Cohesity ServiceNow Integration

User Guide
Version 4.1

Copyright © Cohesity 2020

ABSTRACT

The Cohesity ServiceNow (SNOW) plugin integrates ServiceNow with Cohesity DataPlatform. The main
goal of this plugin is to execute the workflows of Cohesity Data Platform such as data protection, cloning
and recovery from ServiceNow. The ServiceNow plugin also lets you manage alerts using webhooks which
is a common and an important part of IT Service Management (ITSM).
The Cohesity ServiceNow Integration Installation and Configuration Guide describes the process to help
you set up and configure the SNOW plugin.
Contents

Introduction 4
Audience 4
Plugin Requirements 4
Features 5
What’s New 5
Latest Release: v4.1 5
Previous Releases 6
Software Requirements 6
Process Overview 6
Cohesity SNOW Tasks 7
Cohesity Catalog 7
Protection Source 8
Data Protection 8
Recovery/Clone 9
SNOW Workflows 9
Register a Source 9
Unregister a Source 10
Create New Protection Job 10
Environment: vCenter 10
Environment: Physical Server (block-based) 11
Environment: Physical Server (file-based) 11
Protect VM 11
Unprotect VM 12
Delete Protection Job 12
Recover VM 13
Clone VM 13
Move VM 14
Run Job 14

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 Recover Files/Folders 14
Approvals 16
Cohesity Alert Incident Management 16
Dashboard 17
Cohesity Logs for Troubleshooting 18
Your Feedback 20
About Cohesity 20

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Introduction
The Cohesity ServiceNow (SNOW) plugin fetches data from DataPlatform and facilitates performing
various operations such as protecting, recovering and cloning VMs in ServiceNow using a secure network.
See ServiceNow platform for more details.

The following figure illustrates how DataPlatform integrates with ServcieNow.

Cohesity DataPlatform integrates with ServiceNow through REST API to simplify data protection and data
management on VMs including workflow automation, backup and recovery and so on.

Audience
The reader of the Cohesity SNOW plugin guide must be familiar with the following:

● User Interface of ServiceNow

● Cohesity DataPlatform and DataProtect

Plugin Requirements
Our application requires following ServiceNow plugin(s) to access specific dashboard in the application.
Before accessing the application, user should install the following plugin(s) in the instance.
 Content Management

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Features
The Cohesity ServiceNow plugin offers the following features:
 Supports a multi-cluster environment
 Availability of Service Catalog with Protection Source, Data Protection, and Recovery and Clone
workflows
 Note: The workflows are supported for vCenter and physical sources
 Option to register and unregister a vCenter and physical server
 Workflow Management such as protect VMs, recover VMs, clone VMs, recover files and folders,
and creating protection jobs
 Alert management through Webhooks

What’s New
Latest Release: v4.1
VERSION WHAT’S NEW REVISION DATE
v4.1  Option to schedule the recovery and clone workflow July 2020
at a specific timeslot
 Optimization of the search files/folders results
 Displaying the file size while restoring the file/folder
 Resolving alerts through ServiceNow on a multi-node
cluster environment
 Few minor bug fixes

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Previous Releases
VERSION WHAT’S NEW REVISION DATE
v4.0  Cohesity Alert Management through Webhook April 2020
configuration
 Simplified cluster synchronization and discovery
processes
 Service Catalog for workflow process
v3.0  Multi-cluster support Nov 2019
 Registering/Unregistering of Protection sources
 Simplified Protection job creation process directly from
ServiceNow which replaces the earlier process of creating
it in the Cohesity cluster and then syncing the jobs
 Protection of Virtual Server and Physical Server (Block-
based & File-based)
v2.0  Update and modernized dashboard for the plugin with May 2019
few bug fixes
v1.0  First draft released Dec 2018

Software Requirements
COHESITY SNOW
SERVICENOW RELEASE
PLUGIN VERSION COHESITY DATAPLATFORM
VERSION

4.1.0, 4.0.0 New York, Madrid, and Orlando 6.3.x or higher

2.0.0, 3.0.0 New York and Madrid 6.2.x or higher

Note:
 Alert management using Webhook is supported in Cohesity cluster version 6.3.x or higher
 Alert management is currently not supported in Cohesity cluster version 6.5

Process Overview
The overall process of working with the SNOW plugin is as follows:

