backed before the failure gets saved.

The server also captures the various changes made, recording every version of the saved data. These records are saved in separate storage, so you only need to roll back the data to the specific date and time whenever you want to review previous data.

True Continuous vs. Near Continuous Data Protection

True continuous and near-continuous data protection are similar backup methods. However, near-continuous data protection does not capture data in real time. Instead, it works by scheduling a backup time. At the specified time, the server backs up data changes. The scheduled time could be an hour or as short as 20 minutes.

True-continuous data protection offers real-time data backup, ensuring no information gets lost due to backup windows. On the other hand, when using near-continuous protection, you will lose data changes between the last and the next scheduled time if a failure occurs. But it still reduces the potential data loss you will experience using traditional backup methods.

Near-continuous data protection can provide sufficient protection for businesses with less complex needs. However, establishments processing large amounts of data every minute may need a better solution. Hence, they should go for true-continuous backup.

Advantages of Continuous Data Protection

CDP offers many benefits for data backup and cybersecurity, which is why it’s one of the most popular data backup methods. Here are some perks to note:

• Significantly Reduces Backup Window

Continuous data protection closes the backup gap, ensuring there is little data backup window. CDP saves data almost every minute, bridging the time gap and shortening the recovery point objective (RPO), which is the maximum acceptable amount of data lost after recovery from a data loss incident. With this backup method, you can store data every minute instead of the daily backup that traditional methods offer.

You can rest assured there will be little data loss thanks to the continuous backup process. Typically, the data lost will only be a few minutes worth of backed data, preventing massive data loss that may occur when data is backed up less frequently.

• Saves Disk Space

CDP supports minimal use of disk space.  The full backup only happens once. After that, the server adds new information to the already backed-up data. CDP also provides a history log that captures the changes made instead of using snapshots. This saves disk space.

• Records Multiple Versions of Data

A separate storage captures data changes in real-time, providing multiple versions of the modifications made over time. Thus, you can always roll back to recover information from any date and time of backup. This facility is most helpful when multiple users assess the records because it ensures they can all find past information without impacting the other user’s activities.

• Constantly Syncs Data

Continuous backup enables constant syncing of data. Hence, it reduces the potential data loss by syncing data streams as they are backed up.

• Doesn’t Slow Down the Server

When using the CDP method, your system doesn’t have to go through all backed-up data every time. Instead, it only reads the current changes made. Hence, the backup process won’t hugely impact your server’s performance, ensuring a speedy process.

• Supports Faster Disaster Recovery Time

You can always roll back to recover data, so if a cybersecurity attack takes place, leading to data loss, you can always recover them. Also, you can duplicate the CDP storage to an offsite storage facility to protect the data. Doing so enables you to recover quickly from crashes, data corruption, infrastructure failure, and other causes of data loss.

Disadvantages of Continuous Data Protection

Despite the benefits, CDP has some drawbacks. They include:

• High-Cost Investment

CDP uses physical disk storage, so any organization looking to employ this method must invest in disk drives. These disks must be efficient and fast enough to keep up with the high-performance rate. Thus, they usually require heavy investment, leading to increased operational costs.

• CDP Servers Could be Your Single Point of Failure (SPOF)

Although continuous backup reduces the risk of data loss, it is still fragile. Your CPD server can be your single point of failure because damage to the server will mean a total data loss. Thus, your organization must have a secondary means of data-protecting backups to prevent loss. One way to do so is to have a secondary CDP server.

• Compatibility and cloud issues

Incompatibility is also a challenge. If your application and operating system are incompatible with CDP, it won’t work. Hence, you must consider compatibility when deciding on which backup method to adopt.

• Increases Data Volume

CDP backs up data in real-time, doubling your throughput. The rapid increase in data volume can cause performance issues for data resources.

Comparing Continuous Data Protection with Other Data Backup Methods

Besides CDP, there are other methods used to back up data. This section will explore how each of them differs from continuous backup:

Continuous Data Protection vs. Traditional Backup 

Traditional backup methods are the earliest ways to store data. They specify a data backup timeframe, usually by the end of the day. So, unlike the continuous backup technique, they schedule backup time. The true CDP eliminates the need for scheduling by writing the data to a disk and also writes it to a second location.

