I have heard a few rumors around misconceptions on what storage platforms vSphere Data Protection (VDP) and VDP Advanced will work with. Perhaps these rumors stemmed from the announcements of new features in VDP 5.5 and VDP Advanced 5.5. For example, it is true that VDP 5.5 can replicate backup data only to EMC Avamar. By the way, VDP Advanced 5.5 will be able to replicate backup data to EMC Avamar and other VDP Advanced 5.5 virtual appliances. It is true that VDP Advanced 5.5 can leverage EMC Data Domain as a backup data target, but that is an option (not a requirement). I have heard that VDP and VDP Advanced can only be used with EMC storage which is FALSE.
VDP and VDP Advanced virtual appliances can be deployed to one or more VMFS or NFS datastores on any storage that is supported by vSphere. In other words, I can deploy VDP and VDP Advanced virtual appliances to EMC, NetApp, HDS, IBM, HP, Dell, etc. I can even deploy a VDP or VDP Advanced appliance to a VMFS datastore on direct attached storage (DAS) in a vSphere host.
