Reference Architecture

SimpliVity with Ontrack® PowerControls

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Table of Contents Executive Summary.................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Purpose......................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Audience....................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Solution Overview...................................................................................................................................................................... 3 SimpliVity Introduction................................................................................................................................................. 3 Why SimpliVity For Ontrack PowerControls?................................................................................................................ 4 Kroll Ontrack Introduction............................................................................................................................................ 6 Ontrack PowerControls Overview................................................................................................................................. 6 Customer/Solution Benefits.......................................................................................................................................... 6 Solution Architecture................................................................................................................................................................. 7 Topology....................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Technical Details............................................................................................................................................................ 8 Data Protection And Recovery................................................................................................................................................... 8 SimpliVity Built-In Data Protection................................................................................................................................ 8 Backing up a VM....................................................................................................................................................... 8 Restoring a VM....................................................................................................................................................... 10 File Level Restore.....................................................................................................................................................11 Ontrack PowerControls Application Recovery........................................................................................................................ 12 Access to VMDK on Ontrack PowerControls VM........................................................................................................ 12 Microsoft Exchange.................................................................................................................................................... 13 Granular Recovery for Exchange Databases.......................................................................................................... 13 Microsoft SQL Server.................................................................................................................................................. 14 Granular Recovery for SQL Databases................................................................................................................... 14 Microsoft SharePoint................................................................................................................................................... 16 Granular Recovery for SharePoint........................................................................................................................... 16 Best Practices And FAQ’s......................................................................................................................................................... 17 Exchange FAQs........................................................................................................................................................... 17 SQL FAQs.................................................................................................................................................................... 17 SharePoint FAQs......................................................................................................................................................... 17 Conclusion............................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Additional Information................................................................................................................................................ 18

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Executive Summary

SimpliVity Introduction

Simplivity with Ontrack PowerControls simplifies recovery of enterprise application data. SimpliVity’s built in data protection features leverage Ontrack PowerControls from Kroll Ontrack to recover granular objects from Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SharePoint environments.

SimpliVity’s hyperconverged infrastructure solution transforms the data center by virtualizing data and incorporating all IT infrastructure and services below the hypervisor into commodity x86 building blocks. With 3X total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction, SimpliVity OmniStack software-defined hyperconverged infrastructure delivers the best of both worlds: the enterprise-class performance, protection and resiliency that today’s organizations require, with the cloud economics businesses demand.

Purpose This paper provides an overview of Ontrack PowerControls and SimpliVity OmniStack hyperconverged infrastructure. It presents implementation guidance, configurations, deployment considerations, and administrative best practices for the combined solution.

Audience This paper is intended for IT planners, architects, system administrators, channel partner engineers, professional services personnel and other technology professionals who are evaluating or planning to implement Ontrack PowerControls with SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure.

Solution Overview Backups and restores of enterprise application data are expensive operations that are critical to ensure business continuity. Recovering data from the restored data back into the application requires application expertise and adds significant complexity. SimpliVity with Ontrack PowerControls solution eliminates these issues by leveraging • Simplivity’s built-in data protection features that simplify backup and restore operations and management to a matter of seconds and a couple of mouse clicks • Ontrack PowerControls application specific recovery software for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SharePoint that provides an easy to navigate UI to recover data from SimpliVity restored backups.