1. Install the Cohesity SNOW plugin along with the MID server configuration
2. Add ServiceNow users and assign to appropriate groups

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 3. Run Fix Script if the application is upgraded to any new version from v2 to v1
4. Configure Cohesity clusters in SNOW for:
 Discover of resources (vCenter and Physical Server)
 Webhook configuration
 Discovery and Webhook.
(Refer: Cohesity ServiceNow Integration-Installation and Configuration Guide)
5. Execute workflows in SNOW as described in Cohesity SNOW Tasks

Cohesity SNOW Tasks

You can execute various Cohesity SNOW tasks such as registering a source, protecting VMs, physical
servers and other workflows using one of the following methods:
 Using Cohesity Catalog
 Using the UI options available in the respective ServiceNow database as explained in SNOW
Workflows

Cohesity Catalog
Service Catalog is structured collection of catalog items and consumable view of available services and
offerings managed by an organization, which describes the list of services that the plugin is providing for
the user including those available for Deployment.

Cohesity Catalog is a collection of services available such as Protection Source, Data Protection, and
Recovery/Clone. To access this, type Cohesity in the search bar, and navigate to Cohesity Application >
Cohesity Catalog.

Our plugin provides following Services:

 Protection Source: Register or Unregister a Protection Source on the Cohesity Cluster. It could be
the root node of a vCenter Server or a Physical Server.
 Data Protection: End-to-end protection for your virtual and physical server with a single, simple
web-scale solution.
 Recovery/Clone: Provide services to Recover/Clone Virtual Machines, which have been protected.

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Protection Source

You can register or unregister vCenter and physical servers using the Protection Source catalog as
follows. The protection source can be the root node of a vCenter server or a physical server.

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Cohesity Catalog
2. Click Protection Source
3. Select the environment category as Physical Server or VMware, based on the environment of source
to be registered/unregistered.
4. Select the operation to be performed:
 VMware: Register Source or Unregister Source
 Physical Server: Register Source or Unregister Source

Data Protection

You can perform various operations such as create protection Job, delete job, protect virtual machine and
unprotect virtual machine.

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Cohesity Catalog
2. Click Data Protection
3. Select the environment category either as Physical Server or Virtual Server, based on the
environment of Protection job
4. Select the operation to be performed –
 Virtual Server: Create New Protection Job, Delete Job, Protect Virtual Machine or Unprotect
Virtual Machine
 Physical Server: Create New Protection Job or Delete Job

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Recovery/Clone

You can perform recovery or clone operations on virtual machines.

NOTE: This service is only applicable for Virtual Machine.

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Cohesity Catalog
2. Click Recovery/Clone
3. Select the operation to be performed:
 Recover VM
 Clone VM

SNOW Workflows
You can execute various SNOW workflows as described in the below procedures. After you execute
a workflow, it will be sent as a request for approval or will be approved directly. This depends on
the configurations enabled for approvals while configuring a cluster. See Configure Cohesity
clusters in Cohesity ServiceNow Integration Install and Configuration Guide. Users belonging to a
group with the necessary privileges to approve the requests can approve the SNOW execution
requests.

Note: Users associated with Cohesity Admin or Cohesity User group only will be able to perform the
below tasks.

Register a Source
You can choose to register a source as Hypervisor or Physical Server.
1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Protection source > Source and click Register
2. Select the cluster in which the source to be registered in the Cluster drop-down list
3. To register Hypervisor source:
a. Select Hypervisor as the Environment and vCenter as Source Type
b. Enter the Source information such as Host IP address of the vCenter, Username and Password
for authentication
4. To register Physical Server Source:
c. Select Physical Server as the Environment
d. Enter the Source Information such IP address of the physical server and Host type of the server
either Linux/Windows
5. Click Order now

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 6. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity Source)
7. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity ProtectSource
group. See Execute Approvals for details

Unregister a Source
Discovered source of environment type vCenter or Physical Server can be unregistered. After
unregistering the source, all the associated resources of the source will be removed from the CMDB table.

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Sources > Protection Source
2. Select the source (either Physical Server or VMware) that must be unregistered
3. Click Unregister and click Ok in the confirmation prompt
4. Click Order now
5. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity Source)
6. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity Source group.
See Execute Approvals for details

Create New Protection Job

You can choose to protect a vCenter or a physical server, which is block based or file based.

