Version 4.2
July 2024

Archive Your Data Directly with
Cohesity CloudArchive Direct
Technical Overview of Cohesity’s Cost-effective
CloudArchive Direct

ABSTRACTWith the exponential growth of data, organizations need better, more cost-effective ways to archive
their petabytes of data. Cohesity's CloudArchive Direct solution provides an efficient and innovative
approach by streaming your data directly into lower-cost cloud storage without having to store a copy
locally. What’s more, the solution allows you to search and restore seamlessly while reducing TCO bystoring only the metadata and index on the local cluster.

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Table of Contents
Introduction to CloudArchive Direct ....................................................................... 4
Key Terms ...................................................................................................................... 4

Explore Cohesity’s Long-term Retention Solutions ............................................... 5
Cohesity CloudArchive .................................................................................................. 5
Cohesity CloudArchive Direct ........................................................................................ 5
Differences Between Legacy CloudArchive Direct or CAD v1 and CloudArchive Direct v2 ............. 7
Features and Benefits of CloudArchive Direct ............................................................................... 8
Cohesity Data Movement.............................................................................................................. 9Compare CloudArchive with CloudArchive Direct ...................................................... 10

Configure CloudArchive Direct ............................................................................ 12
Set Up CloudArchive Direct ......................................................................................... 12

Recover Data with CloudArchive Direct .............................................................. 13
Disaster Recovery with CloudArchive Direct ....................................................... 15
Prerequisites and Limitations .............................................................................. 16
Prerequisites ................................................................................................................ 16
Limitations .................................................................................................................... 16

Your Feedback .................................................................................................... 17
About the Authors ................................................................................................ 17
Document Version History ................................................................................... 17

FiguresFigure 1: Cohesity CloudArchive Archives Your Local Backups on External Targets ...... 5
Figure 2: Legacy CloudArchive Direct Archives Your NAS Data Directly to an External
Target ................................................................................................................................... 6
Figure 3: CloudArchive Direct Archives Your NAS Data and VMs Directly to an External
Targets ................................................................................................................................. 7
Figure 4: Data Migration.................................................................................................... 10

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Figure 5: NAS Cloud Recover Decision Tree ................................................................... 13
Figure 6: VM Cloud Recover Decision Tree ..................................................................... 14
Figure 7: Cloud Recover to Original Source and CloudRetrieve to New Cluster............ 15

TablesTable 1: Key Feature Differences Between Legacy CloudArchive Direct Or CAD V1 And
CloudArchive Direct v2 ........................................................................................................ 7
Table 2: Key Features and Benefits of CloudArchive Direct ............................................. 8
Table 3: Features and Benefits Inherited from Cohesity Platform..................................... 9
Table 4: Compare CloudArchive Direct with CloudArchive ............................................. 10

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4Introduction to CloudArchive Direct
In today’s technology-driven world, it is constantly becoming easier for organizations of all kinds to findthemselves collecting, and having to store and protect, growing amounts of data—from sensitive HR dataand healthcare records to large media and entertainment files. As many of those organizations store theirgrowing data collections on network-attached storage (NAS) and run most of their workloads on VMWareinfrastructure, it has never been more important for them to focus on NAS and VMWare data protection—
how they store, protect, and retain all that data.
CloudArchive Direct (CAD) is a policy-driven archival feature in Cohesity that was built specifically toaddress these challenges by streaming data directly to lower-cost storage on an External Target withoutstoring local backups. And while Cohesity does not store the data, it indexes it and stores the metadata
locally for fast search and recovery, and offers options to compress and encrypt the data.
With these capabilities, Cohesity CloudArchive Direct solves many business needs, including:•Long-term data retention. Most organizations are required to keep data for at least seven years,
and many choose to keep it longer, accruing growing costs. With CloudArchive Direct, you can copy
large datasets directly to cheaper storage easily. For example, hospitals often need to retain
petabytes of patient records (EHR, PACS, etc.) for decades to meet regulatory requirements.
Cohesity CloudArchive Direct can help you to reliably archive this dataset securely to the cloud.