Designed to work with any hypervisor or industry-standard x86 server platform, the SimpliVity solution provides a single, shared resource pool across the entire IT stack, eliminating point products and inefficient siloed IT architectures. The solution is distinguished from other converged infrastructure solutions by three unique attributes: accelerated data efficiency, built-in data protection functionality and global unified management capabilities. • Accelerated Data Efficiency: OmniStack performs inline data deduplication, compression and optimization on all data at inception across all phases of the data lifecycle, all handled with fine data granularity of just 4KB8KB. On average, SimpliVity customers achieve 40:1 data efficiency while simultaneously increasing application performance. • Built-In Data Protection: OmniStack includes native data protection functionality, enabling business continuity and disaster recovery for critical applications and data, while eliminating the need for special-purpose backup and recovery hardware or software. OmniStack’s inherent data efficiencies minimize I/O and WAN traffic, reducing backup and restore times from hours to minutes. • Global Unified Management: OmniStack’s VM-centric approach to management eliminates manually intensive, error-prone administrative tasks. System administrators are no longer required to manage LUNs and volumes; instead, they can manage all resources and workloads centrally, using familiar interfaces such as VMware vCenter and VMware vRealize Automation. SimpliVity packages OmniStack on popular x86 platforms—either on 2U servers marketed as OmniCube, or with partner systems from Cisco or Lenovo, marketed as OmniStack Integrated with Cisco UCS and OmniStack Solution with Lenovo System x, respectively.

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An individual OmniStack node includes:

Why SimpliVity for Ontrack PowerControls?

• A compact hardware platform - a 2U industry-standard virtualized x86 platform containing compute, memory, performance-optimized SSDs and capacity-optimized HDDs protected in hardware RAID configurations, and 10GbE network interfaces.

OmniStack was specifically designed to meet the stringent price-performance, scalability, agility and resiliency demands of today’s data-intensive, highly virtualized IT environments. Key benefits and advantages include:

• A hypervisor such as VMware vSphere/ESXi. • OmniStack virtual controller software running on the hypervisor. • An OmniStack Accelerator Card – a special-purpose PCIe card with an FPGA, flash, and DRAM, protected with super capacitors; the accelerator card offloads CPU-intensive functions such as data compression, deduplication and optimization from the x86 processors.

• Superior economics: OmniStack eliminates infrastructure cost and complexity by consolidating a variety of IT functions (compute, storage, network switching, replication, backup, etc.) onto commodity virtualized x86 hardware, with global unified management. The solution contains CAPEX by eliminating IT silos, converging technology stacks, and optimizing storage capacity; and it reduces OPEX by containing power, cooling, rack space and system administration expenses.

(4) Servers & VMware

Storage Switch

(2) HA shared storage

Backup & Dedupe

One Building Block 3x TCO Savings • Global Unified Management • Operational Efficiency •

WAN Optimization



Cloud Gateway SSD Array Storage Caching Data Protection Application

Data Protection Apps

Data Protection Application

Enterprise Capabilities

Cloud Economics

Figure 1 – Legacy Comparison

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• Linear scalability: The SimpliVity solution features a scale-out architecture that minimizes upfront investments and provides a high degree of flexibility and extensibility. OmniStack nodes are installed in an incremental fashion to accommodate growth, enable new applications or extend system availability. Two or more OmniStack nodes can be federated to create a massively scalable pool of shared resources that is administered as a cohesive system, with a single administrative interface. • VM-centric design: OmniStack was designed from the ground up with virtualization in mind. The solution abstracts data from the underlying hardware; virtual machine files are mapped directly to blocks on storage. All data storage, management, and protection functions are inherently optimized for virtualization. And all administrative tasks including managing data protection policies, analyzing performance and troubleshooting problems are all performed at the VM level. From an administrative perspective, a datastore is simply a logical construct, decoupled from the underlying physical infrastructure. Concepts like LUNs, volumes, shares, and disk groups simply don’t apply with SimpliVity.

• Accelerated IT service agility: OmniStack’s inherent data efficiencies and VM-centric management capabilities dramatically simplify operations and boost IT service agility. With OmniStack, system administrators can spin up IT services and clone VMs in just seconds with two or three mouse clicks. • Enterprise-class resiliency: The SimpliVity solution is designed to be highly resilient, with no single point of failure. The solution supports both RAID (redundant array of independent disks) for disk-level resiliency and RAIN (redundant array of independent nodes) for nodelevel resiliency. In a high availability RAIN implementation, the complete set of data associated with a VM is simultaneously written to two distinct nodes, protecting data in the event of disk or node failures.

Public Cloud Figure 2 – An OmniStack Federation

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Kroll Ontrack Introduction Kroll Ontrack provides technology-driven services and software to help legal, corporate and government entities as well as consumers manage, recover, search, analyze, and produce data efficiently and cost-effectively. In addition to its award-winning suite of software, Kroll Ontrack provides data recovery, data destruction, electronic discovery and document review.

Ontrack PowerControls Overview The Ontrack PowerControls software suite provides granular-level recovery and is compatible with SimpliVity solutions. It includes three simple, yet powerful tools for searching, recovering, collecting and restoring data from Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server backups. It is forensically-sound, meaning no file metadata is affected or altered during search and restoration processes. It is suitable to use to access and export data under legal hold, and can be used in any litigation matters. By eliminating the need for a recovery server or restore an entire backup just to restore a few items, emails or SQL tables, Ontrack PowerControls offers significant time and cost savings to SimpliVity customers.

Solution Benefits Built on Kroll Ontrack’s history of recovering databases from damaged servers, Ontrack PowerControls has been helping administrators and e-discovery teams search, collect, and restore data in Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server environments for over 12 years. Tens of thousands of customers worldwide depend on Ontrack PowerControls to save precious time and money by eliminating the need for a recovery server and working directly with backups, allowing you to extract and restore only the items needed.

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Some key uses of Ontrack PowerControls with SimpliVity OmniStack are: 1. Litigation/Legal Hold: Ontrack PowerControls is forensically sound and any data accessed with Ontrack PowerControls can be used in litigation and audits. This means the file metadata is not affected when using Ontrack PowerControls, which is not the case with all granular level recovery solutions. Simplivity Omnistack systems enable you automate backups by creating backup policies and setting retention levels to further assist with litigation and legal mandates. 2. Search/Collection: Ontrack PowerControls is a robust search tool that can locate key words in message subject, body, attachment name, and attachment text. It supports search of over 100 different attachment file types. Search results can be exported to .PST or other file formats. 3. Restore Deleted/Modified Data: Simplivity’s integrated data protection features simplify management of backups and restores of VMs. Ontrack PowerControls leverages Simplivity’s data protection abilities to restore files or previous versions of files, saving time and resources when dealing with human error. 4. Data Migration: Ontrack PowerControls can also assist in migration of data to new versions of Exchange, SharePoint or SQL Server. It can even help migrate data to cloud environments. With Simplivity’s in-built deduplication feature migration between Omnistack systems is more efficient and faster because of less data being sent over the network.

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Solution Architecture This section provides a high level architectural view of running Ontrack PowerControls alongside application servers on SimpliVity systems. It also provides a flow chart showing the steps required in recovering data from Simplivity backups using Ontrack PowerControls

Topology The following diagram shows the topology of Kroll Ontrack-SimpliVity solution. Application Servers Exchange/SQL/SharePoint

Ontrack PowerControls

Infrastructure VM’s

DC 1 Application Servers Exchange/SQL/SharePoint

Infrastructure DC 1GbE Network 10GbE Network

DC 2

Note: A 32-bit version of Outlook 2010 SP2/Outlook 2013 SP1 is installed on the Ontrack PowerControl VM.

Solution process workflow The following flow diagram shows the steps involved in recovering data using the SimpliVity-Kroll Ontrack solution. SimpliVity VM Backup

SimpliVity VM Restore

Attach VMDK to Target VM running Ontrack PowerControls Use Ontrack PowerControls for Application Data recovery from attached VMDK

Details on each step of the process in the above diagram are provided in following sections of the paper. Page 7 of 18

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Technical Details Ontrack PowerControls Version

7.3.1

SimpliVity OmniStack Version

3.0.8 and higher

Supported SimpliVity Platform

All

Supported Exchange Version

Exchange 5.5 and higher

Supported SQL Server Version

SQL 2005 and higher

Supported SharePoint Version

SharePoint Server 2007 and higher

Note: Please refer to the Ontrack PowerControls user guides for Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint in the Additional Information section for specific service packs supported with the applications.

