Virtustream Storage Cloud: Product Overview and Insight

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Bottom Line:

Virtustream Storage Cloud serves a very specific market, yet that market has a substantial size. It is best-suited for long-term storage archive workloads, as opposed to cloud storage platforms that offer fast, immediate data access. And it is an extension of Dell EMC solutions, such as Data Domain Cloud Tiering, Isilon CloudPools, CloudArray and CloudBoost products.

In short, if you’re a Dell EMC customer (a huge group) and you need archiving (also a large audience), then Virtustream could be a top pick for your company. So the company is clearly a niche player, but a valuable one.

But while Virtustream is a smaller player, it offers a robust platform. It offers a number of clearly defined service levels, geared for typical high-demand enterprise workloads. It can handle complex, mission-critical applications.

Company Description:

Virtustream is a U.S.-based subsidiary of Dell. Founded in 2008, Virtustream’s focus is on cloud services and software. It was acquired by EMC in July 2015 and then became part of Dell in 2016. Customers include Dell, Govplace and Super Systems.

Service Description:

Virtustream Storage Cloud (VSC) is an object storage service based on Dell EMC’s storage appliances. The Virtustream cloud storage service is mainly sold by Dell EMC sales representatives. It is used primarily for archiving. The company has added a unified portal and expanded its capabilities to support regulated industries. There are several different levels:

• Standard – Objects are ingested into a single region with data being protected within that region only. This offering is best used when data needs to be readily available and online but does not require the same level of protection provided by Premium.

• Standard– Infrequently Accessed – Objects are ingested into a single region with data being protected within that region only. This offering is best used when data needs to be online but does not require the same level of protection provided by Premium. It is suitable for long term archival and data that will not be accessed much.

• Premium – Objects can be ingested into multiple regions with data being protected across all regions. This offering is best used when data needs to be readily available, online, and protected across an entire geographical area such as the United States or Europe.

• Premium – Infrequently Accessed – Objects can be ingested into multiple regions with data being protected across all regions. This offering is best used when data needs to be online and protected across an entire geographical area such as the United States or Europe. This offering is suitable for long term archival and data that will not be accessed much.

Storage Type:

Object.

Locations:

Virtustream has data centers in the U.S., Germany, Netherlands and U.K.

Differentiator:

Virtustream has credibility among Dell EMC enterprise customers as the only public cloud storage offering that is co-engineered, co-sold and commonly supported with Dell EMC solutions.

Implementation:

Via Dell EMC hardware and virtual appliances “Virtustream Storage Cloud is simple to deploy and provides operational efficiency,” said a solutions architect in the services industry.

Data Transfer:

Across the network.

Performance:

Virtustream offers up to 100,000 IOPS if required.

Availability/ SLA:

Up to 99.999%

Technical Support:

The service portal is provided in English, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. Documentation and support are provided in English only.

Security:

Virtustream offers embedded disaster recovery protection through the replication of data at geographically-dispersed data centers. Data backup and recovery options are also available.

Role-based access, and segregation of logical and physical assets, as well as encrypting data at rest, in-use, and in motion without damaging I/O performance.

Storage Management:

A full suite of professional and managed services from the infrastructure up to the application layer, Virtustream Enterprise Cloud is managed by the xStream Cloud Management Platform. xStream provides a control plane that integrates infrastructure orchestration, enterprise application automation and a suite of business intelligence and service management tools to run mission-critical applications.

“We are very satisfied with a solution where users see all their files (on-prem and cloud) in one common file structure,” said a solutions architect in the services industry.

Markets and Use Cases:

Virtustream’s Storage Cloud is specially designed for long-term storage archive workloads as an extension of Dell EMC Data Domain Cloud Tiering, Isilon CloudPools, CloudArray and CloudBoost products. 

The primary use cases for Virtustream Storage Cloud include backup, archiving and tiering from Dell EMC’s on-premises storage products to the public cloud. Virtustream is purpose-built to run complex, mission-critical, I/O-intensive applications like SAP, and Oracle.

Pricing:

Starting at $0.0300 per month per GB.

Virtustream

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