Simple and scalable backup with ransomware protection for Nutanix

Legacy data protection can’t match the simplicity, scale, and efficiency of Nutanix hybrid cloud infrastructure. Only the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud can protect Nutanix workloads wherever they run without additional hardware or software. Druva secures data offsite, offers infinite scale, and provides a simple consumption-based pricing model that enables customers to reduce costs and complexity, increase cyber resilience, and maintain compliance. 

Protecting your Nutanix environment with legacy on-premises software or secondary storage is complex and involves massive administrative overhead and infrastructure costs. Today, Druva delivers expanded features for Nutanix by adding support for AHV hypervisor and Nutanix Clusters on AWS. This brings the same advantages offered to other workloads we support, including no need for additional hardware, software, or storage management. Of course, Druva is already supporting Nutanix customers today for key workloads such as vSphere, Hyper-V, MS-SQL, Oracle, Windows, and Linux, so this is a natural way to expand your current capabilities safeguarding data within Nutanix environments. 

Use Cases

Nutanix AHV

Druva integrates with Nutanix AHV through an agentless proxy that auto-discovers virtual machines and configures them for backup and recovery purposes. When you start your cloud journey, you need a cloud-native SaaS solution that covers all your Nutanix workloads. The solution should scale as you move to the hybrid cloud and your data footprint grows.

Support for Nutanix Clusters on AWS

The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud lets you back up virtual machines (VMs) in your on-premises data centers, and also those on Nutanix Clusters on AWS. All these VMs are backed up to a single and secure data pool which maximizes storage savings through global deduplication and provides centralized visibility for your entire Nutanix infrastructure. 

Nutanix Files

Druva simplifies and lowers the cost of data protection for Nutanix Files with deep analytics, global source deduplication, auto-tiering, and direct-to-cold storage capabilities. By deploying one or more agentless proxies, organizations can scale backup and recovery operations to meet their needs. Druva Storage Insights and Recommendations automatically scans metadata to help you identify and remove non-critical business data from backups. 

Druva’s Key Capabilities for Nutanix AHV

• Image-based backups: Image-based backups of VMs reduce the complexity and manual overhead involved with Guest OS maintenance and troubleshooting through agent based backups, and even helps with data protection of legacy Guest OS. 

• Support for Prism Central and Prism Element: Back up VMs from Prism Central or Prism Element and restore to any Prism deployment, including Nutanix Clusters on AWS. 

• Application consistency: Druva leverages Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) for application-consistent snapshots of Nutanix AHV VMs. 

After the initial release of AHV support in January 2022, we expect to offer other standard Druva capabilities for AHV workloads. These also support all other workloads running on Nutanix (vSphere, Hyper-V, MS-SQL, Windows, Linux, and Nutanix Files) and provide the following benefits:

• Reduced cost with long-term retention: Meet your legal and compliance needs by protecting data long term with automated storage tiering and the Druva Archive Tier.
• Optional local CloudCache: Retain local backup copies up to 30 days for stricter RTO/RPO or industry-specific compliance requirements using Druva CloudCache —- Druva's secondary storage.

Protecting Nutanix AHV VMs with two simple steps

• Deploy a backup proxy — Start by deploying the Druva backup proxy in your Prism setup. The backup proxy is a virtual machine that sits between your data center and the Druva Cloud, and performs backup and restore of your Nutanix AHV virtual machines. Druva supports both Prism Central and Prism Element.

• Configure backup policy — A backup policy is a set of rules that define the schedule for automatic backups of virtual machines configured for backup. Your backup policy also contains the retention settings for your backup copies. You can create a backup policy and assign it to one or more virtual machines. After assigning a backup policy to a virtual machine, it is configured for backup. Use this policy to define a retention period for the backup snapshots.

Next steps

Now you know how easy it is to use Druva to protect Nutanix AHV environments. 

Druva gives you a single pane of glass through which you can view the backup status and manage data protection of your environment distributed across remote sites in multiple geographies.

To learn more about how Druva supports Nutanix AHV, watch the demo or visit our Nutanix workload page.