Compared to traditional backup solutions, backup appliances have the following advantages:
- 1. Cost-saving: Simplified solution design, reduced construction costs. Traditional backup systems require separate purchases of backup software, servers, and dedicated disk backup devices, followed by project delivery by integrators, resulting in high costs. In some environments, if separate backup solutions are implemented for physical and virtual resources, costs can unnecessarily increase. Backup appliances integrate the backup software, backup server, backup storage media, and operating system required by traditional backup systems into one, effectively reducing user costs. For users, the design of backup appliances only requires selecting disk capacity based on the number of business hosts, business types, and storage capacity, with the rest being managed by the vendor. Compared to separately purchasing backup software and dedicated disk backup devices, backup appliances are a more economical choice.
- 2. Time-saving: Simplified installation and deployment, shortened system implementation time. The construction of traditional backup systems, from requirements analysis, solution selection, solution implementation, to post-maintenance, all require professional personnel to complete. For enterprises and organizations lacking sufficient IT personnel, backup system construction often consumes a lot of time and effort. Backup appliances come pre-installed with the operating system and backup software, and have pre-configured some backup strategies, enabling "plug-and-play" installation, simplifying the installation and deployment of backup systems, and reducing the construction cycle of backup systems.
- 3. Peace of mind: Simplified after-sales maintenance, reduced system complexity. Traditional backup systems use devices from different vendors, and when troubleshooting is required, support from multiple software and hardware vendors is needed. In complex situations, there may also be issues of vendors shifting responsibility onto each other. Backup appliances provide integrated services, where users only need to contact one supplier for after-sales support, and there are no compatibility and fault determination issues with multiple products, simplifying the compatibility of after-sales maintenance hardware and software components. Compared to traditional backup solutions built using different hardware and software components provided by different vendors, the software in backup appliances has been specifically optimized for backup systems, reducing system complexity with highly matched software and hardware, and effectively improving overall performance.
For domestic users, backup appliances, with their "software, hardware, and service all-in-one" turnkey solution, are particularly attractive. Taking the CDM appliance FX18000 from the well-known domestic backup appliance manufacturer Aisys as an example, let's compare it with traditional backup:
