Unitrends addresses system crashes with Hot Bare Metal ... Idealstor announces combination storage and backup appliance ... Dell blade servers offer more connectivity features.Unitrends introduces new system protection and recovery software, Idealstor offers a multifunction appliance that combines storage and backup, and Dell provides more connectivity options for its PowerEdge 1855 blade servers.
Unitrends Addresses System Crashes with Hot Bare Metal
Unitrends of Columbia, S.C., has announced Hot Bare Metal software for system protection and recovery. The software enables users to obtain point-in-time, block-based "hot snapshots" of their operating systems concurrent with performing regular backups.
Hot Bare Metal allows administrators to capture complete image backups on a system without taking it down. If a crash occurs, the software lets administrators restore the system in 30 minutes or less.
The goal, according to Mark Phillippi, Unitrends director of product management, is to provide greater assurance to companies that system crashes and downtime will be minimized as much as possible. The ability to take snapshots with systems running is part of that goal, he said.
The software, aimed at the SMB (small and midsized business) market, supports Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Unix.
Get more information here.
Idealstor Announces Combination Storage and Backup Appliance
Removable disk-to-disk backup vendor Idealstor LLC of Gaithersburg, Md., has announced a combination storage and backup product that brings together the features of a redundant RAID 5 Array with the removable drive functionality of a traditional backup appliance.
The resulting solution, called the Idealstor RAID Array with Removable ATA Drives (FrankeNAS), is split into two parts. Half of the appliance functions as a RAID 5 array of SATA (serial ATA) drives with capacities up to 1.8TB of native storage, while the other half is configured with as many as four removable drive bays that can accommodate an ATA drive with up to 1.6TB of removable storage.
The result, said Ben Ginster, Idealstors channel manager, is a solution that allows backup administrators to schedule backup jobs to run to the RAID 5 array for nearline storage and offload the data to the removable drives to be stored offsite.
By providing combined functionality, customers can avoid buying multiple NAS devices to back up and store data, and avoid buying multiple tape drives or removable disk devices to back up and remove the data to an offsite location, Ginster said.
Get more information here.
Dell Blade Servers Offer More Connectivity Features
Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade servers now offer more connectivity options.
The Dell Modular Server Enclosure can accommodate a variety of Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand connectivity options from McData, Intel, Brocade, QLogic and Topspin, as well as from Dell itself. The goal, according to company officials, is to provide redundant server-to-storage connectivity and better integration of existing SAN fabrics.
The McDATA 4314 Fibre Channel switch for the Dell PowerEdge 1855 is immediately available, with single switch pricing starting at $8,999.
Get more information here.
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