Quest Enhances vRanger With VMware Backup, Recovery

Key enhancements to vRanger 5.2 include full VMware ESX and ESXi support and active block mapping technology.

IT management software specialist Quest Software on Aug. 2 made available vRanger 5.2, the latest addition to its vRanger line of virtual data protection packages.

vRanger 5.2 is designed to simplify and accelerate VMware backup, replication and recovery while reducing storage requirements and providing reliability and scalability to help ensure data protection as virtual infrastructures grow over time.

Key enhancements to vRanger include full VMware ESX and ESXi support to provide a wide range of backup and recovery capabilities for VMware virtual infrastructure, as well as VMware HotAdd support for faster speeds when making network backups of ESXi. The latest version of the platform also features the ability to run as a low-resource usage virtual appliance when replicating ESXi virtual machine data.

In addition to these enhancements, vRanger continues to deliver a host of capabilities that increase VM backup, replication and recovery speeds. vRanger's active block mapping technology and support of VMware's changed block tracking vStorage API also reduces the amount of backup traffic and storage requirements.

Parallel job execution capabilities enable vRanger to complete backup and recovery operations in a less time required by products that force single-threaded processing, while dynamic resource governing ensures that those operations don't impact the performance of other virtualized applications. vRanger also offers an integrated catalog that enables administrators to locate VM and individual file backups and offers a hands-free recovery experience, automatically scheduling and executing jobs, and alerting administrators when VMs are ready to use.

"In today's business environment, where IT is being asked to do more with less, administrators no longer have time for the laborious, manual processes most VMware backup and recovery tools require," said John Maxwell, vice president of data protection product management at Quest Software. "That's why vRanger was purpose-built to provide users with an unparalleled combination of speed, simplicity and ease of use, and it's why more than 38,000 customers worldwide have turned to vRanger to meet their virtual data protection needs."

A recent report by IT industry analyst firm IDC ranks Quest as one of the top three vendors by market share for virtual server management software, for the second consecutive year. IDC projects continued growth for the worldwide virtual server management software industry at large, estimating in the report that the market will total $1.4 billion by 2015, representing a 5-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.1 percent. The report specifically noted that Quest Software continued to build on the base established by the Vizioncore acquisition as well as extending the vFoglight business.

"As enterprise data centers and cloud service providers continue to deploy complex, virtualized infrastructure to support a wide range of production applications and services, sophisticated, automated management software will be required to efficiently monitor, control and optimize the performance of these environments," said Mary Johnston Turner, research vice president of IDC's, enterprise systems management division. "Our recent analysis shows that Quest continues to be a major player in this market."