With traditional backup methods, you cannot restore data from any point in time. You can only restore data up to the last backup schedule. Hence, there is a higher risk of data loss, and recovery also takes longer when there is a data loss or corruption.

Continuous Data Protection vs. Snapshot-based Technologies 

Snapshot-based technologies work with schedules, while CDP doesn’t. When using this system, you must schedule a backup time. Before the scheduled time, the system takes snapshots and saves them to the original network.

These snapshots take up much storage space, making this method less efficient than continuous backups. Snapshot-based backups use about two times that of CDP. The continuous backup technique also reduces data loss to seconds instead of minutes, making it a better option for data protection.

Continuous Data Protection vs. Mirror Backup 

Mirror backup is a fast backup method that mirrors data from your computer system to a separate disk. It creates an exact copy of the backup data. Mirror backup only saves the most recent version of the stored data.

Hence, you cannot recover data from any point in time. Conversely, continuous data protection is a better backup method because it captures data changes, allowing you to recover the data fully.

To Sum it Up

Continuous data protection (CDP) is a technique that backs data up in real time. It saves every data change as it occurs, eliminating the backup window. CDP also saves disk space, syncs data, provides multiple versions of the data, and supports fast recovery. It offers optimum protection against data loss due to natural failures or cyber-attacks.

CDP provides the highest advantage when compared with other available backup methods. However, businesses and organizations with less complex needs can use near-continuous data protection methods. Those with simple needs may choose more straightforward techniques, like traditional backup solutions.

Among the many cloud platforms available, Canonical OpenStack is notable for its open-source foundation, cost efficiency, and scalability. Unlike many proprietary solutions, it gives companies complete control over their cloud infrastructure and flexibility in network, compute, storage, and network administration. This article explores why Canonical OpenStack is a leading choice, covering its components, key advantages, use cases, and more.

What is Canonical OpenStack?

Canonical OpenStack is a leading open-source cloud computing platform. It is meant to help with distributed compute, network, and storage resource administration. Canonical OpenStack combines these resources into pools, allowing companies to offer virtual resources on demand via a self-service portal.

Because of its capacity, it is a reasonably priced substitute for proprietary virtualization solutions. As a result, companies can maximize their cloud expenditures and compete with hyperscale service providers.

How Does OpenStack Work?

OpenStack aggregates physical resources into a big pool from which it distributes virtual resources when customers request them through a self-service portal or application programming interfaces (APIs). It does not handle virtualization directly, but instead, it capitalizes on existing virtualization technologies. As a result, it can facilitate the rapid deployment and management of cloud-native services.

Key Components of OpenStack

OpenStack was designed based on a modular architecture. It has several main features, which include:

• Nova: The main compute running instance scheduling, creation, and termination. It supports Hyper-V, Xen, QEMU/KVM, and VMware ESXi among other hypervisors.
• Glance: An image service that controls, uploads, and retrieves cloud images for instances running on the platform.
• Neutron: Provides networking capabilities between instances, allowing multi-VM deployments to take place.
• Cinder: Manages block storage by provisioning, managing, and terminating persistent block devices.
• Swift: Offers scalable object storage services that retrieve and store unstructured data objects using a RESTful API for OpenStack services and instances running on the Cloud.
• Keystone: Handles authentication and authorization functions for users in multi-tenant environments.

Advantages Over Competition

Canonical OpenStack offers several advantages compared to other cloud platforms:

• Focus on Performance and Simplicity

The implementation of a small-scale private cloud can be complex and costly, especially for organizations without the necessary expertise. Sunbeam, an OpenStack project, offers a solution by simplifying the adoption process and providing a more accessible platform. MicroStack, a Sunbeam-based distribution, is specifically designed for small-scale environments and can be self-deployed without requiring professional services. This provides organizations with a cost-effective option for building their own private cloud infrastructure. Additionally, MicroStack is supported by Canonical, a leading provider of cloud infrastructure solutions. With the support of Canonical, MicroStack offers a robust and reliable option for organizations looking to deploy a small-scale private cloud.

• Cost Efficiency

Although the initial capital expenditures (CapEx) for implementing OpenStack can be somewhat high, the operational expenses (OpEx) are far lower than the cost of using hyperscalers. This results in a reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) over time, making it an attractive option for long-term cloud operations.

