When it comes to backup architecture, the choice between scale-out and scale-up can make a big difference in how you manage data growth, performance, and resilience. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, and the best fit depends on your business needs. In this blog, we’ll look at the pros and cons of each, using Rubrik and IBM Storage Protect as examples. We’ll also explore why many businesses are using a mix of both, and how Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can help you management of these environments.
Scale-Out: The Flexible, Modern Approach
Rubrik is a great example of a scale-out architecture. With this model, you add more nodes to your backup infrastructure as your data grows, and each node brings both storage and compute power with it. This makes it an excellent choice for fast-growing environments.
Pros:
- Easy to scale: Every time you add a node, you’re increasing both storage and performance, making sure you keep up with your growing data without hitting performance bottlenecks.
- Resilient by design: Rubrik’s scale-out architecture spreads your data across multiple nodes. If one node goes down, the others pick up the slack, ensuring your backups remain available without downtime.
- Future-proof: You can grow your infrastructure step by step, so you don’t need to make big upfront investments. This makes it ideal for businesses dealing with unpredictable growth.
Cons & How to Handle Them:
- Higher upfront cost: Feedback from our clients often highlights the initial surprise at the cost of deploying multiple nodes right from the start. To help manage this, we often recommend integrating cloud storage as a smart alternative to avoid unnecessary upfront investments. The Silverstring Immutable Vault offers a cost-effective way to offload older or less critical data to the cloud. This not only frees up valuable on-premises storage but also enhances resilience and significantly reduces infrastructure costs.
- Complex management: Managing a cluster of nodes can get more difficult as your environment grows. But tools like Rubrik Polaris can help by giving you a centralised way to manage and monitor everything in one place.
- Over-provisioning: Adding nodes means increasing both storage and compute, which can lead to excess capacity you don’t immediately need. Policy-based automation is a great way to keep your resources in check by dynamically allocating them based on real-time needs.
Scale-Up: The Traditional, Simple Option
IBM Storage Protect is the daddy of the traditional scale-up model. In this setup, you add storage capacity by upgrading your existing hardware rather than introducing more nodes.
Pros:
- Familiar and simple: Expanding capacity in a scale-up system is usually easier and less disruptive. You just add more storage to your current infrastructure, making it less of a headache for IT teams.
- Cost-effective for smaller environments: If your business isn’t dealing with rapid data growth, scale-up can be more affordable because you’re only upgrading as needed, rather than adding whole new nodes.
- Fewer moving parts: With fewer physical components, you have less to manage, patch, and monitor. That simplicity is a big win for teams that want less complexity.
Cons & How to Work Around Them:
- Limited scalability: If your data is growing, you’ll eventually max out your hardware’s capacity. When that happens, you’ll need to either replace the system or find ways to offload less important data. At Silverstring, we often recommend using tiered storage – where older, less critical data is moved to cheaper storage, freeing up space for more essential tasks.
- Single point of failure: In a scale-up model, everything is tied to one system. If it goes down, so does your backup. One way to protect against this is by setting up a secondary backup server at a remote site. By configuring replication, you can ensure your data is backed up in multiple locations, so a system failure doesn’t bring you down.
- Performance drops: As you scale up, performance can start to degrade. Using deduplication and compression to reduce data size can help maintain performance levels. Even though it is an older product, IBM Storage Protect still excels in dedupe and compression when dealing with large workloads.
Using Both: A Hybrid Approach for Maximum Flexibility
At Silverstring, we often see businesses using a combination of both approaches. For newer, cloud-native workloads and virtual environments, a scale-out solution like Rubrik is perfect. It offers the flexibility and scalability needed for these modern systems. But for more traditional workloads like AIX, IBM Storage Protect still holds its ground as the reliable, cost-effective market leader.
The challenge comes when you need to manage both architectures at once. Having different systems for different workloads adds complexity to your environment. This is where platforms like Predatar come in. We use Predatar to manage both scale-up and scale-out systems through a single pane of glass. Predatar provides a centralised view, letting you manage both Rubrik and IBM Storage Protect in one place, which makes it easier to keep track of your whole backup estate.
Predatar also automates routine tasks, so you don’t have to manually switch between different platforms. Plus, it helps you spot inefficiencies, security issues and ensures that resources are being used optimally across your environment, whether you’re using Rubrik, IBM, or a combination of other leading backup solutions such as Veeam or Cohesity.
3 Tips for Picking the Right Backup Architecture
- Understand Your Workload Mix: If your business handles both modern and legacy workloads, a hybrid solution may be your best option. Use scale-out architectures for cloud-native, dynamic workloads and scale-up for stable, traditional environments like AIX. This tailored approach ensures each workload is supported by the most suitable infrastructure.
- Simplify with a Unified Platform: Managing different architectures can be complex, but partnering with a specialist MSP and leveraging tools like Predatar can provide centralised visibility and control. This approach not only simplifies the management of both scale-up and scale-out systems, but is often more cost-effective than handling it all in-house.
- Plan for Resilience: Whichever architecture you choose, resilience should be at the core of your strategy. Implement secondary sites, use replication, ensure air-gapped and immutable backups, and regularly test for recoverability. This way, you’ll be protected against system failures and cybercrime, ensuring your backups are reliable and ready when you need them most.
Final Thoughts
There’s no single ‘right’ choice when it comes to backup architecture. Many businesses benefit from using both scale-up and scale-out solutions to address different needs. At Silverstring, we’ve seen how managing both can get tricky, but with the right guidance and tools in place, you can keep everything running smoothly without getting bogged down by complexity. Whether you’re looking to scale incrementally with Rubrik or rely on the trusted power of IBM Storage Protect, make sure your architecture supports your business both now and as it grows.
If you need help deciding between scale up and scale out for your backup and recovery then please contact us.