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Protection Jobs > Protection Jobs and click New Job
2. Once the respective catalog item page is loaded, select the Cluster where the Protection job need
to be created for the available source.
3. Provide the name for the protection job.
4. Make a selection to protect either a vCenter, physical server block based or file based.

Environment: vCenter
 For auto protecting the source with higher source level, select the Auto Protect as Yes.
Then select the protection level (Source/DataCenter/Compute Resource/ESXI Host) and
select the corresponding source in the populated source dropdown, that to be auto
protected.
 For standalone protection of Virtual Machine, select the corresponding source and ESXI
host information.
 Select the Virtual Machine(s) to be protected by moving them from the Available list to the
selected VM(s) list or double click on the Virtual Machine(s) that to be protected.

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Environment: Physical Server (block-based)

 Select the environment as Physical Server (Block-based)

 Select the Physical Server in the Source dropdown
 If specific Volumes to be protected instead of all volumes in the block, disable the
‘Automatically protect all volumes on the server’ option
 Once it is disabled, volumes in the selected physical server will be populated in the list
collector. Select the volumes to be protected in the server
NOTE: If the Physical Server is already protected, then it won’t be available for protection again.

Environment: Physical Server (file-based)

 Select the environment as Physical Server (File-based)

 Select the Physical Server in the Source dropdown
 Enter the file path(s) to be protected (with comma separated)
5. Select the Policy and Storage Domain
6. Click Order Now
7. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity ProtectionJob)
8. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity ProtectionJob
group. See Execute Approvals for details

Protect VM
1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Virtual Machines > Virtual
Machines List.
2. Select the Virtual Machine(s) to be protected and click Protect

NOTE:
a. Only unprotected Virtual machines can be selected for protection
b. Virtual Machines from different clusters are not allowed to protect at same time

3. Select the protection job from the drop down through which the selected virtual machine(s) need
to be protected.
4. Click Order Now
5. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity ProtectVM)

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 6. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity ProtectVM
group. See Execute Approvals for details

Unprotect VM
1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Virtual Machines > Virtual
Machines List
2. Select the Virtual Machine(s) to be unprotected

NOTE:
a. Only protected Virtual machines can be selected for unprotecting
b. Virtual Machines from different clusters are not allowed to unprotect at same time
c. Virtual Machines from different protection jobs are not allowed to unprotect at same time

3. Click Ok in the confirmation prompt.

4. On confirmation, it will navigate to the catalog item page.
5. Select the protection job from the drop down through which the selected virtual machine(s) need
to be protected.
6. Click Order Now.
7. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity UnprotectVM)
8. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity UnprotectVM
group. See Execute Approvals for details

Delete Protection Job

You can delete a previously protected vCenter or a physical server (file/block based).

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Protection Jobs >
Protection Jobs
2. Select the Protection Job to be deleted
3. Click Delete Job and click Ok in the confirmation prompt
4. Select whether to delete the snapshot or only the job.
5. Click Order Now
6. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity ProtectionJob)
7. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity
ProtectionJob group. See Execute Approvals for details

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Recover VM
1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Recover > Recover VM
2. Select a virtual machine to be recovered and click Recover VM button
Note: Only one VM can be selected at a time for recovery. If multiple VMs are selected, an alert
displays.

3. Select the Recover Points for the snapshot of virtual machines to be recovered
4. If the recovered VM name to be renamed, then enable ‘Rename Recovered VMs’ option
and provide the Suffix and Prefix value
5. Enable Change Recover Options to relocate the recovered VM into new location and
provide the source details, where the recovered VM need to be relocated.
6. In case of attaching new network to the recovered VM, select ‘Attach to new network’
option in the Networking Options and select the network to be atatched. This is applicable
only when the VM is recovered in new location
7. To schedule the restore workflow, enable the option Schedule the Restore, and select the
appropriate time slot in the Scheduled Date field
8. Click Order Now
9. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity RecoverVM)
10. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity
RecoverVM group. See Execute Approvals for details

Clone VM
1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Clone > Clone VM
2. Select a virtual machine to be cloned and click Clone VM button
Note: Only one VM can be selected at a time for cloning. If multiple VMs are selected, an alert
displays.