•Data migration. As your data management infrastructure continually evolves, it is important to beable to migrate large datasets from one data center or silo to another. With CloudArchive Direct, you
can copy your data more efficiently without consuming local storage and resources. For example, if acontent company generates 1PB of data every week and requires these large datasets to be archived
in the cloud once the content is published/broadcasted, they can use CloudArchive Direct to stream
the data directly from their primary NAS storage to the cloud without saving it on the Cohesity cluster.

Key Terms
This document covers the following key terms to explain CloudArchive Direct:•

CloudArchive Direct or CloudArchive Direct v2 (CAD v2): In this document, the term
CloudArchive Direct or CAD v2 defines the latest version of CloudArchive Direct released with
Cohesity version 6.7.

•

Legacy CloudArchive Direct: In this document, the term Legacy CloudArchive Direct defines theolder version of CloudArchive Direct introduced in Cohesity version 6.4.1 onwards.

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5Explore Cohesity’s Long-term Retention Solutions
Cohesity offers two similar (but importantly different) cloud-based solutions that help customers save
space and cost by archiving their data to lower-cost storage, typically in the cloud:•

CloudArchive. Back up your data on a Cohesity cluster and copy it to the cloud for archival.

•

CloudArchive Direct. Stream your data directly to a storage target without creating local backups
first.

Cohesity CloudArchive
Cohesity CloudArchive first backs up your data onto a Cohesity cluster and then copies your backups toan External Target — object storage from cloud vendors (AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle), S3-compatible
storage, or NFS-mounted storage.
You can use CloudArchive if you have aggressive Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) for data recovery,
as CloudArchive offers nearly instant recovery of your data, that can be restored to any Cohesity cluster,of any type, regardless of the origin of the data (using CloudRetrieve).
Figure 1: Cohesity CloudArchive Archives Your Local Backups on External Targets

Cloud Archive is very flexible. You can use it with AWS, Azure, GCP, NAS, and S3-Compatible cloud
object storage.

Cohesity CloudArchive Direct
For customers who need or prefer to archive their data directly without storing a copy on the cluster,Cohesity built the CloudArchive Direct solution that allows you to archive your NAS data and VMware
Virtual Machine (VM) instances directly to any registered External Target. In this solution, the Cohesity
cluster acts as a local cache to stream the dataset to the External Target, eliminating the need to store a

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6full backup copy on the Cohesity cluster first. This approach dramatically reduces the capacity
requirements on the local Cohesity cluster to a small cluster footprint, as only the metadata and index,
and not the dataset itself, are stored on the local cluster. Storing the metadata and index on the local
cluster enables much quicker search and recovery down the road. The External Target also stores themetadata and index, in addition to the data itself. On Cohesity’s platform, you can register AWS cloudstorage, S3-compatible storage, or NFS-mounted servers as External Targets.
NOTE:●

VMware support is only available with Cohesity version 6.7 onwards.

●

With legacy CAD, AWS, Azure, GCP, or Oracle cloud storage is supported.

●

For the list of all supported External Target types, see Supported External Targets in the online
Help.

Depending on your specific business needs, you can choose to use CloudArchive Direct with the native
NAS or a non-native format, that is, Cohesity’s proprietary SpanFS™. Using the native format allows
third-party tools to perform data analysis on your NAS data on the External Target, while using the nonnative format allows Cohesity to compress, dedupe, and encrypt the data for dramatic savings in spaceand network traffic but does not support data access by third-party tools. With Cohesity version 6.7
onwards, CloudArchive Direct does not support backing up NAS data in native NAS format.
Figure 2: Legacy CloudArchive Direct Archives Your NAS Data Directly to an External Target

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Figure 3: CloudArchive Direct Archives Your NAS Data and VMs Directly to an External Targets