Data Protection and Recovery This sections provides information on Simplivity’s data protection features.

Simplivity Built-in Data Protection Data protection is fully integrated into SimpliVity’s hyperconverged offering and architected into its technological foundation, eliminating the need for purpose-built backup/recovery and disaster recovery applications and appliances. Management of backup policies is performed at the VM-level, with just a few clicks, and fully managed within VMware vCenter. All backups and restores are full logical copies of VMs with almost no impact on running applications. SimpliVity reduces downtime with its ability to restore Terabyte (TB) VMs in seconds to minutes, with backups as frequently as every 10 minutes.

Backing up a VM Backups on a Simplivity Omnistack system can be either policy-driven or manual. Policy-based backup Policy driven backups allow you to schedule backup operations for virtual machines running on OmniStack systems. A backup policy contains certain rules, which include • Backup schedule • Destination Datacenter for the backup • Retention period for the backup Backup policies can be applied at a datastore level or at a VM level. A VM backup policy takes precedence over a datastore level backup policy.

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Manual Backup A VM running application data can also be backed up on-demand manually. Perform the following steps to manually backup a VM. 1. In the vSphere client right click the VM. 2. Hover over all SimpliVity Actions 3. Click Backup Virtual Machine

4. Select the datacenter to backup the VM to and optionally provide a name for the backup in the next dialog box. Advanced settings for the backup in terms of retention period can be configured as well.

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Restoring a VM Restoring a VM from a backup on a SimpliVity Omnistack system is extremely efficient and significantly faster than other backup-restore technologies available. Either the original VM can be restored from the backup or a new VM can be created from it. To recover objects using Kroll a new VM is created from the backup. To restore a VM perform the following steps: 1. Find the backup to be restored 2. Right click the backup and select restore.

3. From the restore VM dialog box. a. Confirm the “Create New VM” option is chosen. b. Optionally provide a specific name for the restored VM c. Select the datacenter where the Ontrack PowerControls is running d. Click OK.

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After the restore operation completes a new VM will appear under the datacenter selected in step 3.c

File Level Restore Specific files and folders can be restored from backups using SimpliVity’s File Lever Restore (FLR) feature. The files and folders retrieved are attached as a DVD drive to a user selected virtual machine within the Datacenter. To restore specific files from a SimpliVity backup 1. Right-click the backup you want to recover files from. 2. Click Restore Files

This will open up the File Level Restore wizard. 3. Use the wizard to select the files needed from the backup and the destination VM to attach the files as a DVD drive to. Confirm and click finish when done.

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Ontrack PowerControls Application Recovery This section provides details on recovering application data for Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint. Ontrack PowerControls leverages SimpliVity backups to recover data. Before using Ontrack PowerControls to perform data recovery, the .vmdk containing the databases to be recovered has to be attached to the VM running Ontrack PowerControls.

Access to VMDK on Ontrack PowerControls VM The following steps must be executed before running Ontrack PowerControls to recover Exchange, SQL or SharePoint data. 1. Select a Simplivity backup to recover data from. 2. Create a new VM from the backup by restoring it. Do not power on the new VM. 3. Open the edit settings page of the target VM running Ontrack PowerControls. 4. From the Virtual Hardware tab select Existing Hard Disk from the drop down menu and click Add

5. Browse the datastore to open the newly restored VM containing data to be recovered.

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6. Select the .vmdk containing databases to be recovered and click OK.

The target VM running Ontrack PowerControls now has access to the virtual drive containing data/databases to be recovered.

Microsoft Exchange Perform the following steps to recover Exchange data

Granular Recovery for Exchange Databases 1. Once you have your VMDK restored and attached to the Ontrack PowerControls VM, open the Ontrack PowerControls for Exchange software. 2. You should be greeted by the Data Wizard, which will walk you through opening both a source EDB and connecting to your target Exchange server that you want to restore messages to. As you can see in the bottom left corner of this screenshot, you may also disable the data wizard. If you prefer to open them individually, you can do so from the File menu, or by using the icons on the toolbar.

