Hedvig
All-encompassing Storage Solution with Dynamic Scalability

Many organizations today have their data spread across various locations and datacenters, which include a mix of multiple on-premise as well as cloud storage sites. A prevalent practice among these organizations is to employ distinct solutions for each of their storage workloads by installing multiple storage clusters at different locations. Also, most of these solutions lack hybrid or multi-cloud capabilities, thus highlighting the need for an omni-storage solution that simplifies the task of managing data across an organization’s disparate and distant storage sites. A Swedish manufacturer of commercial vehicles—Scania—was in search of one such comprehensive storage solution to unify its multiple datacenters along with simultaneously running and backing up the virtual machines for user workloads. California-based Hedvig fulfilled all of Scania’s unique requirements by providing an end-to-end solution which consolidated the diverse storage workloads and requirements in one large system.

Hedvig deployed one big storage cluster that extended across Scania’s multiple sites, which enabled the automobile company to run its primary storage workload as well as back up all the virtual machines with a single, all-encompassing solution. “While the implementation of our solution boosted Scania’s performance, we also managed their entire data migration along with fixing the malfunctions and network interruptions,” states Gaurav Yadav, Founding Engineer and Product Manager at Hedvig. As a result, Hedvig’s solution acted as a primary as well as a secondary storage system within the same cluster in addition to functioning seamlessly with Scania’s existing backup applications including VMware and Veeam.

To ensure that the storage solution works seamlessly with clients’ backup applications, Hedvig has integrated its platform with several frequently used applications. These integrations make it easier for users to deploy a complete solution encompassing backup applications as well as backup targets. Hedvig’s solution, like most historic systems, has built-in enterprise features including compression, data de-duplication, and more. However, traditional backup systems have been expensive and complex to use, and hence organizations today refrain from spending millions of dollars merely on backup targets.

Hedvig’s solution, on the other hand, is cost-effective, easy-to-use, and can be deployed on any kind of commodity hardware, thus offering low total cost of ownership (TCO) coupled with significant CAPEX and OPEX savings.

To ensure that the storage solution works seamlessly with clients’ backup applications, Hedvig has integrated its platform with popular and frequently used applications

“Organizations need not invest in specialized appliances and expensive, bulky backup targets anymore. They can instead resort to our solution which stretches far beyond backups,” remarks Yadav. As Hedvig’s backup solution isn’t siloed and is also highly effective in global data de-duplication, clients can collaborate with one vendor for a range of diverse workloads including running databases, archiving data, and more. While the all-encompassing solution can be customized to best serve clients’ requirements, Hedvig is integrating its platform with more applications in addition to leveraging advanced backup workload characteristics in its volume abstraction—the way an organization consumes storage.

What sets Hedvig apart from the competitors is the dynamic scalability of its storage solution. It isn’t mandatory for clients to figure out their storage capacity requirements right in the beginning as Hedvig helps them to expand the storage cluster as and when required. The company is now working on methods to best leverage public cloud for on-premise applications along with devising strategies for cases that involve backing up data in the cloud for one to six months. Hedvig also looks forward to making its cloud storage model simpler, intuitive, and deterministic with regard to price, reliability, and performance for the migration of data from premises to cloud and back. “The overall aim is to make our solution cloud-agnostic, thus allowing clients the flexibility to move from one cloud vendor to another,” concludes Yadav.