Differences Between Legacy CloudArchive Direct or CAD v1 andCloudArchive Direct v2
Legacy CloudArchive Direct or CAD v1 was introduced in Cohesity version 6.4.1. CloudArchive Direct v2
is available from Cohesity version 6.8 onwards.
Table 1: Key Feature Differences Between Legacy CloudArchive Direct Or CAD V1 And CloudArchive

Direct v2

LEGACY CLOUDARCHIVE DIRECT OR CAD v1

CLOUDARCHIVE DIRECT v2

Uses incremental forever with periodic metadata full
method for archiving. While data is incremental
forever, by default every 90 days a full metadataarchive will be sent to the external target (this period
is configurable).

Uses incremental forever upload of data andmetadata. No periodic full metadata uploadrequired.

From a source, only a single object can be selected
for backup per Protection Group.

From a source, supports multiple objects per
Protection Group.

No Life Cycle Management support

Life Cycle Management provides multiple data
movement policies to downtier the data tolower storage classes.

No deduplication support

Supports deduplication

Supports only NAS sources

Supports NAS and VMware Sources

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LEGACY CLOUDARCHIVE DIRECT OR CAD v1

CLOUDARCHIVE DIRECT v2

Can backup data in Native or Non-Native format

Always backs up data in Non-Native format

Enabled at Protection Group level

Enabled at Protection Policy level

Supports AWS,Azure,GCP, and Oracle Cloudstorage

Supports only AWS

Features and Benefits of CloudArchive Direct
CloudArchive Direct allows customers to manage, protect, and store their massive NAS datasets andVMware VMs directly in the cloud, and offers a wide array of features, including storage efficiency, filelevel recovery, and more:
Table 2: Key Features and Benefits of CloudArchive Direct

CLOUDARCHIVE
DIRECT FEATURE

BENEFITLow on-premises
footprint

Stores only the metadata and index on-premises, requiring only a minimal
Cohesity cluster footprint.

Metadata

Available on-premises and in the cloud. And because Cohesity stores themetadata in the cloud, if your Cohesity cluster becomes unavailable in adisaster or other event, you will be able to recover it using any Cohesity
cluster with Cohesity’s CloudRetrieve (onto a new cluster) feature.

Cost Storage Efficiency

Incremental archival at block level. Only changed blocks will be archived
instead of a complete file.

Cohesity Data Movement(Life Cycle Management(LCM) support)

Based on your business SLAs, Cohesity Data Movement feature allows thedata to be downtiered to a lower storage class.

There are also many benefits that CloudArchive Direct inherits from Cohesity’s platform, summarized inTable 3 below.

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9Table 3: Features and Benefits Inherited from Cohesity Platform

COHESITY PLATFORM
FEATUREBENEFIT

Automated, policy-driven
workflow

Define simple and flexible policies to archive your NAS data directly to thecloud.

Distributed and parallel
uploadCohesity intelligent data-transfer logic creates an efficient archive plan andassigns archive streams across all nodes in a Cohesity cluster, performing
distributed and parallel upload to the External Target, ensuring fasterarchives.

Incremental indexing

CloudArchive Direct indexes only the changed data between the lastarchive and the most recent archive, resulting in faster indexing andreduced impact on resources.

Faster and granular
restores

With file metadata stored and indexed on-premises and in the cloud,
CloudArchive Direct keeps track of the archived data. This enables you toquickly search for a specific file from among hundreds of billions of files in
the cloud.

Storage efficiency onExternal Target with
Compression andCompresses and deduplicates data to reduce workload by 2-5x before
sending it to the External Target, requiring much less cloud storage.

deduplication
Data security withencryption

Encrypts the data while archiving in non-native format before sending thedata to the cloud. This provides security for the data both at rest and inflight, using the industry standard 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard(AES) algorithm.

Mobility

Recover to any other Cohesity cluster using CloudRetrieve.

