1. Size Nodes Based on BET
Commvault Flex Open supports 1 TB to 500 TB BET per node and is available in four sizing tiers.
| T-Shirt Size | Capacity (BET) | Typical Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| Small | Up to 50 TB | Small businesses, branch offices |
| Medium | Up to 150 TB | Mid-sized environments |
| Large | Up to 300 TB | Enterprise workloads |
| Extra Large | Up to 500 TB | Large enterprise and high-performance environments |
As protected capacity grows, you can add additional Commvault Flex Open nodes to distribute workloads.
2. Size for Performance as Well as Capacity
Capacity is only one part of the sizing exercise. Also consider the following factors:
- Daily backup ingest (TB/day)
- Number of concurrent backup jobs
- Recovery time objectives (RTOs)
- Number of simultaneous restores
- Workload mix (VMs, databases, NAS, cloud applications)
- Threat Analysis processing requirements
For environments with high backup throughput or demanding recovery SLAs, multiple nodes may be preferable even if a single node has sufficient capacity.
3. Scale Out as Requirements Grow
Commvault Flex Open follows a familiar Commvault MediaAgent architecture and can be expanded by adding nodes.
Typical growth triggers include:
- Increasing protected capacity
- Higher daily change rates
- More concurrent backup streams
- Faster recovery requirements
- Additional geographic locations or business units
Adding nodes distributes backup processing and improves aggregate throughput while maintaining operational simplicity.
4. Size Storage Independently
Commvault Flex Open supports both internal and external storage, allowing storage to be selected based on business requirements rather than appliance constraints.
Supported storage options include:
- Direct-attached storage (DAS)
- NAS
- Fibre Channel / iSCSI block storage
- S3 object storage
- Tape
- Dell Data Domain
- HPE StoreOnce
Storage should be sized for:
- Required retention
- Expected data growth
- Immutability (if applicable)
- Backup and restore performance
5. Plan for Growth
When sizing a new deployment, include future growth rather than sizing only for today's requirements.
| Planning Horizon | Recommended Capacity Headroom |
|---|---|
| 12 months | ~25% |
| 24 months | ~50% |
| Rapid growth / AI workloads | 75–100% |
This approach minimizes future hardware refreshes and allows additional Commvault Flex Open nodes to be introduced as performance and capacity demands increase.
6. Match Hardware to the Selected T-Shirt Size
The Commvault Flex Open sizing guide defines the minimum hardware requirements for each node size, including:
- CPU cores
- Memory
- Boot SSD
- NVMe cache
- Network bandwidth
- Parallel stream capability
As node size increases, CPU, memory, cache, and networking scale accordingly to support higher backup throughput and larger datasets.
Example Sizing
| Protected Capacity (BET) | Example Deployment |
|---|---|
| 40 TB | 1 Small node |
| 120 TB | 1 Medium node |
| 250 TB | 1 Large node |
| 450 TB | 1 Extra Large node |
| 800 TB | 2 Extra Large nodes |
| 1.5 PB | 3 Extra Large nodes |
Actual node sizing should also account for backup throughput and recovery objectives, not just total capacity.
Commvault Flex Open is sized using a T-shirt model, with each node supporting between 1 TB and 500 TB BET. Customers can start with a single node and scale out by adding additional nodes as capacity, performance, or recovery requirements grow. Storage is sized independently and can be internal or external, providing maximum deployment flexibility.