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Vizioncore, a provider of virtualization data protection and management solutions and a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest Software, announced the availability of vRanger Pro Data Protection Platform (DPP). Version 4.5 of the image-based data protection technology features Active Block Mapping (ABM) accompanied by Change Block Tracking (CBT).
ABM queries the Windows OS to remove inactive blocks from read lists during backups, which accelerates the data-collection process by an average of 49 percent compared with vRanger Pro 4.2.3. ABM works on its own to speed full backups, typically performed weekly by Vizioncore customers. ABM also works in combination with CBT to speed incremental and differential backups, typically performed nightly.
The company said ABM is particularly helpful in speeding the backup of virtual machines running file and print services, which create and delete many small files as a routine part of their operation. ABM also speeds recovery by an average of 90 percent as compared with vRanger Pro 4.2.3 by avoiding the need to write zero blocks.
With CBT, vRanger Pro 4.5 DPP receives changed blocks by making queries to the VMware vStorage API, which returns the list of the changed blocks. The CBT approach is dramatically faster than legacy technologies that resort to scanning the virtual file system for all changes. The combination of ABM and CBT reduced the size of backup archives by an average of 25 percent compared with vRanger Pro 4.2.3.
“vRanger Pro 4.5 DPP offers well-designed and reliable image-level backups that can be deployed easily and inexpensively,” said beta customer Andrew Gahm, a systems and security engineer for South Jersey Healthcare. “The Active Block Mapping and Change Block Tracking features allow us to easily backup all of our 120 virtual servers well within our allotted time frame. But the key aspect is recovery: We’re delighted to find that the recovery process is faster because we’re storing a smaller image as well.”
vRanger Pro 4.5 DPP also features support for Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange (RME) to provide object-level recovery (OLR) for Microsoft Exchange. With RME, vRanger Pro DPP is the first image-based solution to provide agentless OLR from image-based backups. This set of capabilities enables administrators to search, select and restore individual Exchange e-mail objects from a vRanger Pro DPP backup image, including individual e-mail messages along with their attachments and individual e-mail folders.
Lauren Whitehouse, a senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, commented on the new version of vRanger Pro DPP. “Traditional file-level backup is cumbersome and inefficient in server virtualization environments. Vizioncore vRanger Pro’s image-based backup provides a portable point-in-time image of a virtual machine without disrupting the virtual machine-resident applications or overwhelming the host’s CPU,” Whitehouse said. “Further, vRanger Pro takes advantage of Changed Block Tracking in vSphere and applies its own Active Block Mapping to dramatically reduce the size of the image file, accelerating backup and optimizing bandwidth and storage capacity.”