Dell AppSync vs NetApp Snapshot comparison

Dell AppSync is a data management software solution provided by Dell Technologies. It is designed to simplify and streamline data protection, replication, and recovery operations for virtualized environments. The solution specifically focuses on application-consistent data protection, allowing organizations to safeguard critical applications and ensure data availability.

AppSync integrates with leading virtualization platforms such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. It provides centralized management and automation capabilities for various data protection tasks, including backup, replication, recovery, and testing. The software leverages snapshot-based technology to create point-in-time copies of virtual machines, enabling efficient and non-disruptive backups.

With Dell AppSync, administrators can define policies and schedules to automate backup and recovery operations. The software provides granular recovery options, allowing users to restore individual files, folders, or entire virtual machines as needed. It also facilitates data replication to remote sites for disaster recovery purposes, ensuring business continuity in case of a system failure or disaster.

Dell AppSync Features

Dell AppSync offers the following features:

• Granular Recovery Options: Users can restore individual files, folders, or entire virtual machines as needed. This flexibility enables efficient and targeted recovery operations, minimizing downtime and data loss.

• Data Replication for Disaster Recovery: The software facilitates data replication to remote sites, enabling organizations to create a disaster recovery infrastructure. By replicating data to a secondary location, AppSync ensures business continuity and minimizes the impact of system failures or disasters.

• Non-disruptive Backups: AppSync utilizes snapshot-based technology to create point-in-time copies of virtual machines. This approach allows backups to be performed without disrupting the production environment, ensuring continuous operations and reducing the impact on performance.

• Centralized Management: The solution offers a centralized management interface that provides a unified view of the backup and recovery operations across the virtualized environment. Administrators can efficiently monitor and control data protection tasks from a single console.

• Application Testing and Development: AppSync supports the creation of writable snapshots, allowing developers and testers to work with real production data without impacting the primary environment. This feature enhances application development and testing processes.

• Integration with Virtualization Platforms: It integrates seamlessly with leading virtualization platforms such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V to ensure that organizations can leverage their existing virtualization infrastructure.

• Copy Data Management: Dell AppSync empowers application owners to meet the demand for copy data, whether it's for data repurposing, operational recovery, or disaster recovery. It simplifies, orchestrates, and automates the process of generating and consuming copies of production data, providing application owners with self-service capabilities.

• Deep Application Integrations: AppSync offers deep integrations with various enterprise applications, including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server & Exchange, SAP HANA, Kubernetes, and others. This enables application-consistent copies of data stores and individual virtual machine recoveries, ensuring data integrity and reliability.

• Instant Copy Creation and Restore: The solution provides automated and instantaneous copy creation and restore capabilities. Users can quickly generate copies of production data for various purposes, such as testing, development, or analytics, and efficiently restore data when needed.

• Multigeneration Copies for Data Repurposing: With AppSync, organizations can create multiple generations of copies for data repurposing, then they can leverage different versions of copies for specific use cases, enhancing flexibility and agility in application workflows.

• VMware Environment Support: AppSync enables VM-consistent copies of data stores and individual VM recovery specifically for VMware environments. This ensures that the data is protected and recoverable in a consistent state, reducing the risk of corruption or application failures.

• Integrated Copy Data Management: Users provided with an integrated copy data management capability for all Dell primary storage platforms. The solution leverages the abstraction of underlying Dell storage replication technologies, allowing storage administrators to perform initial setup and policy management while empowering application owners with self-service copy data operations.

Dell AppSync Benefits

Some of the benefits of using Dell AppSync are:

Reviews from Real Users

Rhett Waldock, a Programmer Analyst at Mankato Clinic, Ltd. notes that “Dell AppSynch has shortened the data applications between our development and production because it had a significant speed increase and reduced complexity.”

A PeerSpot user and pre-sales specialist at a computer software company observes that “This solution is very helpful and easy to use. You cannot manage storage without it.”

NetApp Snapshot is a data replication software that works through snapshot copies, crucial for the recovery of data. These copies are used as safe points for rollback before upgrades or patches. NetApp Snapshot provides prompt data replication which is also highly space-efficient, and provides users with the full management and control of their data and its copies. Through the various solutions the Snapshot technology has introduced, companies receive enhanced stability, functionality, and performance, as well as storage efficiency.

NetApp Snapshot uses two types of snapshot technologies to handle data replication: Copy on Write (COW) and Redirect on Write (ROW). The COW technologies make a copy of the original information and then only after the replication process is completed does the system overwrite the modified data into the original blocks. In contrast, ROW redirects the snapshots to new storage blocks, updating pointers to those blocks, which always point to the original location. When NetApp Snapshot combines the two technologies, it allows customers to save storage efficiency by way of deduplication and compression.

NetApp Snapshot Features

NetApp Snapshot’s valuable features include:

• Data replication stability: Every NetApp Snapshot copy is an immutable, static copy, giving organizations the opportunity to create consistent backups from their storage system while applications are running.
  
  
• Performance impact: The performance of NetApp's systems that store NetApp Snapshot aren’t affected. The actions of creating or deleting a Snapshot copy also don't greatly impact the performance of the systems where they are located. NetApp’s storage can be used for data replication, backup, and archival even if a company is using another storage system.
  
  
• Storage scale: Another beneficial feature of NetApp is the volume of storage, which supports 255 Snapshot copies. This provides users with the opportunity to perform frequent data replication, thus creating current versions of their data.
  
  
• File recovery: The above-mentioned features allow for the creation of backup for recovery purposes. They also provide\ the opportunity to copy backups to offline storage as well as to create an archive for them.
  
  
• Storage utilization: The option for utilization of storage allows NetApp Snapshot users to benefit from storage volumes similar to those of active file systems. The software works through block increment, which limits the interval of time between added blocks of Snapshot copies, thus creating more efficient storage.

NetApp Snapshot Benefits

The benefits of using NetApp Snapshot include:

• Ability to create instant data replication while applications run
• Up to 255 data replicas available
• Various tools for full-package coverage, including SnapManager, SnapProtect, SnapMirror, SnapRestore, and SnapVault

Reviews from Real Users

Gregg N., Manager of Data Center Services at TTi Power Equipment, states that the primary use of NetApp Snapshot by his organization is as a data-protection solution in the cloud and in the data center. He points out that this data duplication software is very user-friendly, extremely stable, and scalable.

Edgar M., Sr. Data Protection Engineer at DataPivot Technologies, uses NetApp Snapshot for its monitoring or clone capabilities, and he agrees that the solution is very stable.

According to George A., CEO at BDPR Technologies Limited, the most valuable features of NetApp Snapshot are the integration with other vendors and customization.