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Legato Systems Inc. is now shipping version 7.0 of its flagship Networker backup software, officials in Mountain View, Calif., said Monday.
The new version is faster and has more operating system integration than the prior Networker 6.2. “We really are focusing on performance… of recovery. Its not really about backup anymore,” said Victoria Grey, vice president of information protection.
The new version improves on its disk backup option by now performing simultaneous reads and writes. Users who prefer backing up to tapes can now share their drives in clustered configurations from Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., and Legato itself, she said.
Features that work with the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) 4.0 now let users share tape devices and automate tape cloning, Grey added.
NDMP is a standard originally developed by Sunnyvale, Calif.s Network Appliance Inc. that eases backup by splitting the control and the data itself into separate paths, which can be managed by separate nodes.
On the operating system front, Networker 7.0 has client software for the upcoming Windows 2003 Server, itself with new backup and storage management features. Windows new features, however, wont be in Networker until a 7.1 launch by late June or early July, she said. Meanwhile, Networker also now supports Mac OS X 10.2, plus Red Hat Inc.s and SuSE Linux A.G.s Linux distributions that run on Intel Corp.s 64-bit Itanium chip. Journaling file systems are also now supported in Linux, she said. The newest versions of AIX and Tru64 are now certified as well.
Networker 7.0 pricing starts at $2,995, backing up 26 tape slots, multiple drives, and 10 clients.
The upgrade comes during an important time for Legato and its customers. The company is for sale, but does not yet have a buyer. The leading candidate is Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC Corp., sources have said. Officials from both companies have said they do not comment on speculation.
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