Cohesity Data Movement
From Cohesity version 6.7 onwards, Cloud Archive Direct supports Data Movement, a policy-based data
LCM in external targets to downtier the data to lower storage classes. This allows Cohesity to directly own
the LCM of data in an external target. When using data movement, data must always be downtiered. Data
movement does not support uptiering data. When it comes to S3 Glacier and S3 Deep Archive a choicemust be made. It is not possible to downtier from S3 Glacier to S3 Deep Archive as AWS does not allow
downtiering from S3 Glacier to S3 Deep Archive. Once you have downtiered to either S3 Glacier or S3
Deep Archive you cannot downtier any further.

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10Figure 4: Cohesity Data Movement

As a best practice, Cohesity never downtiers the metadata and index. It always stores the metadata andindex in the original tier to speed up the recovery operations (E.g.: Data down-tiered from S3 > S3 One
Zone, will always have metadata retained in S3).

Compare CloudArchive with CloudArchive Direct
While the two solutions are very similar, each offers unique benefits, depending on your current
operational infrastructure and future business needs. Table 4 below provides a side-by-side comparisonof the benefits and trade-offs of each solution.
Table 4: Compare CloudArchive Direct with CloudArchiveFEATURE

CLOUDARCHIVE DIRECT

CLOUDARCHIVE

Reduced TCO

Local backups

Business needs addressedLong-term data retention Security Compliance
Local backup retention
Cluster space requirements

No

Yes

Requires a fraction of the footprintof the data being archived.

Requires enough space for at least
one copy of the backup.

Indexed

Yes

Metadata

Yes

Data natively accessible incloud
Encryption

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Yes

No, requires a Cohesity cluster
Yes

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FEATURE

CLOUDARCHIVE DIRECT

CLOUDARCHIVE

Deduplication

Yes

Compression

Yes
Yes

Yes
Subject to source supportability

Replication

Cannot be replicated.

Yes, as there is a local backup copy

Tape outNo

Yes (Supported only with Legacy
Cloud Archive)

Number of archival
External Targets supported
per Protection GroupOne

Multiple

Number of archival
schedules supported per
Protection Policy

Multiple(For the same target)

Multiple

Incremental forever

Extended Retention(That is, daily backup
retained for 30 days,
weekly for 90 days, andmonthly for 365 days)
Total copies (including the
primary dataset)

Yes

Two
(One primary and one in theExternal Target)

Cohesity Data Movement(Object Lifecycle
Management)
Cloud Native Object
Lifecycle Management

Unlimited. You can add as many
backup copies, replication copies,
archive copies, and copies on tapeas you require.
Supported

Not Supported

Supported (Legacy CloudArchive)

Instant restore

No

Yes, to a Cohesity View

Clone

No

Yes

File and folder restore
WORM Support

Send Feedback

Yes
No

Supported (Legacy CloudArchive)
6.8 onwards

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Configure CloudArchive Direct
Set Up CloudArchive Direct
To enable CloudArchive Direct:
1. Register or edit your NAS VMware vcenter as a source in Cohesity.
2. Register an External Target where you will archive your NAS and VMware data.
When you register an External Target for CloudArchive Direct:o

Select an archival format (Incremental Forever, Incremental with Periodic Full).

3. Create a Protection Policy with archival scheduled after every run.
4. Add or edit a Protection Group to protect your NAS or VMware workloads.

NOTE: For more, see NAS CloudArchive Direct in the online Help.

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Recover Data with CloudArchive Direct
Cohesity indexes and stores metadata on the cluster for improved search and accessibility of the files andfolders that are archived in the External Target, thus enhancing the speed and simplicity of data recovery.
You can search for individual files and folders, or an entire NAS volume or VM, with their respective
names, or you can browse the archived data index to find, select, and perform data recovery.
Once the data is archived to the External Target, you can choose to recover to your original source or to anew, alternate source.
Figure 5 below illustrates the many recovery choices and options you have with Cohesity.
NOTES:●

There is no need to restore the entire file or volume onto the Cohesity cluster before restoring it to
the NAS or VMware source.