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3. In the first screen of the data wizard, as seen above, browse to your source data that should be located on the attached VMDK. You will need both the EDB and the corresponding log files. Once you have both locations selected, click on Next.

4. The next window will prompt you for your target server. This will be your live Exchange server that you plan to restore messages to. If you are going to be exporting messages to PST or just browsing your backup, you can click Skip here. Otherwise, you will need your Domain Controller and Exchange Server name to connect to. If you are using Exchange 2013 or newer, Autodiscover and Outlook Anywhere are supported and you will only need to fill in your Domain Controller name. Once the information is correct, click on Next. 5. The main window should look something like this once you have connected successfully. The source file will be open on the top panel, and your target server will be open on the bottom. The idea here is to drag whichever messages/folders/mailboxes you need to restore from the top panel, to where they need to go in the bottom-left panel. You cannot drop them on the bottom-right panel, where you see the list of messages. You may also use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V if you prefer, or right-click and copy and right-click and paste.

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6. Once you select your messages from the top half, and drag them to the folder they need to be restored to, you will see a progress window like the screenshot below. If any messages failed to copy, it will show all needed information.

7. Close the progress window when the copy is complete, and your messages will have been restored.

Microsoft SQL Server Perform the following steps to recover SQL Server data

Granular Recovery for SQL databases 1. Once you have your VMDK restored and attached to the Ontrack PowerControls VM, open the Ontrack PowerControls for SQL software. 2. You should be greeted by the Data Wizard, which will walk you through opening both a source database to restore tables from, and connecting to your target SQL server that you want to restore/copy tables to. As you can see in the bottom of this screenshot, you may also disable the data wizard. If you prefer to open them individually, you can do so from the File menu, or by using the icons on the toolbar. Click on Next to get started.

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3. In the second screen of the data wizard, as seen below, browse to your source data that should be located on the attached VMDK. You will need a detached MDF/ LDF/NDF set, or a native SQL backup file (.BAK). Click on Add and browse out to the location of those files. Once they are added to the list, click on Next.

4. The next window will prompt you for your target server. This will be your live SQL server that you plan to restore/copy tables to. You will need to enter the specific server you want to connect to, and what type of authentication needed to access the server. You may also connect to a single database attached to that server, or all of them. Once the information is correct, click on Next.

5. The main window should look something like this once you have connected successfully. The source file will be open on the top panel, and your target server will be open on the bottom. You can select a specific table to preview the first 1,000 rows. The idea here is to drag the individual table you need to restore/copy from the top panel, to the Tables folder of the database you want to restore it to in the bottom-left panel. You cannot drop them on the bottom-right panel. You may also use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V if you prefer, or rightclick and copy and right-click and paste.

6. Once you select your table from the top half and drag it to the Tables folder, you will see a progress window like the screenshot below. If it failed to copy, it will show all needed information.

7. Close the progress window when the copy is complete, and your table will have been restored.

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Microsoft SharePoint Perform the following steps to recover SharePoint data.

Granular Recovery for SharePoint. 1. Once you have your VMDK restored and attached to the Ontrack PowerControls VM, open the Ontrack PowerControls for SharePoint software. 2. You should be greeted by the Data Wizard, which will walk you through opening both a source database to restore items from, and connecting to your target SharePoint site that you want to restore those items to. As you can see in the bottom-left of this screenshot, you may also disable the Data Wizard. If you prefer to open them individually, you can do so from the File menu, or by using the icons on the toolbar.

5. The main window should look something like this once you have connected successfully. The source file will be open on the top panel, and your target site will be open on the bottom. You can navigate the tree on both the source and target just like you would in Windows File Explorer. The idea here is to drag the items you need to restore from the top panel, to the library you want to restore it to in the bottom-left panel. You cannot drop them on the bottom-right panel. You may also use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V if you prefer, or right-click and copy and right-click and paste.

