IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is a modern data protection solution that provides near-instant data recovery, replication, retention, and reuse for physical and virtual machines, Windows file systems, databases applications, SaaS workloads, and containers. It is easily deployed as a virtual appliance and the agentless architecture is easy to maintain. It unlocks the value of your data by improving the quality and speed of testing, reporting, and analytics.

The primary components of this solution are an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server and one or more vSnap servers. The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server manages all components in the system. The vSnap server is the primary snapshot backup location for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. 

You can deploy these components in one of the following configurations: 

All-on-cloud environment:

In this configuration, both the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server and the vSnap server are deployed in Azure on an existing or virtual private cloud (VPC). An on-premises IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server and a VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V infrastructure are not required. 

This option might benefit new IBM Spectrum Protect Plus users who want to protect databases on Azure and do not have IBM Spectrum Protect Plus running in an on-premises environment. 

Hybrid environment:

In this configuration, only the vSnap server is deployed in Azure on an existing or new VPC. The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server is installed and maintained on premises. This option might benefit existing IBM Spectrum Protect Plus users who want to continue protecting workloads that are running on premises and in the cloud environment. In addition to backup and recovery operations, you can also use a hybrid environment to replicate and reuse data between your on-premises location and Azure for additional data protection. For example, you might want to use data that is protected at your on-premises site on Azure for DevOps, quality assurance, testing, and disaster recovery purposes.