Microsoft have changed the model for the StorSimple devices. In the previous iteration it was based on an upfront commit to Azure Consumption of either $60K or $100K. Under the new model, it’s subscription based which means that for:
- $1,333 or £999 per month you can bag yourself an 8100 device
- $1,916 or £1436 per month for a 8600 device
StorSimple Overview
StorSimple is a Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS) solution that stores highly active or heavily used data locally while it moves older and less frequently used data into the cloud. StorSimple is designed to be a best-of-both-worlds solution for storage, backup, and recovery. While on-premises storage is more appropriate for data that undergoes real-time processing, cloud storage is the better option for archiving and housing your periodic backups and infrequently used files.
- Data transmission between the StorSimple system and cloud storage are encrypted using SSL, supporting up to AES 256 bit session encryption during data transfers between the StorSimple system and Microsoft Azure Storage.
- The StorSimple 8600 model offers up to 500TB of storage that can be allocated and this is split between the local device (approx. 38TB before compression) and the cloud.
- Microsoft Azure StorSimple automatically arranges data in logical tiers based on current usage, age, and relationship to other data. Data that is most active is stored locally, while less active and inactive data is automatically migrated to the cloud.
- Microsoft Azure StorSimple uses deduplication and data compression to further reduce storage requirements. Deduplication reduces the overall amount of data stored by eliminating redundancy in the stored data set. As information changes, StorSimple ignores the unchanged data and captures only the changes. In addition, StorSimple reduces the amount of stored data by identifying and removing unnecessary information.
Disaster Recovery
StorSimple provides device failover using the backup copies of on-premises volumes held within Microsoft Azure. During a failure scenario the Microsoft Azure based StorSimple Device Manager rehydrates the secondary StorSimple with the data held within the cloud based Storage Account.
It should be noted that dependent on the backup schedule, data change rate and network bandwidth to Microsoft Azure, data loss is possible.
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