3. In the first screen of the Data Wizard, as seen below, browse to your source data that should be located on the attached VMDK. You will need your detached MDF/LDF/NDF set from the content database that houses the items you need to restore. Click on Add and browse out to the location of those files. Once they are added to the list, click on Next. 4. The next window will prompt you for your target SharePoint site. Enter the URL, as well as the credentials with access to that site if you do not have them. One of your web front ends will need to have the Agent for Content Transfer Service (ACTS) installed and running in order to restore items. More details on this are available in the FAQ section below. Once the information is correct, click on Next.

6. Once you select your items from the top half and drag it to the target library, you will see a progress window like the screenshot below. If the items failed to copy, it will show all needed information.

7. Close the progress window when the copy is complete, and your items will have been restored.

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Best Practices and FAQ’s This section discusses certain best practices and Frequently Asked Questions for the Simplivity-Kroll Ontrack solution. • Use Simplivity’s file level restore feature to recover specific .PST and .OST files from a users computer • Use the backup-restore-mount method to recover data from large application databases. • 32-bit version of Outlook should be Outlook 2010 SP2 or preferable Outlook 2013 SP1.

Exchange FAQs Q: Where does the Ontrack PowerControls for Exchange software need to be installed? A: The software can be installed to any server or workstation that has a 32-bit Microsoft Outlook client installed. Q: What permissions are required to be able to restore messages to a mailbox? A: The user running Ontrack PowerControls for Exchange must have full-access within Exchange in order to restore messages to that mailbox.

SQL Server FAQs Q: Does Ontrack PowerControls for SQL Server support compressed databases? A: Ontrack PowerControls for SQL Server does not support compressed databases. However, if your backups are natively compressed, it can open those without issue. Q: Is encryption supported? A: Ontrack PowerControls for SQL Server does not support database or backup encryption at this time.

SharePoint FAQs Q: What can be restored or copied with Ontrack PowerControls for SharePoint? A: Most content items can be restored with Ontrack PowerControls for SharePoint. Individual items, libraries and sites can be restored. Themes and custom settings will have to be restored and setup outside of Ontrack PowerControls. Q: What is ACTS and why do I need it? A: ACTS stands for Agent for Content Transfer Service. This is a required service that needs to be installed and running on a web front end in your SharePoint environment in order to restore items. The installer for this service is included in the Ontrack PowerControls install package. Q: ACTS is installed and running, but Ontrack PowerControls for SharePoint is not detecting it. What is wrong? A: More than likely you have load-balanced web front ends. If this is the case, a HOSTS file entry must be made on the computer running Ontrack PowerControls that points directly to ONE web front end specifically, for the site URL you are trying to connect to. This same web front end would have to have ACTS installed and running. The entry in the HOSTS file should look something like this: 123.45.67.890 site.sharepoint.com

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Conclusion Simplivity with Ontrack PowerControls provides unmatched simplicity in recovering data from enterprise applications. Recovering and restoring data from enterprise applications is a complex process, which also requires application expertise. Simplivity’s built in data protection allows you easily restore data from a point in time backup. Ontrack PowerControls provides an easy to use UI specifically designed to recover data from applications like Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint.

Additional Information For additional information on Simplivity and Ontrack PowerControls, refer to the following resources. https://www.simplivity.com/data-protection/ Ontrack PowerControls for SQL User Guide Ontrack PowerControls for Exchange User Guide Ontrack PowerControls for SharePoint User Guide

For more information, visit: www.simplivity.com

® 2016, SimpliVity. All rights reserved. Information described herein is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice. SimpliVity, the SimpliVity logo, OmniCube, OmniStack, and Data Virtualization Platform are trademarks or registered trademarks of SimpliVity Corporation in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. J809-Kroll-RA-EN-0616

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