PlateSpin Forge 2.5 by Novell

Novell announced the availability of PlateSpin Forge 2.5, the latest release of the only all-in-one, out-of-the-box disaster recovery hardware appliance. PlateSpin Forge leverages virtualization to back-up and restore physical and virtual servers.

In the event of production server downtime or a disaster, protected workloads can be rapidly recovered, including failover directly on the PlateSpin Forge appliance, so there is no need for additional hardware. The protected workloads can later be restored to the production environment, either to the repaired server, or even to a replacement server of a different make or model.

PlateSpin Forge includes PlateSpin’s exclusive Server Sync technology, which replicates only the changes between a source and target workload. PlateSpin Forge 2.5 features an improved block-based transfer protocol, making replications up to 50 percent faster than previous versions. In contrast to traditional file-based transfers that copy entire files, block-based transfer technology replicates only changed blocks at the disk level, dramatically reducing the amount of data transferred. For customers replicating workloads over a WAN, faster replications mean lower bandwidth costs, shorter backup windows and faster workload recovery times.

Other key new features in PlateSpin Forge 2.5 include:

• Multi-tenancy – enabling users to host multiple customers on a single PlateSpin Forge appliance, ideal for hosted service providers;
• Support for virtual-to-physical Server Sync – providing faster failback scenarios and significantly reducing restore time to the repaired server after an outage;
• Support for replications lasting more than 24 hours – making PlateSpin Forge the best option for customers with extremely large workloads or slow WAN connections;
• User interface enhancements – giving customers the ability to failover, failback and change protected workloads within the PlateSpin Forge interface;
• Appliance portability – allowing customers to retain server protection contracts when the Forge appliance is moved to a different network;
• Support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista workloads.

PlateSpin Forge is an integral component of PlateSpin Virtualization and Workload Management solutions from Novell, which also include PlateSpin Recon, PlateSpin Orchestrate, PlateSpin Protect and PlateSpin Migrate. PlateSpin Virtualization and Workload Management solutions enable customers to profile, migrate, manage and protect server workloads and are part of the Novell Service-Driven Data Center which provides solutions to build, manage and measure next generation data centers.

Availability
PlateSpin Forge 2.5 will be available this month.