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Unitrends, a provider of all-in-one backup, archiving, recovery and disaster recovery solutions, announced the launch of Unitrends Release 7.2, the latest version of its software powering the company’s Unified Data Protection offering of physical and virtual backup and recovery appliances.
Unitrends 7.2’s new features include a replication wizard, which enables replication setup, as all replication functionality is managed on one appliance through a single user interface.
In addition, a Legal Hold feature enables administrators to maintain retention control by specifying backup groups that should not be purged from the system for a specified number of days or indefinitely and helps companies meet compliance requirements and service level agreements (SLAs).
Another update is increased granularity for data protection by enabling IT administrators to specify inclusion lists for Windows file-level master, differential and incremental backups, giving users the ability to specify exactly what data they want to back up–down to a specific folder or file type.
Also included is DNS/DHCP Support for Windows, which is designed to simplify client management by removing the IP address requirement for backups, and a second-level, task-based menu that includes task-based drop down options on the interface’s Main Menu for increased ease-of-use.
“Storage, backup and disaster recovery demands are skyrocketing as data volumes grow, but unfortunately, IT staffing rates are not rising with them,” Dr. Mark Campbell, Unitrends’ chief strategy and technology officer, said in a statement. “IT administrators at small and medium-sized enterprises are continuously challenged to do more with less. Our mission at Unitrends has always been to provide them with enterprise-class data protection for heterogeneous environments that is affordable, easy to use and intuitive. Smaller budgets and limited resources should not mean companies have to sacrifice data protection, and Release 7.2 ensures that this isn’t the case.”
The release also includes functionality targeted at managed services providers (MSPs). The software includes integration with the ConnectWise professional services automation (PSA) tool, as well as with remote monitoring and management (RMM) systems. With this new support, MSPs can monitor and manage end users’ infrastructures, including backup and recovery processes directly through their PSA or RMM system.
The company’s Unified Data Protection offering already supports more than 100 different versions of servers, operating systems, storage platforms, hypervisors and applications. With the latest upgrade, companies now also receive expanded data protection support for Oracle 11g on Linux and Solaris, Debian 7.0 and Ubuntu 13.04 on Linux, and VMware resource pools.
In addition, administrators also have the ability to exclude a subset of VMware virtual machine drives from backups, which can help reduce backup size, save storage space and increase retention.