EMC has updated five of its data protection products with new capabilities including the ability for organizations and service providers to deliver data protection as a service.
The new feature will “help customers redefine their data protection strategies in a software defined networking world,”Steve Flynn, the director of product marketing for EMC’s data protection and availability division, said in an interview.
Over the last few years the requirements for data protection have changed, he explained, with data being held less centrally and often being accessed remotely. As a result, organizations have to adjust their data protection strategies.
For those enterprises that see the need, some updates will allow the delivery of data protection as a service to business units. Others will give data and storage administrators greater control over backup architecture to keep a lid on users who fill storage with unneeded repetitive backups. FInally, some updates will allow data protection to ensure continuous availability of data through backup and recovery to archive.
The changes include:
–Enhancements to EMC Data Protection Suite (which includes Avamar deduplication backup software, NetWorker backup and recovery software, Data Protection Advisor and Mozy cloud backup service) optimize it for private and hybrid cloud environments, give greater visibility and control for data owners and improve integration with primary and protection storage.
Specifically, Avamar has been upgraded to version 7.1, adding embedded backup services into VMware Backup Director. As a result Avamar can be deployed and managed from within vCloud Director.
As a result it “will heighten confidence of customers in offerings from service providers in data protection as a service,” Flynn said.
Avamar 7.1 also now fully integrates with EMC’s Data Domain operating system for all backup workloads including wide area workloads such as remote office backup. Avamar has its own backup storage system, but customers that want a single system can now backup Avamar to Data Domain storage systems.
This capability existed for VMware, Microsoft applications Oracle and SQL Server, and is now joined by WAN backups so customers can consolidate their storage on Data Domain.
NetWorker has been updated to version 8.2, which expands snapshot support to include network attached storage (NAS) filters. Adding snapshot management for Isilon, VNX and NetApp arrays adds visibility and control of all snapshots for storage admin and back up admins.
NetWorker already had block-based file support so the “bi-directional catalogue awareness” gives administrators visibility into all of the snapshots created from a single console.
NetWorker also now has a new plug-in that allows HyperV administrators to manage protection and recovery from Microsoft Systems Centre Virtual Machine Manager, Flynn said.
Moisy’s cloud data protection solution has new capabilities for enterprises. These include adding corporate key encryption to improve security, a local agent can interface into LDAP directories to help push information from customer to Mosy for more efficiently and Linux support.
For protecting storage Re: protection storage the Data Domain OS has been updated to version 5.5. Improvements include expanding the Boost for Enterprise Applications to protect SAP, SAP HANA, SQL Server and DB2 databases. Oracle was already covered. With Boost administrators can direct backups from native tools within those databases to a Data Domain system.
Also new is multi-tenancy support in the operating system for service providers and enterprises wanting to offer data protection.
And for those using Data Domain for archiving, it now has the capacity to store 1 billion files.
Finally, there’s a new Virtual Edition of VPLEX, a high availabily backup solution that produces simultaneous rights to two locations, for those who want to mount the software on their own server.
A new MetroPoint topology adds three-site continuous availability, along with disaster recover and operational recovery capabilities, through VMware RecoverPoint. It integrates with high availability solutions within applications like Oracle RACK and SAP’s high availability module.
All updates will be available in the second quarter.