Actifio: Cost Reductions While Maintaining Same Performance for SAP HANA Backup on Google Cloud Platform

A technical validation report by Enterprise Strategy Group, an independent analyst firm, found that Actifio, Inc. reduced backup and DR infrastructure costs by 86% when protecting SAP HANA workloads leveraging Google Cloud Platform (GCP) object storage compared with legacy backup approaches using high-performance block storage.

Even with the cost savings, ESG found the same high levels of performance from a DR copy running off Google Nearline object storage as their production instances running on Google Persistent disk block storage.

It evaluated the vendor’s software backing up and recovering a 529GB SAP HANA in-memory database from GCP region (West) to GCP East using Google Nearline object storage.

The study’s author, Tony Palmer, senior validation analyst, summarized some of the key findings: “Cloud object storage is typically 10x inexpensive than the cloud SSD/flash block storage. Actifio’s ability to recover SAP HANA database in just minutes from cloud object storage, while delivering the I/O performance of an SSD/flash block storage is very unique in the industry and reduces cloud infrastructure costs by more than 80% for enterprises. We found Actifio’s user interface to set-up backup and replication SLAs, and perform rapid recoveries to be very simple and easy to use.“

The firm’s incremental-forever data capture minimizes the required compute, bandwidth, and storage to reduce costs. Its deep integration with SAP HANA databases and all other enterprise databases ensures consistent data capture and recovery on GCP.

Palmer continued, “We looked further into the analysis to identify some of the [Actifio] soft benefits, which include self-service provisioning, compliance-driven automated data masking, role-based access controls, and real-time updates from the database to DevOps copies. Combined, these benefits help an organization to be more agile, deliver solutions to market faster, and tighten RPOs and RTOs since the DR copies are always current.“

ESG research shows 52% of IT and data protection professionals cite wasted IT budget as a major risk they are currently facing. Actifio’s ability to reduce the cost of backup and DR infrastructure by leveraging GCP Cloud Object Storage compared with traditional SSD storage can reduce costs by 86% – freeing up budget to help IT teams thrive.

Validation testing confirmed:

Actifio’s ease-of-use to protect SAP HANA databases
The company’s solution ability to support GCP Nearline object storage for DR copies with post-recovery performance that is equivalent to the production environment
Automated provisioning of many multi-terabyte SAP HANA test environments for DevOps within minutes in the cloud

Resource:
ESG Review (registration required)

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