esXpress v3.5 From PHD Virtual

PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the pioneering esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, released esXpress version 3.5 with enhanced functionality for enterprise management. The new product features a multi-user global deployment and configuration application, advanced block-and-file-level backup and the industry’s only patent-pending source-side global data de-duplication across the entire ESX farm. esXpress v3.5 uniquely uses the virtual environment to backup itself without requiring any additional hardware or software, making it the most scalable and cost effective VMware backup solution on the market.

"PHD Virtual takes an innovative approach to virtual machine data protection by performing backup and recovery from within the virtual machine," said Lauren Whitehouse, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Companies can leverage their existing resources for fault-tolerant data protection, without added hardware or software costs enabling them to achieve unprecedented economies of scale, simplicity and management."

To deliver backup and recovery using the virtual environment itself, esXpress v3.5 uses virtual backup appliances (VBAs) – small virtual machines – that can be deployed in minutes on a VMware ESX server to autonomously conduct hot full or ‘virtual full’ backups of virtual machines. esXpress VBAs operate outside of the ESX console, leveraging a virtual appliance architecture and an innovative disk throttling technique so that backups run during business hours with no impact on virtual machine performance on the ESX server. esXpress v3.5 supports VMware v3, v3.5 and will support vSphere4 soon after its availability.

esXpress supports up to 16 concurrent backup streams per ESX host and the resulting backups can be self-restored without using esXpress or other virtual machine infrastructure. esXpress backs up virtual disks at the block level, backing up incremental data only that is de-duplicated at the source before being sent to one or more local and/or remote storage targets simultaneously.

"esXpress 3.5 has reduced the complexity and time spent administering our backups," said Douglas Soltexz, vice president IST, Budd Van Lines. "De-duplication and integrated file-level restoration provides for instant one step restorations without having to go to tape."

The new esXpress v3.5
offers the following additional features:

• Multi-user global deployment and configuration application featuring hierarchical, policy-driven configuration to significantly reduce deployment time
• Patent pending source-side global de-duplication across the entire ESX farm to greatly reduce LAN traffic and disk space usage
• Multi-user file-level restore for instant access to compressed data
• Built-in incremental replication which can replicate newly changed blocks and inject them directly to into the replicated virtual machine
• Date-smart dynamic export with pre-defined date-based directories, providing critical flexibility in deciding what data is exported to a choice of tape or disk

"esXpress v3.5 builds on our promise of helping companies realize the great potential of virtual infrastructures – to simplify IT by reducing hardware and removing costs," said Joe Julian, executive chairman, PHD Virtual. "With this release data de-duplication becomes a reality, greatly reducing network load which typically slows performance of the virtual enterprise. By leveraging the new Web-based management console and esXpress v3.5’s central hierarchical configuration capabilities, enterprises are easily able to deploy and manage data protection eliminating the complexity and cost associated with traditional solutions."

Pricing and Availability
esXpress v3.5 is available now with pricing starting at $1,000 per host for four concurrent backup streams delivering the best price/performance for data recovery and protection in virtual environments.