I did my personal performance review over the weekend. It’s always important to look back at what you’ve been able to accomplish, especially when you work in the fast-paced world of enterprise software. Looking back, we’ve accomplished a lot. We combined 4 products into a Data Protection portfolio. We combined several communication vehicles – social media accounts, websites, blogs, SalesForce instances, marketing automation programs…you name it we had THREE (Dell, Quest, AppAssure). We worked to combine processes and IT stacks of three companies. It was rough sometimes, but we’re just about through it.
If we’re connected on LinkedIn, you know I finally got around to updating my title. I’ve been the Product Marketing Manager for AppAssure for the last six months. A lot of my time has been spent on the activities I mentioned above, plus working on AppAssure’s reputation. One of the things we did to address this was invite one of the founders of AppAssure, now Dell’s Data Protection GM, to speak to the Tech Field Day 9 candidates back in June. He talked about what actually happened when we first released AppAssure 5.0, and what we’ve done to fix it:
(Please visit the site to view this video)
Still, I feel like I’ve been slacking off on one of the things I wanted to bring to this role – writing technical things in social spaces about my product. I’ve come across things some things marketers from other companies are saying about AppAssure, and I think it’s time to just deal with this issue head on.
Untruths you may hear about AppAssure:
- AppAssure is a software only product.NOT TRUE.
AppAssure is absolutely available in an appliance version, it is called DL4000. Come on y’all, AppAssure is a Dell product now. Why wouldn’t we put the power of our PowerVault servers behind AppAssure, to make protecting data in your environment as quick and easy for you as possible? - AppAssure’s lowest RPO (time when a backup is taken) is one hour. NOT TRUE.
Granularity for backups (and therefor recovery) using AppAssure is 5 minutes. - AppAssure does not have capacity based licensing. NOT TRUE.
Currently capacity licensing is available with the DL4000s. - AppAssure cannot do File Level Recovery. NOT TRUE.
- AppAssure uses a tool called “local mount utility” to restore files. This downloadable application lets you mount a recovery point from the AppAssure Core (AppAssure’s central repository – where all the snapshots live) on any protected machine. Once the recovery point is mounted, its file system can be explored. Using the tool you can recover data all the way down to an individual file.
- AppAssure has only limited bare metal support to Windows and it requires an additional license. NOT TRUE.
AppAssure supports bare metal recover for Windows and Linux, and is included at no additional cost. - AppAssure only backs up a single server without understanding the relational connection between the data and the application. NOT TRUE.
AppAssure is application aware, even with distributed applications. It supports CCR, DAG, SCC, and Hyper-V CSV. - AppAssure has a lower ROI and TCO due to higher operational expenses of putting together, managing, and monitoring servers, storage, networks, operating systems and data protection software. NOT TRUE.
The DL 4000appliance is a self-contained server sized perfectly for AppAssure, it includes two licensed virtual machines that can be used for DR, and you can even purchase additional storage if you need it. Or if you are more comfortable managing all of the elements of your environment, you can purchase the software on its own. We leave the choice up to you.
What else have you heard about AppAssure? Ask me in the comments, or just check out this video we released when AppAssure 5.3 was released. Let's open up this conversation, because we have some cool stuff share coming soon!
(Please visit the site to view this video)
edited to fix one fact. Sorry y'all!
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
