Zmanda Amanda Enterprise 3.0 for DR to the Cloud

Zmanda, in open source backup and recovery software, introduced a major upgrade of its product — Amanda Enterprise Version 3.0. The world’s leading open source backup and recovery product now offers high-end features and functions that make it optimal for protecting modern data centers — including disaster recovery to the cloud and enterprise-level media and device management — all at a fraction of the price of proprietary solutions.

Comparison of initial purchase costs between Amanda Enterprise, EMC NetWorker and Symantec NetBackup

“Zmanda is challenging the way backup products and services are being delivered by offering more choice and flexibility — a refreshing proposition for users who don’t want to lock up data in proprietary formats or proprietary clouds,” said Lauren Whitehouse, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “The latest release of Amanda Enterprise introduces media and cloud enhancements that provide alternatives for how and where applications and data are protected and how customers pay for it. Given the economic climate, Zmanda may provide a welcome relief to customers’ backup ails.”

Zmanda has broadened its portfolio of application and database agents in Amanda Enterprise 3.0 to include live backup agents for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, PostgreSQL, and EnterpriseDB’s Postgres Plus product family. These agents allow administrators to perform hot backups at any time without impacting users and applications thus increasing their own productivity as well as that of their users. Further, Zmanda agents provide uniform backup methods across all applications so that administrators don’t have to learn and keep up with application-specific methodologies.

"We are delighted that Amanda Enterprise now has official support for Postgres Plus," said Andy Astor, co-founder and EVP of Business Development, EnterpriseDB Corporation. "Our users are deploying Postgres Plus to serve data needs of mission-critical and advanced Web 2.0 applications, and data protection is on top of their minds. Zmanda’s Postgres Plus Agent enables DBAs to easily backup and recover their Postgres Plus databases."

Disaster recovery functionality has been enhanced in Amanda Enterprise 3.0 with support for disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) and disk-to-disk-to-cloud (D2D2C) backup operations. Users now have the ability to backup to disk and then vault a tertiary backup to either tape or the cloud on their own schedule when bandwidth allows. Additionally, new location directives have been added for backing up to the cloud, giving users the ability to select the specific geography where they would like their backup data stored to ensure optimal disaster recovery protection and meet compliance requirements.

“Organizations must protect their data to ensure compliance and business continuity, but with dwindling budgets IT managers are finding it exceedingly difficult to fulfill these critical business needs with fewer dollars,” said Chander Kant, chief executive officer, Zmanda. “With its enterprise-level functionality and value price, Amanda Enterprise 3.0 is the ideal data protection platform for today’s economy.”

Other enhancements in Amanda Enterprise 3.0 include:

• ZFS file system support has been optimized for disaster recovery. Zmanda Solaris Client supports backup and recovery of access control lists (ACL) of ZFS. Also, close integration with ZFS Snapshot enables users to create a point-in-time backup of the entire file system, including open files.
• Security enhancements for Windows clients ensure data on Windows systems, including laptops, will be protected with strong levels of encryption during remote backup and recovery operations.
• Media management enhancements to Zmanda Management Console allow auto discovery of tape libraries and management of multiple tape drives within one tape library.

Amanda Enterprise is an enhanced and supported version of the world’s most popular open source backup and recovery software. Amanda Enterprise allows users to easily and affordably backup, archive, and recover servers, workstations, desktops and business-critical applications across a network. The backup data and archives can be stored on disks, tape, optical devices or storage clouds such as Amazon S3.

Targeted at SMBs and departmental customers, Amanda Enterprise 3.0 is in beta and will be generally available within 30 days through Zmanda’s online store at a starting price of $100 per client and $300 per application agent.