StorSimple Backs Up SharePoint To The Cloud

Users of Microsoft's SharePoint business collaboration platform can greatly reduce the amount of space the application takes up with the Armada device from StorSimple. StorSimple Armada works by deduplicating and intelligently examining data, keeping the most-used data on serial-attached SCSI drives within the device and migrating less-used data to the cloud.

The Armada devices can also help improve security by encrypting data. In addition, because much of the data is archived to the cloud, less data needs to be backed up.

Shawn Partridge, VP of IT for Rockford Construction, a Michigan-based commercial construction company, says his company had been concerned about putting data in the cloud due to security issues. The company was concerned not just that the cloud vendor's administrators would have access to the data, but that the admins could turn it over under a subpoena without notifying Rockford. "StorSimple alleviated that [concern] because data is encrypted and deduped at a block level," says Partridge. "So, even if they could get to the data, it's encrypted. If they decrypted it, it's still a jumbled mess because of the dedupe."

Rockford uses the product for two purposes: archival data and for its 300GB of Microsoft SharePoint data, which Partridge expects to increase with the new device. "We'd been having performance problems with 300GB," he says. "That's no longer an issue." While the system is too new for Partridge to know whether he is saving on operational expenses, it cost about half what it would have cost to buy a new, larger SAN, he says.

The Armada device is optimized for applications and particularly for Microsoft SharePoint, says Ian Howells, chief marketing officer for StorSimple. It is also the only cloud storage product to be certified for Windows Server 2008 R2, according to Howells.StorSimple lets organizations use Microsoft SharePoint more efficiently, says Mark Gilbert, VP in the research group of Gartner. "[SharePoint's] a vacuum cleaner that nobody changes the bag on, sucking up docs and information," he says. "Nobody wants to be the janitor and figure out what they can throw out." Consequently, it's common these days for companies to have SharePoint installations of 1TB or more, which can amount to more like 7TB to 10TB including backups, he says. Gilbert adds that StorSimple reduces this with deduplication and archiving to the cloud.

The device comes in three models: the Armada 1010, the Armada 5010 and the Armada 7010. The Armada 1010 is 1U, has capacity of up to 50TB and stores all data on the cloud; the Armada 5010 and Armada 7010 are 2U, store up to 100TB and 200TB, respectively, and provide SAS for local storage.

The three devices start at $15,000 for 10TB, $30,000 for 20TBand $50,000 for 40TB, and are scheduled to ship by the end of the year. The devices work with cloud vendors including Amazon, AT&T, EMC, Iron Mountain and Microsoft.