Dell EMC PowerProtect DD Series Appliances and DDOS 7.7

Learn more about what's new in this DDOS 7.7 release.

It has been a busy summer for the Dell EMC PowerProtect DD series appliances team and today, we are happy to announce the availability of the next version of DDOS: DDOS 7.7. DDOS is the intelligent data protection engine behind the DD series appliances that provides the agility, security, and reliability that our customers know and love. DDOS 7.7 delivers enhancements to our cloud offerings, updates to management of the appliances, improved performance in a variety of areas and a new way to consume DDOS.

Dell EMC Cloud Tier and PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition

When we introduced the DD series appliances to market, we made sure to have cloud as one of the central focuses of the offering. DD series appliances with Dell EMC Cloud Tier allows for native and cost-effective long-term retention of data in the cloud. In the past, Cloud Tier could support up to 2x the active capacity of a given DD model except for the DD9900. With the DD9900 already pushing the limits of scale, it was capped at 2PB of Cloud Tier capacity. Today, we are happy to announce that the DD9900 now supports up to 3PB of usable Cloud Tier capacity. With this update, the DD9900 now supports up to 4.5PB of usable capacity with Cloud Tier and up to 293PB of logical capacity with Cloud Tier.

As part of our quarterly DDOS updates, we have also added enhancements to PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition (DDVE). DDVE supports up to 256TB DD instances in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. With DDOS 7.7, DDVE in-cloud now supports the AWS EBS gp3 volumes, lowering the cost of running DDVE natively in cloud.

Ease of Use and Management

Prior to DDOS 7.7 improvements were made to the management and onboarding of DD series appliances at scale. With PowerProtect DD Management Center (DDMC), you can schedule DDOS upgrades and also run pre-checks on those systems for compatibility before the DDOS upgrade is initiated. Starting with DDOS 7.7, we now have an auto rollback function to the previous DDOS version in case the upgrade does not go through, allowing for continuous backup operations even if the upgrade does not complete. The auto rollback capability provides you peace of mind knowing that the DDOS upgrade process will not impact scheduled backups.

Improved Performance and Security

With ongoing development and refinement in any DDOS release, we always strive to deliver higher performance, and DDOS 7.7 is no exception. With DDOS 7.7, we have decreased the failover times of our high availability (HA) configured systems providing a more seamless transition when transferring the workload from one controller to the other. Another area of improvement is in the performance of our Instant Access and Instant Restore (IA/IR) function. When DD series appliances were introduced to market, we were able to claim up to 60K IOPS for the use case of IA/IR. When running DDOS 7.7, you can now take advantage of up to 100k IOPS* for Instant Access and Instant Restore use cases.

With security being paramount and customers wanting to store their data in an encrypted state, DDOS 7.7 also offers improved performance on systems that are taking advantage of data at rest encryption. DD series appliance customers that are taking advantage of encryption will now see little to no drop in performance when using Instant Access and Instant Restore with encrypted data.

On the topic of security, with DDOS 7.7 we are now supporting CipherTrust encryption key manager, formerly known as Next Generation KeySecure, an enterprise key management solution for encryption keys. This helps manage key lifecycle tasks ranging from key generation, key rotation, destruction, and supports the importing/exporting of encryption keys.

DDOS as a Subscription

Flexibility and choice are top of mind for many of our customers today. DD series appliances are available in a physical or software defined form factor and can be deployed on-prem or in the cloud. With DDOS 7.7, when you purchase a DD series appliance you can also purchase DDOS as a subscription. This allows for more flexibility from DD series appliances and minimizes the upfront costs. You can subscribe to DDOS in one, two, three, four, and five year plans and still get access to all the core features you know and love from DD series appliances such as DD Boost, DD Replicator, and DD Encryption.

DDOS 7.7 is packed with new features ranging from enhanced cloud support, increased performance, and the ability to purchase DDOS as a subscription. If you have any questions about this release, please reach out to your sales representative to learn more. Discover more at our PowerProtect DD series appliances site  and follow us on Twitter for the latest information on the Dell Technologies Data Protection Portfolio.

* When using DDOS 7.7 and later on the DD9900. Based on Dell EMC internal testing. Actual results may vary. October 2021

About the Author: David Tye

David is a California native, born and raised in the Bay Area with a passion for technology. Upon graduating from a local university, David was hired on to the Dell Technologies Marketing team full-time. Over the past few years, David’s focus has been on a variety of data protection products and services. Outside of work, David enjoys spending time in the outdoors and watching sports.