Unitrends With Enterprise Data Protection for Hyper-V

Unitrends, Inc. unveiled release 8.0, an upgrade of the data protection software powering the company’s enterprise physical and virtual backup and recovery appliances.

Delivering support for the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP), release 8.0 provides mid-sized to large enterprises with agile and scalable protection for EMC Corp.‘s and NetApp, Inc.‘s NAS.

This software expands Unitrends’ support for virtual environments, featuring unrivaled data protection and DR capabilities for the Hyper-V hypervisor.

Physical Protection for Large-Scale Deployments
The company has enhanced its integration for EMC and NetApp NAS to provide larger enterprise customers with  flexibility and backup management. Extending protection of NAS devices using file-level methods, release 8.0 introduces support for NDMP backups that helps organizations improve performance, scalability and ease-of-use through tighter integration with these storage vendors.

Physical and Virtual Recovery for Hyper-V – in Minutes
With the release 8.0 software, Unitrends Enterprise Backup (UEB) and Recovery-Series appliances extend the company in virtualization management by providing protection and recovery for Hyper-V environments. Through virtualization at the guest and hypervisor levels, virtual and physical appliances are capable of recovering Hyper-V VMs in minutes, as well as leveraging Hyper-V for failover of physical Windows machines. New features include:

• Windows Instant Recovery for Hyper-V: The Unitrends Bridge technology supports one-click physical to virtual (P2V) transformation from a Windows guest backup to a standby VM running on Hyper-V. Organizations can leverage their existing, low-cost Hyper-V infrastructure, VMware infrastructure and/or the Recovery-Series appliance to spin up physical systems and VMs – in minutes – after a failure or planned P2V migration.

• Hyper-V Instant Recovery: Unitrends Bridge also delivers one-click recovery for Hyper-V host OS (HOS) backups. By simply booting up the VM directly from UEB or Recovery-Series backup storage, organizations can reduce RTOs from hours to just minutes. Organizations can even recover the VM to a different Hyper-V host or recover from replicated backups offsite.

• Enhanced Hyper-V SMB 3.0 Protection: With Hyper-V Server 2012 and higher, organizations can run VMs from SMB 3.0 shares. Release 8.0 protects these VMs at the hypervisor level, eliminating the need to manage agents for every VM. As a result, organizations can drive down TCO.

These capabilities, combined with Unitrends’ previously available Hyper-V Host Bare Metal Recovery functionality and protection for Hyper-V Shared VHDX’s, provide Hyper-V administrators with an affordable virtual, deep virtual and physical protection.

“As a service provider, we have to cater to many customer environments and IT requirements and can’t afford to be burdened with the inefficiency of managing 10 different products to meet each customer’s needs,” said Tyson Sands, data protection systems engineer, DSM.net. “It is critical to have a go-to vendor that can adapt quickly and offer a full breadth of data protection capabilities to satisfy the unique demands of the various customers we serve – Unitrends is that vendor. The addition of NDMP support and the advanced Hyper-V functionality delivered in Unitrends Release 8.0 adds substantial value to what we can offer our customer base.“

Performance and Deduplication Improvements
IT administrators protecting SQL Server can enjoy up to 66% improved performance in scalable SQL Server environments, as well as general improvements in SQL data deduplication that can reach up to 30% better retention. In addition, SQL databases can now be replicated using a fraction of the bandwidth previously consumed with replication performance improvements up to 30 to 40%. Furthermore, Unitrends has made  improvements to its  Adaptive Deduplication technology, which enables Release 8.0 to deliver up to 40% greater retention than past versions of the software.

Enhanced Support for Mac and HP OSs
This version of the software also delivers complete protection for the Mac 10.9 and HP-UX 11 OSs, underscoring the company’s commitment to providing interoperability and scalability that meets the needs of organizations of all sizes.

“Unitrends Release 8.0 represents yet another key milestone in our strategy to provide iron-clad business recovery solutions that are highly adaptive to each and every customer’s IT environment,” said Mike Coney, CEO, Unitrends. “With the software’s latest advancements, Unitrends becomes the only vendor to support NDMP, as well as instant recovery for vSphere and Hyper-V hypervisors. Our UEB and Recovery-Series appliances are now unmatched in their respective abilities to meet the physical protection needs of larger-scale organizations, as well as to support the fastest growing hypervisor in the small to mid-sized enterprise market.“

Unitrends Release 8.0 will be available for the UEB virtual appliance and Recovery-Series physical appliances on December 1, 2014.

As part of the ongoing Unitrends Not For Resale (NFR) program, free licenses of UEB 8.0 will be available to Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, Microsoft Certified Professionals, VMware vExperts, VMware Certified Professionals, VMware Certified Instructors and VMUG members.