StorageCraft Technology, a provider of disk-based backup and disaster recovery for Windows-based servers, desktops and laptops, announced on Aug. 22 upgrades to its two frontline backup and disaster recovery software products.
ShadowProtect Server Edition 3.0 and ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3.0 both include the companys “secret sauce,” HIR (hardware-independent restoration). HIR allows IT administrators to back up, restore or migrate server, desktop and laptop systems to any physical or virtual environment, according to Brandon Nordquist, vice president of product management for StorageCraft Technology, based in Draper, Utah.
“Weve been working very closely with VMware on this,” Nordquist told eWEEK. “They provided support in the VMware Workstation 6 product and their converter tool [for] our image file format. They can now open those directly.”
Both new editions of ShadowProtect also support Microsoft Virtual Server and Virtual PC, Nordquist said.
ShadowProtect enables flexible migration to new systems, whether P2P (from a physical machine to another physical machine), P2V (from a physical to a virtual machine), V2V (from a virtual machine to another virtual machine) or even V2P (from a virtual machine to a physical machine), Nordquist said.
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“Weve engineered ShadowProtect 3.0 to help IT professionals protect every Windows system in their computing environment,” said Scott Barnes, chief technology officer at StorageCraft. “This means there arent any limitations on the types of Windows systems you are backing up or migrating to—whether virtual or physical.”
ShadowProtect Server Edition 3.0 and ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3.0 have an improved recovery environment that includes additional drivers to make it easier to recover systems and data, Nordquist said. In addition, ShadowProtect allows IT professionals to dynamically load drivers to provide flexibility in adding new storage controllers or NIC (network interface card) drivers, for example.
The new versions also feature a bootable recovery CD based on Windows Vista that includes automatic hardware detection and network support; a new Verify Backup Image tool to ensure that backup files are recoverable; visual partitioning support; and remote management of the recovery environment, Nordquist said.
“Before implementing ShadowProtect, we backed up our clients data to tape once a day,” said Dave Watts, president of Los Angeles-based NetFusion, a systems consulting firm specializing in outsourced support for SMBs (small and midsize businesses).
“With ShadowProtect, we back up our clients servers to disk—even their Exchange servers—every 15 minutes, instead of once a day. ShadowProtect gives us the flexibility to restore from any one of those points in time.”
StorageCraft, founded in 1999, is privately held and employs about 35 people. Its sales are completely channel-driven, Nordquist said.
“We have about 500 VARs and MSPs [managed services providers], and we OEM about two-thirds of our products to companies such as EMC—including VMware and Dantz—Symantec, LiveVault and others,” Nordquist said. “But that OEM percentage is starting to come down now as we come out with new products like these.”
StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server Edition 3.0 and ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3.0 are available now through the StorageCraft Web site and through authorized StorageCraft distributors, MSPs and VARs.
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