Data recovery specialist Unitrends introduced a pair of free tools that offer extended visibility into storage and file capacity and utilization, with the aim of helping organizations to identify cost savings.
The company’s Backup Capacity and Storage Inventory tools are designed to help systems administrators determine how much storage to allocate for backups and which files are critical to back up.
These new tools offer a single point-in-time snapshot of storage and files across data centers, enabling administrators to calculate current backup sizing requirements, and avoid backing up unnecessary files or running out of storage space.
“Small businesses have tight budgets and may not have experts in storage or backup technologies to recommend the best backup policies and guidelines to reduce storage space among a number of servers and solutions,” Subo Guha, Unitrends’ vice president of product management and marketing, told eWEEK. “Unitrends has made it a priority to deliver a portfolio of free tools intended to help systems admins overcome these challenges.”
The Storage Inventory Tool gives administrators visibility into their storage environment, enabling them to see how storage assets are being used and where they are stretched to capacity.
The free tool automatically synthesizes vast quantities of storage data and summarizes findings in detailed reports.
The Backup Capacity Tool enables systems administrators to capture a snapshot of all data center files residing on storage devices and servers, and view file-level information that can be used to plan, construct and schedule backups.
Providing detailed summary reports for backup planning, this non-invasive and secure tool gives organizations visibility into their file utilization with the aim of optimizing the backup management processes.
“Together, these free tools help small businesses determine what data to back up and how often, how to create an efficient retention and backup schedule, and where to store backups in question,” Guha said. “Visibility and insight is critical for admins tasked with managing dynamic backup and recovery demands with limited time and budget.”
The platform automatically synthesizes storage and file data into an executive-ready deck of PowerPoint slides organized for management with lists, graphs and annotations.
In July, Unitrends launched BC/DR Link, a free online service tool that lets companies build a disaster recovery plan.
The service also includes one gigabyte of centralized storage in the Unitrends cloud, which companies can use to house essential disaster recovery and business continuity documents.
“The issues facing small businesses – tight budgets, limited IT staffs and fragmented storage – aren’t likely to change much over the next few years, but the planning tools available will hopefully help them identify cost savings,” Guha said. “Managing cost is the biggest challenge for small businesses, and these intelligent tools allow them to automate and manage their IT assets more economically– we believe that data protection doesn’t have to be so hard.”