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SAN DIEGO—As the criticality of storing, securely accessing and retrieving information becomes more closely aligned with an organizations lifeblood, storage vendors are feverishly trying to build “a better mouse trap” toward enhancing existing data protection and backup and recovery capabilities.
Here at Storage Networking World, storage vendors have launched a variety of new software and hardware offerings targeting key pain points customers continue to struggle with surrounding their shortened or stressed backup operations. These products cast a wide net over the problem by addressing areas such as bundling disaster recovery technology in a single appliance, backup for Linux-based environments, enhanced virtual storage engines for tape backup, and CDP (continuous data protection).
Vendors announcing products on Feb. 3 dealing with this issue in a variety of formats include: IBM and STORServer, BakBone Software, Neartek, WysDM Software, FalconStor Software, and Topio.
A recent Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Survey fielded by Applied Research-West shows that customers are heavily reliant on their backup operations to safeguard data. According to the survey, 70 percent of respondents questioned said they are currently using data backup to ensure availability of underlying IT and applications.
In a partnership unveiled here at SNW designed to remove backup complexity among expertise- and cash-strapped small and midsize businesses, STORServer announced its new line of STORServer EZ Backup Appliances featuring preloaded IBM storage hardware and software. Available in both entry-level and high-end models through IBM resellers only, the new EZ Backup appliances utilize IBMs new Tivoli Storage Manager Express backup and recovery software built for SMBs and IBM TotalStorage TS3310 tape library.
Customers can select three preconfigured bundles of EZ Backup Appliances. These include Disk-to-Disk providing backup and archives along with optional tape or disk for disaster recovery; Disk-to-Tape featuring backup, archives, and online tape pool and disaster recovery to tape; and Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape providing backup, archives, as well as an online pool of IBM TotalStorage DS4100 disk arrays and disaster recovery to tape.
A single STORServer EZ Backup Appliances can store up to 10TB. Pricing for the entry-level appliance begins at $5,000 with the larger model starting at $15,000.
In step with the “disaster recovery in a box” concept, Topio at SNW announced Roadrunner—its new data protection turnkey software for VARs. Through Roadrunner, VARs can network-attach and plug in a backup and recovery product featuring replication and storage management tools.
With the Linux audience in mind, BakBone unveiled the newest versions of its NetVault: Replicator and NetVault Report Manager product suite built specifically for backup operations and application server storage growth within Red Hat and Novell SUSE Linux environments.
NetVault: Replicator Version 4.2 provides file-level replication for Linux x86-64 environments while working in tandem with BakBones NetVault: Backup product. NetVault Report Manager Version 2.5 gives administrators insight into storage use and trending information across their Linux, Microsoft Windows and UNIX application servers via NetVault: Report Manager for Backup and NetVault: Report Manager for Disk Space.
Pricing for NetVault: Replicator per host node starts at $2,999 for Linux, while NetVault: Report manager pricing per supported server starts at $495 for NetVault: Report Manager for Backup and $278 for NetVault: Report Manager for Disk Space.
BakBone also announced a technology agreement with Silicon Graphics whereby NetVault: Replicator will be fully integrated with and ship with SGIs NAS (network-attached storage) products either sold directly or through SGIs channel partners.
WysDM also got into the partner act, announcing an OEM agreement with Avamar Technologies. Through the partnership Avamar will introduce Avamar Data Protection Manager—built via WysDM for Backups technology which monitors and analyzes backup environment data in all devices and applications. In addition, WysDM at SNW unveiled its upgraded WysDM for Backups 3.5 and WysDM for Fileservers 3.5 products. The enhancements include multistage backup and iSCSI support, respectively.
FalconStor added CDP to its data protection line, which currently features the companys VTL (virtual tape library) and IPStor products. FalconStor CDP allows users to create a continuously updated copy of an active data set. Any changes made to the data are immediately journaled and can be set to any point in time for either administrator or self-user recovery. The software features a visual slider interface that lets users roll back data to a relevant image or file targeted for recovery.
Proving that tape backup innovation is still in play, Neartek announced enhancements to its VTL Virtual Storage Engine.
New features include migration capabilities based on policies to move virtual media to multiple disk tiers or across an IP network to a remote location, disk-based archive device or onto physical tape.
The updated Virtual Storage Engine also includes IP tape library emulation, 4G-bps Fibre Channel host bust adapter support, hardware-based compression and four levels of security access.
Geared toward simplifying Microsoft Server backup environments, Spectra Logic introduced its new Spectra SabreDisk D500 box. The disk-based backup appliance is built on top of Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 software. The 3U (5.25-inch) SarbeDisk 500 can scale from 2TB to 8TB of capacity. The appliance will begin shipping integrated with Microsoft DPM in June with pricing starting at $17,995.
Editors Note: This story was updated to correct that an agreement was reached between BakBone and Silicon Graphics.