Symantec Releases Upgraded System Backup Product

Symantec officials announced the release of an upgraded version of Backup Exec System Recovery that features enhanced Microsoft Exchange support and data recovery capabilities they hope will speed and simplify the Windows system recovery process.

Backup Exec System Recovery 7.0 works by creating recovery points to capture an exact copy of a system, company officials said.

"We have a full recover point, and then we have incremental recover points," said Steve Fairbanks, senior director of Product Management, in an interview with eWEEK. "If a system goes bad, you can restore that system in minutes, not hours, not days," he said.

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Fairbanks added the disc-based product also has the ability to index recovery points and can restore systems to dissimilar hardware.

Read more here about Symantecs storage products supporting Red Hat.

BESR 7.0 also includes a new Exchange Retrieve Option that speeds the recovery of both the entire Exchange server and individual messages, attachments, folders and mailboxes. A similar search-and-retrieve capability is also available via integration with Google Desktop, company officials said. End-users can also protect only select files and folders by running a local file and folder protection schema in addition to the volume-based recovery point process. This includes support for versioning so customers can keep multiple versions of the same file containing the various changes in time that they wish to restore, officials added.

The product also enables physical recovery points to be converted to virtual formats and conversion of virtual systems back to physical environments for VMware Server, VMware ESX Server, VMware Server, VMware Workstation, and Microsoft Virtual Server.

"The unique thing about this tech is being able to convert the physical to virtual," Fairbanks said. "Thats not something that VMWare is providing its customers today…to use virtual for testing purposes, for example, you might want to go in and perform a series of tests in a virtual environment, and then roll those tests back into physical."

BESR 7.0 also features centralized management, providing IT administrators a view of all system backup and recovery activity across multiple systems, simplifying recovery administration for organizations with more than a single system, Symantec officials said.

"For small environments lacking data protection, Backup Exec System Recovery is an easy-to-use solution providing rapid recovery of Windows systems and data," said analyst Lauren Whitehouse of Enterprise Strategy Group, in a statement. "Larger organizations will benefit from its system recovery capabilities and virtual environment migration tools, both of which are complementary to any existing data protection solution already in use."

With this release, Backup Exec System Recovery adds significant performance improvements and adds support for Microsoft Vista, x64-bit platforms, VMware ESX Server and Microsoft Virtual Server. Backup Exec System Recovery is a stand-alone solution for Windows Servers and may be purchased and installed separately, or together with the entire family of Backup Exec product offerings.

BESR 7.0 will be available starting April 25. Pricing starts at $ 1,095 per server and $69 per desktop. A Small Business Server Edition will also be available for $695 per server.

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