3. Select the Recover Points for the snapshot of virtual machine to be cloned
4. If the cloned VM name to be renamed, then enable ‘Rename Cloned VMs’ option and
provide the Suffix and Prefix value
5. Provide the Source information for cloning
6. In case of attaching new network to the cloned VM, select ‘Attach to new network’ option
in the Networking Options and select the network to be attached
7. To schedule the clone workflow, enable the option Schedule the Cloning, and select the
appropriate time slot in the Scheduled Date field
8. Click Order Now.
9. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the

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 configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity CloneVM)
To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity CloneVM
group. See Execute Approvals for details

Move VM

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Virtual Machines List > Virtual Machines
2. Select a virtual machine that is already Protected, and in the Virtual Machines detail page,
click Move to another Protection job
Note: This option will not be available for virtual machines which are not protected.

3. In the Move VM catalog page, the current protection job field will contains the list of protection
job by which the selected Virtual Machine is protected. Select the New Protection Job to which
the VM must be moved for protection.
4. Click Order Now.
5. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity MoveVM)
6. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity MoveVM
group. See Execute Approvals for details

Run Job

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Protection Jobs >
Protection Jobs.
2. Select the Protection to run.
3. Click on Run Job button.
4. On running the job in SNOW, it will call the corresponding REST API call to trigger the Protection
Job in the respective Cohesity Cluster.

Recover Files/Folders
You can either search for specific files/folders and then proceed to choose files/folders for recovery or
directly click Recover Files/Folders option and then choose files/folders for recovery if the file/folder is
already discovered through search option.

1. Type Cohesity in the search bar. Go to Search Files/Folders under Recover category.
OR

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 Click Recover Files/Folders under Recover category.
2. Select the Cohesity Cluster, where search operation need to perform and enter the specific
keyword of the file/folder you want to search in the Cohesity cluster and click Search.

3. The corresponding files/folders based on the keyword match will be populated in

ServiceNow Recover Files/Folders module
4. Select the file/folder to be recovered and click Recover Files or Folders
Note: Only one file/folder can be selected at a time. If multiple files/folders are selected, a
notification displays.

5. Select the recovery points for the file/folder which have to be used for recovery
6. If the file/folder has to be recovered to a different source, select the Server Name from the
list and provide the username and password of the selected source (in case if source type
is Virtual Server)
7. If the file has to be recovered to a different location, then select Recover to original location
to No and provide the Recover location
8. To schedule the clone workflow, enable the option Schedule the Cloning, and select the
appropriate time slot in the Scheduled Date field
9. Click Order Now.
10. A request is submitted for the catalog item. If approval was enabled for this action in the
configuration page, then the requested item will wait for approval from the user with the
respective group (Cohesity RecoverFile)
11. To approve the request, log in to the instance using any of the users with Cohesity
RecoverFile group. See Execute Approvals for details

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Approvals
As an admin, you must approve various requests for SNOW tasks such as protect VM, unprotect
VM, clone VM, recover VM, and recover files and folders. To see the privileges associated with
different groups, see Privileges in Cohesity ServiceNow Integration — Install and Configuration
Guide.
Procedure

1. In the Search box, type Cohesity and select My Approvals under Requested/Approvals

2. Click the appropriate record to approve a request

3. Update the request by providing comments in the Comments field, and click on
Approve/Reject

4. After the request is approved, you can view the updated data in the Cohesity DataPlatform

Cohesity Alert Incident Management

Cohesity DataPlatform supports integration with ServiceNow to enable seamless translation of alerts
to incident tickets in ServiceNow’s Incident Management and IT Service Management system. The
following alert management methods are supported:
 Email-based alerts
 Webhooks
Cohesity Alerts can be resolved through ServiceNow incident management, for which the specific
Cohesity cluster must be configured with the ServiceNow.
When an alert is generated in Cohesity Cluster, an incident is created for the alert in ServiceNow Incident
database.

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1. In the Search box, type Incident and navigate to Incident > All.
2. Select the incident to resolve that has been generated due to Cohesity Alert.
3. Select the Caller from the reference table.
4. Select the Resolution Code and provide the Resolution notes under the Resolution Information
section.
5. Once all the required details are provided, click Resolve.
On resolving the incident, it will call the corresponding REST client API to start the process for resolving
the selected incident in the Cohesity Cluster and display the status message of the resolution process.

Dashboard
Cohesity Dashboard will be visible to those with the role Cohesity Admin or Cohesity User group.
You can choose a cluster from the drop down to display details specific to that cluster in the
Dashboard.

