By Kevin Komiega
At its Vision 2008 Conference last month, Symantec announced a series of updates to its Veritas NetBackup software platform, including the integration of data de-duplication and continuous data protection (CDP) technologies previously available only as stand-alone products.
Symantec has also cherry-picked some features found in its Windows-based Backup Exec product to bring granular recovery capabilities for Windows and VMware environments to the NetBackup platform.
Specifically, Symantec added the Granular Recovery Technology it first introduced in Backup Exec to NetBackup, allowing for quick recovery of an entire system or individual files, e-mails, documents, and virtual machines from single-pass image backups of Windows, Exchange, SharePoint, and VMware servers. The Granular Recovery Technology eliminates duplicate block-level backups, eliminating redundant data and reducing capacity requirements.
NetBackup 6.5.2, available now, features expanded support for Microsoft applications, including the granular recovery technology for Sharepoint 2007, Exchange 2007, and Windows Server 2008. Version 6.5.2 also includes support for VMware, with the addition of VCB incremental backups and Snapshot Client support in virtual machines, as well as higher availability and policy-driven encryption key management for NetBackup tape environments.
NetBackup PureDisk 6.5 integration with NetBackup, also available now, offers a hybrid approach to data de-duplication with a menu of choices, including source-based, inline target-mode, or post processing de-duplication based on application requirements.
The PureDisk 6.5 option also features integrated replication and leverages any storage hardware, and can scale up to meet the backup-and-recovery needs of hundreds of remote sites, data centers, and multiple petabytes of backup data.
Symantec offers a five-system NetBackup starter pack for $3,995. But users will have to wait a bit longer for NetBackup 6.5.3 and RealTime 6.5 CDP, with availability slated for later this summer and in the fall, respectively.
The integration of RealTime Protection 6.5 will add CDP to NetBackup by capturing all changes to application data in real-time. RealTime also includes NetBackup Storage Life-cycle Policies to automate the movement of RealTime data to longer-term storage media.
Symantec has been steadily enhancing its NetBackup portfolio by incorporating technology from Backup Exec and vice versa. Specifically, the company has been fleshing out both products in the areas of disk-based backup, virtual machine support, Windows protection, OpenStorage, and recovery capabilities.
Symantec’s director of product marketing, Marty Ward, says users should expect to see the company update its products faster going forward based on the company’s decision to change its organizational structure by bringing together its enterprise-focused NetBackup and Windows-oriented Backup Exec groups.
“We folded the two groups together about two months ago and now a lot of the technology is being shared between the groups,” explains Ward.
Also at its Vision conference last month, Symantec announced that it has joined forces with Citrix Systems to offer customers a virtual server and storage infrastructure that the companies claim will be more than the sum of its parts.
The two companies are combining Symantec’s Veritas Storage Foundation management software with the Citrix XenServer server virtualization platform to create a new product called Veritas Virtual Infrastructure (VxVI), which is capable of managing thousands of virtual machines and their associated storage from a single interface in large scale, x86-based environments.
Veritas Virtual Infrastructure brings storage management technology from the physical world to the virtual world, offering direct control of block storage from a guest virtual server, block storage functionality, including mirroring across heterogeneous arrays, and SAN-based multi-pathing for data availability.
Citrix XenServer brings server virtualization to the mix to enable sharing of common boot images across multiple virtual servers and streamline the provisioning process. The VxVI client/server architecture establishes unique, individual relationships between each virtual server and its underlying storage, as if it were a physical server.
“We worked with Citrix at the engineering level to make VxVI more than just a collection of bundled stand-alone products,” says Sean Derrington, Symantec’s director of storage management and high availability.
Storage Foundation manages storage across Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms with multi-pathing across Fibre Channel and iSCSI. Derrington says VxVI allows users to manage servers and storage from one screen by performing advanced management tasks, including mirroring and striping LUNs, dynamic reconfiguration of layouts, or copying and moving volumes around from subsystem to subsystem.
Matt Fairbanks, vice president of product marketing at Citrix, says virtualization is all about consolidation, but the storage infrastructure has been a hindrance to realizing the benefits of a virtual server infrastructure.
“Combining XenServer with the Veritas software will enable users to get up and running with virtual machines and storage in about 15 minutes,” Fairbanks says.
Citrix research shows that approximately 60% of the problems related to deploying server virtualization technology are caused by storage.
Veritas Virtual Infrastructure is expected to be generally available this fall, with proposed pricing starting at $4,595 per two-socket server.
