¶ BlueBoxx-S3
Blueboxx-S3 is the 2-node cluster variant of our solution, perfectly suited for small to medium-sized enterprises. Due to this architecture, this variant is more cost-effective compared to the X3 variant. It offers the possibility for vertical scaling, but not for horizontal scaling. However, should horizontal scaling be required over time, BlueBoxx provides the flexibility to easily switch from one variant to another.
¶ BlueBoxx Infrastructure
The following figure shows the architecture of a BlueBoxx-S3 setup.
¶ What does BlueBoxx-S3 offer?
BlueBoxx-S3 offers, as the standard variant, the same benefits as described in BlueBoxx, but with certain specifics and advantages detailed below:
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High Availability: This is achieved through complete redundancy. BlueBoxx is designed to be fully redundant down to its last component, ensuring no single point of failure. If a split across different disaster zones is wanted, business continuity can be even ensured in the event of an elementary disaster. The positioning of nodes can be done either at the company's premises or in a data center, as per choice.
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Infrastructure as a Service: Needed virtual machines can be provisioned within minutes via GUI. Also, the management through GUI or command-line from within an existing automation tool simplifies handling. Furthermore, the administration dashboard can be chosen freely.
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High-Performance: High performance is ensured through the proximity of CPU and Storage. This is achieved by moving storage closer to CPU while maintaining full flexibility for storage management from a virtual machine perspective. Consequently, the utilized SSD- and NVMe-devices can deliver their full performance again, which leads to minimized latency and maximum bandwidth. Read operations are not limited in terms of bandwidth as they occur locally and thus take place with full SSD or NVMe speed. Write operations are only limited by the network link between the two BlueBoxx nodes. Since this is a 100 Gbit Ethernet link, the bandwidth is at 10GB/s.
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Near Zero Data Loss Backups: This is ensured through atomic snapshots of the entire environment and immutable data protection. Traditional backups are thus only necessary in exceptional cases anymore. Also regular restore tests and daily operational handling are no longer required due to BlueBoxx. Snapshot mechanisms below the virtualization layer, which allow for near-realtime distribution to any number of remote sites, are one of the reasons for the elimination of these extra efforts. Without additional costs or effort, this results in a recovery point objective which is only in the minute range while the recovery time objective is even in the range of seconds. Moreover, snapshots themselves are immutable and secure against changes and man-in-the-middle attacks. Additional encryption also allows storing them in public cloud environments. Immutability for the snapshots is ensured through blockchain mechanisms. Implicit consistency checking by these mechanisms combined with permanent application of new snapshots, where only changes to the previous snapshot are stored, guarantee that the system can be restored at any time.
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No Vendor Lock-in: BlueBoxx exclusively employs open-source solutions thus preventing vendor lock-in. Moreover, we aim for a sustainable approach by reusing existing hardware. Thanks to our 'Moving Migration' offer, the migration to pre-existing hardware can even be done while operational with minimal downtimes.
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Ransomware-Proof: Because an unalterable and atomic snapshot is made every 5 minutes, a rollback to a point before the ransomware attack can be performed within seconds. Even taking the best security measures, a hacker attack, resulting in the encryption of the data across the entire system, can not always be prevented. According to studies this can lead to a standstill of the entire company for several days. With BlueBoxx though, a complete and consistent restoration of the entire application world can be guaranteed within a few minutes or even seconds.
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Full Management and Monitoring: BlueBoxx is provided as a managed service by the Sphinx team and comes with 7x24 proactive monitoring. Therefore, security patches, hardware issues, and performance problems are taken care of by the Sphinx Team for customers using BlueBoxx.