• Full Cloud Functionality

Unlike traditional virtualization platforms like VMware vSphere, OpenStack provides a complete cloud environment that resembles public clouds. Users can request resources programmatically through APIs, enabling rapid infrastructure automation and cloud-native operations.

• Community Support

There are thousands of contributors and organizations involved in its development, including Red Hat, IBM, Huawei, and Cisco. As a result, Canonical OpenStack benefits from continuous enhancements and community-driven support.

The Canonical OpenStack Distribution

The Canonical Distribution of OpenStack is designed to be the most straightforward and efficient way to deploy and manage OpenStack private clouds. It acts as an “autopilot” for creating reference OpenStack clouds in minutes and provides full management, monitoring, and scaling capabilities.

This distribution automates the entire process of building a fully managed private cloud from bare metal. It offers high performance, allowing users to focus on their applications rather than the underlying infrastructure. The Canonical OpenStack is currently in public beta. It is free for small-scale deployments of up to 10 physical and ten virtual machines.

This approach significantly reduces the time and costs associated with deploying private clouds. As a result, enterprises can optimize their resources effectively while maintaining a focus on innovation and application development.

Key features of the Canonical Distribution of OpenStack

• Automated Cloud Creation

Users can simply point the distribution at their physical hardware and specify their preferences for storage, software-defined networking, and hypervisors. The system will then automatically create, manage, and monitor the cloud environment.

• Integration with MAAS and Landscape

The distribution utilizes MAAS (Metal as a Service) for physical hardware detection and provisioning, combined with Canonical’s Landscape for systems management. This integration allows for easy addition of machines to the cloud and ensures high availability through physical isolation zones.

• Web-Based User Interface

It offers a simple web-based UI in Landscape that enables users to select compatible components for their cloud, streamlining the setup process.

• OpenStack-Aware Monitoring

Once the cloud has been built, Landscape provides monitoring tools that track the health of cloud resources. Landscape doesn’t only monitor the running cloud environment. It also provides real-time predictions based on current utilization trends. This helps in capacity planning to determine when additional compute nodes or storage will be needed.

• Vendor Flexibility

The Canonical Distribution supports a wide range of vendor components for network, storage, and compute resources, ensuring that organizations can choose solutions that best fit their needs.

Canonical continuously tests thousands of configurations of Canonical OpenStack built with third-party hardware and software in its OpenStack Interoperability Lab (OIL) to find more compatible cloud components, giving customers a wider range of options and allowing them to make flexible choices.

Markets and Sectors

Canonical OpenStack is utilized across diverse industries due to its versatility:

• Telecommunications: Service providers leverage OpenStack for network function virtualization (NFV), allowing them to implement efficient virtualized networks.
• Public sector: Canonical OpenStack is a popular choice for public sector organizations due to its open-source nature, scalability, and security features. Governments worldwide are increasingly adopting OpenStack to modernize their IT infrastructure, reduce costs, and improve efficiency.
• Financial Services: Banks and financial institutions adopt Canonical OpenStack to manage data securely while complying with industry regulations.
• Education: Universities use OpenStack for research projects requiring substantial computational resources without incurring prohibitive costs.
• Healthcare: The healthcare sector benefits from the stability and security of Canonical OpenStack for managing sensitive patient data.

Use Cases for Canonical OpenStack

Organizations can leverage Canonical OpenStack in various ways:

• Private Cloud Deployment: Businesses can establish their own private cloud infrastructures, optimizing costs while maintaining control over their data.
• Public Cloud Services: Using Canonical OpenStack, local service providers can create public clouds offering options in countries where main hyperscalers might not be present.
• Network Function Virtualization (NFV): OpenStack provides a basis for telecommunications companies to implement NFVI solutions. This allows these companies to have flexible and reasonably priced software-based telecom infrastructure.
• Container Management: By extending OpenStack environments with container orchestration solutions like Kubernetes, organizations can improve workload granularity for cloud-native applications.

Data Protection for Canonical OpenStack

The integration of Storware Backup and Recovery with Canonical OpenStack and Canonical KVM ensures seamless operations within this cloud infrastructure, catering to the growing demand for robust cloud solutions. Storware offers a comprehensive backup and recovery solution specifically tailored for OpenStack environments, providing granular control, automation, and efficient data management. Its integration with Canonical’s offerings simplifies the backup and recovery process, allowing organizations to protect their critical data and ensure business continuity in the face of potential challenges.

