Symantec made good on its promise to integrate data deduplication into its flagship backup and recovery products today with the releases of Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup 7.

Backup Exec 2010, which is Symantec’s backup and recovery platform for medium-sized businesses, offers integrated deduplication at the client/source and media server, in addition to integrating with third-party deduplication appliances through the Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) program.

The deduplication technology now native to Backup Exec 2010, as well as NetBackup 7, comes from Symantec’s NetBackup PureDisk data deduplication product. Backup Exec 2010 automates the deduplication of backup sets from one media server to another over a WAN to reduce data across distributed environments. Symantec claims smaller remote offices will be able to replace local tape-based backup with an off-site backup plan that targets a central Backup Exec media server or central PureDisk environment.

As a result of the technology integration, Symantec will cease selling PureDisk as a standalone product in the future, according to Matthew Lodge, Symantec’s senior director of product marketing.

Symantec claims customers can reduce backup storage costs, minimize backup windows and reduce network utilization by as much as 90%.

Symantec has also cherry picked two archiving features found in its Enterprise Vault archiving software and built them into Backup Exec 2010. The new Backup Exec 2010 archive options provide unified backup and archiving for Windows file systems and Exchange environments by archiving data from the backup copy, rather than separately pulling data from the source.

In addition to integrated deduplication and archiving, Backup Exec 2010 offers granular recovery of Microsoft Exchange, SQL and Active Directory in VMware and Hyper-V environments from a single-pass backup. Backup Exec also adds new support for Microsoft Windows 2008 R2, Hyper-V R2, Exchange 2010, Windows 7 and VMware vSphere 4.0.

Symantec Backup Exec 2010 costs $1,174 for a media server license and basic maintenance. Entry-level pricing for the two new Backup Exec 2010 suites that include deduplication and the archiving options ranges from $2,708 to $3,888 with basic maintenance.

NetBackup 7

Like Backup Exec 2010, Symantec’s enterprise-class NetBackup 7 software also includes integrated data deduplication technology in the backup client and at the media server and supports third-party storage appliances from hardware partners through the Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) program. Symantec’s OST partners include EMC Data Domain, ExaGrid, FalconStor, Nexsan and Quantum.

NetBackup also adds backup catalog replication as a standard feature within the main console to streamline disaster recovery.

NetBackup 7 introduces a built-in reporting and management console called OpsCenter. OpsCenter standardizes monitoring and reporting of both backup and archive information for a range of Symantec products, including NetBackup, NetBackup PureDisk, Backup Exec and Enterprise Vault.

Lodge says Symantec has changed its licensing model for NetBackup 7. Licensing for the software is now based on a flat fee for the amount of data protected on a per-terabyte basis.

Symantec NetBackup 7 is priced at $7,995 for an Enterprise Server and five client licenses.

Both Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup 7 will be available next week.