For the past decade, Storware has been dynamically expanding into foreign markets. According to Paweł Mączka, the company’s CEO, as much as 80% of its revenue now comes from outside of Poland. Today the solutions offered by the Polish vendor protect data in over 140 countries. Storware pursues a strategy based on three S’s: simplicity, scalability, security. And even though for the time being its products are used mostly in large enterprises, they retain the ease of use typically associated with SMB-dedicated solutions. Their architecture supports flexible scaling, both vertical (scale-up) and horizontal (scale-out). This is achieved by a three-tier design that features a central server layer and distributed compute nodes. Storware believes that backup tools are not meant for prevention – that’s what cybersecurity systems are for – but rather for restoring data in an intact state after a cyberattack. Instead of consolidating data protection and security products, the company opts for their integration. As Paweł Mączka points out, they “don’t want to create a digital Frankenstein”.

Storware’s experts strive to ensure that their solutions are as secure in the future as they are upon purchase. That’s why the company provides support for 10+ virtualization systems, including VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, Openshift Virtualization, and OpenStack. This means that users can switch between virtualization platforms without the need to change their backup system. Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware proved that this strategy of independence was the right call.

As one of very few vendors on the market, Storware offers a solution that can function either as a standalone platform or as a complementary layer working alongside larger systems such as Dell, IBM, or Rubrik. This is particularly important for large enterprises, where replacing the central backup system is a complex and time-consuming endeavor.

The latest version of Storware Backup and Recovery

The company’s flagship product is Storware Backup and Recovery, which provides centralized management, automation, and comprehensive data protection for local, virtual, and multi-cloud environments. Most importantly, everything can be managed from a single dashboard that supports a wide variety of data sources. Thanks to advanced encryption, data immutability, and multi-factor authentication, Storware ensures a high level of security. The software is available under a perpetual license or as a subscription, depending on the customer’s individual needs. Its most recent version, Storware Backup and Recovery 7.4, was released in September.

“It’s another milestone in our mission to simplify data protection while enhancing efficiency and flexibility for our customers. With Storware Cloud and extensive improvements across major platforms, we empower organizations to protect their workloads more cost-effectively and reliably than ever before,” says Paweł Mączka.

The highlight of this release is Storware Cloud, recommended as a secondary backup destination. Customers can choose between three storage tiers: Tier 1 – powered by N-able, Tier 2 – powered by Vawlt, and Tier 3 – powered by Seagate. Storware Cloud can also serve as secondary storage for the Storware Backup Appliance (SBA), including the newly introduced SBA 1010 and SBA 1010E models.

Storware Backup Appliance: better than DIY

This year the company released Storware Backup Appliance, a new hardware solution that aligns with the latest data protection trends. The device is ready to perform out of the box and seamlessly integrates with both public and private cloud environments. Storware Backup Appliance is available in five configurations, offering from 10 TB to 100 TB of physical storage capacity. Additionally, its integrated deduplication and compression mechanisms ensure at least a 5x increase in effective capacity, which means that the 100 TB model can protect up to 500 TB of data. It’s also worth noting that in real-life scenarios, our customers often reach a much higher compression ratio.

Backups are created synthetically, while the appliance architecture delivers high performance even under heavy workloads. The expected throughput averages about 0.5 TB per hour for 64 KB blocks or 7 TB per hour for 512 KB blocks. The device also offers an interesting feature called Paranoid Mode, which is a proprietary RAID configuration that ensures operational continuity even in the event of four disks failing simultaneously.

Many integrators prefer Do-It-Yourself (DYI) solutions that allow them to achieve decent profit margins. At first glance, this may seem like a cost-effective option, but in practice entails greater complexity, higher risk, and lack of unified technical support. By contrast, every Storware appliance comes individually prepared with a pre-installed and pre-configured operating system, backup environment, and optimized settings. The device is ready to run as soon as it’s connected to the infrastructure, without the need for time-consuming setup or the risk of error. At the same time, it’s built on enterprise-grade components: server-class processors, ECC memory, and disk systems optimized for intensive write operations and data deduplication.