Additionally, Storware Backup and Recovery integrates with the OpenStack Horizon plugin, providing a user-friendly interface for managing backups and recoveries directly within the OpenStack dashboard. Storware is also actively working on integrating with the OpenStack Skyline plugin, which will enable advanced monitoring and analytics of backup and recovery operations.

Learn more about Instant Restore option for OpenStack environments.

Conclusion

Canonical OpenStack is a robust solution for organizations seeking to build flexible, cost-effective cloud environments. Its automated deployment capabilities, modular architecture, and strong community support position it as a leading choice in the open-source cloud landscape. From telecoms to healthcare, Canonical OpenStack keeps becoming more and more popular as companies try to use open-source technology in their cloud plans based on its track record across several sectors.

Storware 7.0 – what’s new?

→ Let’s start with expanded platform support, including Debian and Ubuntu. This addition expands user options by providing greater backup and recovery flexibility. Furthermore, the integration with Canonical OpenStack and Canonical KVM ensures seamless operations within this cloud infrastructure, catering to the growing demand for robust cloud solutions.

→ Support for backup sources has also been expanded to include VergeOS, providing the ultimate protection for the ultra-converged infrastructure of this VMware alternative.

→ What’s more, now you can backup Proxmox environments with CEPH storage, similar to functionality offered in OpenStack.

→ Virtualization support sees a significant boost with the inclusion of generic volume groups for OpenStack and Virtuozzo. This improvement enables users to perform consistent backups for multi-disk VMs.

→ In the upcoming release, we have also added support for a new backup location: Impossible Cloud Storage.

→ Deployment has never been easier, thanks to the introduction of an ISO-based installation. Users can now deploy their backup and recovery solutions with unprecedented simplicity, ensuring quick and hassle-free operations.

→ User experience takes a leap forward with the redesigned configuration wizard. Users can now navigate through configuration with ease, reducing the time and effort required to get the system up and running.

→ In addition to these key features, Storware Backup and Recovery 7.0 also includes a server framework update from Payara Micro to Quarkus, enhancing performance, scalability and advanced security. The system now automatically detects if the proper network storage is mounted in the backup destination path, adding an extra layer of convenience and security.

→ Additionally, the OS Agent now detects the type of operating system (Desktop/Server) for Windows and Linux, and includes an option to re-register the agent for better management.

→ As Storware evolves, certain features will be deprecated, including the “Keep last backup” flag, support for CentOS 7, SSH Transfer backup strategy for RHV, support for Xen and Oracle Virtualization Manager, and the old CLI version from the node

Storware 7.0 high level architecture:

Backup → Recover → Thrive

Storware Backup and Recovery ability to manage and protect vast amounts of data provides uninterrupted development and security against ransomware and other threats, leverages data resilience, and offers stability to businesses in today’s data-driven landscape.

1. Key Trends in Data Protection

Backup Solutions

A significant 54% of organizations indicated a strong likelihood of changing their primary backup solutions within the next twelve months. Several factors drive this willingness to switch:

• Improved Reliability:

Enhancing the success rate of backups remains a top priority. Unreliable backup solutions can lead to significant data loss and operational disruptions.

• Cybersecurity Integration:

The ability to detect and remediate cyber threats, particularly ransomware, is crucial. Organizations are looking for backup solutions that offer integrated cybersecurity features.

• Diversification:

Organizations want to diversify and use different data protection tools for different workloads. Thus, they can work with a more robust data security system, ensuring better protection from data loss and cyber threats.

Cloud Integration and Hybrid Flexibility

The report highlights the growing importance of cyber integration in modern data protection strategies. Hybrid cloud environments, which combine on-premises and cloud resources, are becoming increasingly popular too. Organizations believe that these elements are the most important in modern data protection:

• Cyber-integrated Solutions:

Data protection solutions that integrate cybersecurity tools are the top choice for organizations. Such solutions offer comprehensive protection against various data threats, including cyber threats.

• Cloud-to-Cloud Workload Mobility:

Moving workloads seamlessly between cloud services, such as Amazon and Azure, is a significant advantage as it offers hybrid flexibility.

