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Users of external storage connected to Windows servers will get new, full-system restoration options from Power-Quest Corp. next year.
Changes in the V2i Protector software, via a 1.1 upgrade Jan. 6 and a 2.0 upgrade due in the spring, will add new recovery management functions as well as the ability to take incremental snapshots of the system, said Don Kleinschnitz, chief technology officer and general manager of storage products, in Orem, Utah.
Among the highlights, “were adding to 1.1 the capability to support imaging for all partitions,” Kleinschnitz said. Thats crucial because PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and others sometimes ship servers with hidden service partitions, which wouldnt be restored today, he said.
V2i Protector 1.1 will support multiple Fibre Channel cards, so backups can take place even if there are network problems. The ability to ignore offline servers in a Windows cluster and advanced schedule scripting are also new, Kleinschnitz said. The edition will be a free upgrade for Version 1.0 customers. Pricing for new customers has yet to be determined, although it will be higher than the current rate of $695 for Version 1.0, he said.
Storage users typically get such functions from higher-end vendors such as Veritas Software Corp. Although PowerQuest is better-known for its PC-oriented PartitionMagic application, it does have an enterprise slant, as the supplier of storage resource management technology within Windows.
Robert Engimann, president of Software Engineering Associates Inc., uses PowerQuest for the companys VolumeManager software and plans to consider V2i Protector. Engimann backs up 45GB to 80GB a month to tape, using Veritas Backup Exec software, and has some tapes that are 25 years old, for VAX minicomputers, said the U.S. Air Force contractor, in Fairborn, Ohio.