1. Navigate to Cohesity Application > Dashboard.

 Protection Jobs - Reporting values of the Job can be filtered out for specific cluster by selecting the
cluster in the interactive filter and apply it.
NOTE: Once the application is installed/imported, select ‘Cohesity Protection Job’ under the
Dashboard to access the Protection Job dashboard.

a. Running – Total count of triggered job, that are currently in Running state
b. Success – Total count of triggered job, that ends with Success
c. Cancelled – Total count of triggered job, that has been cancelled
d. Warnings – Total count of triggered job, that ends with Warning
e. Errors – Total count of triggered job, that ends with Failed state
f. SLA Compliance – Total count of Protection job, whose SLA is passed

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 g. Total Job runs – Donut chart that shows the status of Protection jobs in total
h. Job Runs (last 24 Hrs) – Bar chart that shows the status of the protection job that has been
triggered in last 24 hours in 24 hours’ time format
i. Job Details – Table that shows the available protection job information in the Cohesity cluster
 Storage Stats - Doughnut chart that shows the usage and availability of Storage per cluster that
has been configured in the plugin.
 Virtual Machines-Protection Summary - Bar chart that shows the overall count of the VM
protected and unprotected
 Request & Approval - This dashboard displays any workflows execution requests for approvals
and other related data
 Alerts Summary – Pie Chart that shows the state of the Incident count that has been generated
through Configured Cohesity Webhook Alert

Cohesity Logs for Troubleshooting

You can access the Cohesity Logs to analyze and debug the problems logged.
The Cohesity Logs can be accessed in the following ways:
 The logs can be seen under Cohesity Application > Cohesity Logs > Cohesity Logs in the
ServiceNow instance.
 Navigate to the folder where the MID server is installed/configured. The MID server folder
agent/logs/agent0.log.0 file will be populated with debug logs in that location.

To enable the debug logs in System logs:

1. Log in to the ServiceNow instance with system admin credentials

2. Navigate to System Properties table by typing ‘sys_properties.list’ in the left navigation bar.

3. Click New. Enter Suffix as ‘logging.verbosity’

4. Select the Type as choice list and enter the following choices in the Choices field
Debug=debug,Info=info,Warn=warn,Error=error

5. Set the Value field as debug. Enable Ignore cache and Private

6. Save the property

Now, the System logs will start to capture the debug logs.

To enable the debug logs in MID server:

1. Log in to the ServiceNow instance with system admin credentials.

2. Navigate to MID Server > Servers.

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 3. Select the MID server in which debug log must be enabled.

4. Under the Configuration Parameters tab, click New.

5. Select the Parameter Name as ‘debug.logging (Debug logging enable. Default: false)’ and set
the Value as ‘true’.

6. Click Submit.

Now, the MID server logs will start to capture the debug logs.
The following failure modes are captured in the Cohesity application:
Case 1. If credentials are not matching (may be invalid username/password combo).
To resolve, you must update the configured cluster with valid username/password or domain details
and retry.
Case 2. If the discovery of a configured cluster failed with ‘Login Failed’ even if the credential of the
cluster provided is correct.
To resolve, restart the mid server that has been assigned to the specified cluster and try to discover
the cluster again.
Case 3. If http request is not correct.
This could happen if the cluster is not reachable or of if the cluster is down. To
resolve, check the cluster status and restart accordingly.
Case 4. If MID server is down or the MID server is not able to reach the Cohesity environment. The
error displayed is as follows:
Error: 'Exception occured, com.glide.ecc.ECCResponseTimeoutException: No response for ECC
message request with sysid=76bda8e32f7990102e12ae5df699b6cc after waiting for 30 seconds in
ECC Queue'.
This might be caused if the MID server is down. Make sure whether the MID server is up and running.
This could happen if the MID server is down. To resolve, ensure that the MID server is up and running.

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Your Feedback
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About Cohesity
Cohesity ushers in a new era in data management that solves a critical challenge facing businesses today:
mass data fragmentation. The vast majority of enterprise data — backups, archives, file shares, object
stores, and data used for dev/test and analytics — sits in fragmented infrastructure silos that makes it
hard to protect, expensive to manage, and difficult to analyze. Cohesity consolidates silos onto one web-
scale platform, spanning on-premises, cloud, and the edge, and uniquely empowers organizations to run
apps on that platform — making it easier than ever to back up and extract insights from data. Cohesity is
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