Cohesity – Data Management, Protection, and Recovery Platform

Overview

Cohesity provides a software-defined platform for managing and securing enterprise data, focusing on secondary data challenges such as backup, disaster recovery, and archiving. The platform is designed to consolidate various data silos onto a single web-scale architecture, aiming to simplify operations and reduce total cost of ownership. Cohesity supports hybrid and multi-cloud environments, enabling organizations to protect data residing in on-premises data centers, public clouds like AWS and Azure, and SaaS applications.

A core aspect of Cohesity's offering is its emphasis on ransomware recovery and data security. The platform incorporates immutability features and anomaly detection to help protect backup data from cyber threats. In the event of an attack, it facilitates rapid recovery of critical systems and data. This focus extends to data security posture management (DSPM) capabilities, which help identify sensitive data and assess its exposure across the infrastructure.

Cohesity's architecture allows for scalable expansion, managing petabytes of data without requiring forklift upgrades. It caters to large enterprises and organizations with complex data landscapes, offering solutions for consolidating file and object storage, test/dev environments, and analytics data alongside traditional backup and recovery. The platform's unified interface aims to streamline data operations, allowing IT teams to manage diverse workloads from a central point. For instance, managing backups for virtual machines, databases, and enterprise applications can be performed through a consistent set of tools and policies. This contrasts with traditional approaches that often involve multiple point solutions, each requiring separate management. The platform is often considered in environments seeking to modernize their data protection strategy and reduce operational complexity across distributed IT infrastructures.

Key features

• DataProtect: Provides backup and recovery capabilities for a range of workloads, including virtual machines (VMs), databases, file shares, and SaaS applications, across on-premises and cloud environments.
• DataHawk: Offers data security posture management (DSPM) and data classification to identify sensitive data, detect vulnerabilities, and monitor for threats.
• SiteContinuity: Delivers automated disaster recovery orchestration across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, designed for business continuity.
• FortKnox: A secure, isolated cloud vault service for data immutability and recovery, designed to protect against ransomware and other cyber threats by maintaining an air-gapped copy of data.
• Data Cloud: The foundational platform that unifies secondary data, providing a single software-defined solution for backup, recovery, file and object services, and disaster recovery.
• Ransomware Recovery: Integrates anomaly detection and immutability to help detect and recover from ransomware attacks, minimizing data loss and downtime.
• API and SDKs: Offers a REST API, PowerShell SDKs, and Python SDKs for programmatic management of backup, recovery, and policy configurations, enabling integration with existing IT automation workflows. Developers can interact with the platform to automate tasks such as creating backup jobs or initiating recoveries, as described in the Cohesity API overview.

Pricing

Cohesity utilizes a custom enterprise pricing model. Specific costs are determined based on an organization's unique requirements, including data volumes, desired features, and deployment model. Prospective customers typically engage directly with Cohesity sales to obtain a tailored quote.

Common integrations

• VMware vSphere: Integration for protecting and recovering virtual machines running on VMware environments. Learn more about Cohesity VMware backup and recovery.
• Microsoft Hyper-V: Support for backup and recovery of virtual machines hosted on Microsoft Hyper-V.
• AWS: Integration with Amazon S3 for cloud archiving, disaster recovery, and data tiering. Explore AWS storage solutions with Cohesity.
• Microsoft Azure: Integration with Azure Blob Storage for similar cloud data management capabilities.
• Databases (e.g., SQL Server, Oracle, SAP HANA): Application-consistent backup and recovery for critical databases. Consult Cohesity SQL Server documentation.
• NAS/File Shares: Protection for network-attached storage and CIFS/NFS file shares.
• ServiceNow: Integration for incident management and automation workflows related to data protection and recovery tasks.
• Identity Management (e.g., Active Directory, LDAP): Integration for authentication and access control.

Alternatives

• Rubrik: Offers a data security platform with capabilities for data protection, ransomware recovery, and data governance, often compared directly with Cohesity for modern data management challenges.
• Veeam: Specializes in backup, recovery, and data management for virtual, physical, and multi-cloud environments, known for its extensive support for VMware and Hyper-V.
• Dell Technologies (Data Protection): Provides a suite of data protection solutions including PowerProtect appliances and software for backup, recovery, and replication in enterprise environments.

Getting started

To begin using the Cohesity REST API to manage your data protection environment, you can use a Python script to authenticate and retrieve information. This example demonstrates how to obtain an authentication token and list registered Cohesity clusters:

import requests
import json

# Cohesity Cluster Details
COHESITY_CLUSTER_IP = "your_cohesity_cluster_ip"
USERNAME = "your_username"
PASSWORD = "your_password"

# Step 1: Obtain an authentication token
def get_auth_token(cluster_ip, username, password):
    url = f"https://{cluster_ip}/irisservices/api/v1/public/accessTokens"
    headers = {"Content-Type": "application/json"}
    payload = {
        "username": username,
        "password": password,
        "domain": "LOCAL"
    }
    try:
        response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload, verify=False) # verify=False for dev/test, use proper certs in prod
        response.raise_for_status() # Raise an exception for HTTP errors
        token_data = response.json()
        return token_data.get("accessToken")
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        print(f"Error getting token: {e}")
        return None

# Step 2: List registered Cohesity clusters using the token
def list_clusters(cluster_ip, token):
    url = f"https://{cluster_ip}/irisservices/api/v1/public/clusters"
    headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {token}"}
    try:
        response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, verify=False)
        response.raise_for_status()
        clusters_data = response.json()
        return clusters_data.get("clusters")
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        print(f"Error listing clusters: {e}")
        return None

if __name__ == "__main__":
    auth_token = get_auth_token(COHESITY_CLUSTER_IP, USERNAME, PASSWORD)

    if auth_token:
        print("Successfully obtained authentication token.")
        clusters = list_clusters(COHESITY_CLUSTER_IP, auth_token)
        if clusters:
            print("\nRegistered Cohesity Clusters:")
            for cluster in clusters:
                print(f"  - Name: {cluster.get('name')}, Id: {cluster.get('id')}")
        else:
            print("No clusters found or error retrieving clusters.")
    else:
        print("Failed to authenticate with Cohesity cluster.")

Before running this script, replace your_cohesity_cluster_ip, your_username, and your_password with your actual Cohesity cluster details. The verify=False parameter is used for demonstration purposes to bypass SSL certificate verification; for production environments, it is recommended to use proper certificate validation as detailed in Cohesity API security guidelines.