2. Challenges in Data Protection

Enterprise Backup

An enterprise backup solution is crucial for ensuring business continuity and data integrity by safeguarding against data loss due to hardware failures, cyberattacks, human errors, and natural disasters. The top attributes organizations consider when choosing an enterprise backup tool are:

• Consistent Reliability:

Backup solutions must always be reliable to protect and recover data during data disasters. Thus, reliability is the most crucial attribute for organizations.

• Support Modern cloud-hosted workloads:

Support for modern cloud-hosted workloads like SaaS and IaaS is crucial for ensuring comprehensive data protection and seamless recovery across all environments where business operations occur. As organizations increasingly adopt cloud services for scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, backing up these workloads is essential to safeguard against data loss, downtime, and compliance risks.

• Ease of Management:

Another crucial attribute is the ease of management across different locations and geographies. An enterprise backup solution that seamlessly backs up data across every location and platform is essential for large companies with various places that can spread across geographies.

DX Challenges

Cybersecurity threats and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals are the top anticipated challenges for organizations in the next 12 months. The intersection of these areas highlights the need for data protection strategies that safeguard data and align with broader organizational goals, such as sustainability and ethical governance.

3. Customers in the Cloud

Cloud storage has become crucial in the modern data environment as organizations have migrated from traditional storage to modern ones like the cloud. However, these data require protection against data disasters, ensuring total data recovery during a disaster. A survey on cloud backup revealed:

• 74% of the surveyed organizations use third-party backup products or BaaS services to secure their data outside the M365 environment.
• Most organizations still only back up their containers.
• In the next two years, 88% of the surveyed organizations will likely use BaaS and DRaaS to protect their servers.
• Most organizations choose cloud infrastructure or DRaaS over multiple self-managed data centers.

4. Cyber-resiliency: Not ‘If’ but ‘When’

Cyber-resiliency is no longer a matter of “if” but “when,” as cyberattacks have become rampant and inevitable in today’s digital landscape. Organizations cannot afford to neglect cybersecurity because the frequency, sophistication, and variety of cyber threats continue to escalate, targeting businesses of all sizes and sectors.

Below is the analysis of cyber-resiliency:

• Cyber attacks were the most common and most impactful cause of outages over the past two years.
• 75% of the surveyed organizations suffered ransomware attacks in 2023.

5. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

The ability to recover from disasters, whether cyberattacks, natural disasters, or other disruptions, is critical. The report indicates that many organizations struggle to meet service level agreements (SLAs) during disaster recovery tests.

• Within the last year, 58% of organizations met SLAs during data recovery tests.
• Only 32% of organizations can recover a 50-server site.
• 85% of organizations recover their DR servers from cloud copies of their data.
• Only 13% of organizations use orchestrated workflows for their failover mechanism when resuming functionality.

6. Employee Retention

The survey also revealed that 47% of employees in the data protection sector intend to change jobs outside their organization within the next twelve months, which is higher than the 33% of employees who are pretty confident they will retain their jobs.

• Caution: Losing data security experts leaves an organization vulnerable during an inevitable cyber event.
• Opportunity: Organizations should recruit new talent with skills to know how to protect modern clouds and prepare against cyber events.

How does Storware address the issues identified in Veeam’s 2024 Data Protection Trends Report?

Based on Veeam’s report, here’s how Storware Backup and Recovery can address some key findings:

Cloud-powered Protection: The report highlights a surge in cloud adoption for data protection (70% by 2026). Storware, if integrated with a cloud-based backup solution, can facilitate backing up data locally with Storware and then easily replicating or tiering it to the cloud for long-term storage and disaster recovery.

Modernizing Backups (54% seeking new solutions): Storware offers features like:

• Scalability: Storware scales to accommodate growing data volumes, potentially eliminating the need for an entirely new backup solution.
• Efficiency: Deduplication and compression can reduce storage requirements, making backups more efficient.
• Security: Integration with features like immutable backups can enhance data security against ransomware attacks, a growing concern according to the report.

Protection Gaps (27% of organizations acknowledge a gap): Storware can potentially help close this gap by:

• Supporting Diverse Workloads: Backing up a wider range of data sources, including physical, virtual, and cloud-based environments.
• Granular Recovery: Enabling granular restores of specific files or applications, minimizing downtime during recovery.