●

You can recover a NAS or VM and its files and folders to their original location or to a newly
specified location, which can be in the original or a different source. You can also download files
from any specific snapshot that was created by a Cohesity Protection Group.

Figure 5: NAS Cloud Recover Decision Tree

For details on recovering files and folders, see Recover Files or Folders in the online Help. For storage
volume recovery, see Recover Storage Volumes.

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Figure 6: VM Cloud Recover Decision Tree

For details on recovering VM, Instant Volume Mount, Virtual Disks, files and folders, see Recovery.

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Disaster Recovery with CloudArchive Direct
Because CloudArchive Direct stores index and metadata together with the data in the External Target,
you will be able to use Cohesity’s CloudRetrieve feature to recover the archived data using a new
Cohesity cluster in the event that your original cluster becomes unavailable due to disaster or some other
unfortunate event. This acts as a cost-effective alternative for disaster recovery, geo-redundancy, andbusiness continuity.
For more details, see About CloudRetrieve in online Help.
Figure 7: Cloud Recover to Original Source and CloudRetrieve to New Cluster

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Prerequisites and Limitations
Before you get started with this solution, there are a few things to consider.

Prerequisites
In order to archive your data directly to ExternalTarget, ensure:•

The workload is in the NAS or VM format.

•

External target is configured for Incremental Forever archival format.

Limitations
Be sure to consider these limitations as you develop your data protection strategy with CloudArchive
Direct:•If the source NAS is Dell EMC Isilon, Isilon ChangeList is not supported with CloudArchive Direct.

•

No recovery to a Cohesity View.

•

If the data was archived via CloudArchive Direct and your Cohesity cluster becomes unavailable, you
can stand up a new Cohesity cluster to recover the metadata and index, but you will have to recover
the data itself to the original or a new source.

•

Do not apply object lifecycle policy actions like transition or expiration to the External Targets that you
use for CloudArchive Direct, as applying an object lifecycle policy with these actions can result in data
loss or unresponsive operations.

•

From Cohesity version 6.7 onwards the data is always archived in CAD v2 format and Legacy
CloudArchive Direct is deprecated. Contact support if you want to enable Legacy CloudArchive
Direct.

•After version upgrade to 6.7, existing CloudArchive Direct jobs will NOT get converted to v2 format.
You need to create new protection jobs and retire the old ones.

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17Your Feedback
Was this document helpful? Send us your feedback!

About the Authors
Saran Ravi is a Sr. Technical Solution Engineer at Cohesity. In his role, Saran focuses on Cloud andCohesity Cloud Services Portfolios.
Other significant contributors include:•

Ruby Garg, Staff Technical Marketing Engineer•

Adaikkappan Arumugam, Sr. Manager, Technical Marketing•

Bart Abicht, Senior Technology Writer and Editor at Cohesity

Document Version History
VERSION

DATE

4.2

July 2024

Republishing

4.1

Mar 2023

Rebranding updates

3.0

Nov 2021

Updated for 6.7 release

3.0

Nov 2021

Updated for 6.7 release

2.1

Sep 2020

Updated for 6.5.1 release

1.1

May 2020

First release

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ABOUT COHESITY
Cohesity is a leader in AI-powered data security and management. Aided by an extensive ecosystem ofpartners, Cohesity makes it easier to protect, manage, and get value from data – across the data center,edge, and cloud. Cohesity helps organizations defend against cybersecurity threats with comprehensive
data security and management capabilities, including immutable backup snapshots, AI-based threat
detection, monitoring for malicious behavior, and rapid recovery at scale. Cohesity solutions are delivered
as a service, self-managed, or provided by a Cohesity-powered partner. Cohesity is headquartered in
San Jose, CA, and is trusted by the world’s largest enterprises, including six of the Fortune 10 and 44 of
the Fortune 100.
Visit our website and blog, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn and like us on Facebook.

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