Oracle Secure Backup 10.3 ($3,500 Per Tape Drive)

Oracle announced the availability of Oracle Secure Backup 10.3, a centralized tape backup management solution.

Highlights:

• Provides enhanced Virtual Tape Library (VTL) support through server-less tape duplication, which helps increase performance and reduce server overhead when backup data is copied from virtual to physical tapes.
• Backup encryption can now be performed on the host or by leveraging LTO-4 tape drives to offload encryption processes from the host.
• New tape vaulting enhancements better automate management of tapes between multiple locations.
• Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is supported in addition to IPv4.
• Platform support has been expanded to include HP-UX Itanium, AIX, Linux, Windows and SolarisSPARC.

Comprehensive Data Protection for the Enterprise

• Oracle Secure Backup provides unified tape backup management for the Oracle Database, heterogenous file systems and Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices in one, comprehensive solution.
• With a highly scalable client / server architecture, Oracle Secure Backup delivers secure data protection for distributed servers, NAS devices and includes built-in integration with the Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Database 10g and Oracle9i.
• Customers can achieve faster Oracle Database backups to physical and virtual tapes with Oracle Secure Backup through optimized database integration not available in comparable products.
• Oracle Secure Backup utilizes the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) for efficient backup/restore of supported NAS devices (NetApp, EMC, Pillar Data Systems).
• In Storage Area Networks (SAN) environments, Oracle Secure Backup provides enhanced drive utilization by dynamically sharing the drives among multiple media servers.
• Building upon the enterprise-class feature set of previous releases, Oracle Secure Backup 10.3 can deliver increased tape device utilization and more automated volume management addressing tape backup complexities in very large environments.

New features include:

• Host or Hardware Backup Encryption Options: Backup encryption capabilities have been expanded from existing host-based encryption to support of hardware (LTO-4) encryption providing identical policy-based encryption key management for both options. With LTO-4 tape drives, Oracle Secure Backup provides backup encryption for NAS devices.
• Server-less Tape Duplication: In addition to traditional tape duplication, Oracle Secure Backup 10.3 provides server-less tape duplication for copying virtual to physical tapes using NDMP direct tape copy as supported by the VTL.
• IPv6 Support: Delivers a comprehensive infrastructure seamlessly communicating with hardware using IPv4 or IPv6.
• Enhanced Tape Vaulting: Volume management has been further automated with additional granularity in vault scheduling, ability to ‘Vault Now,’ enhanced utilization of library ejection capabilities and improved location status reporting and exception handling.

Oracle Secure Backup is licensed at only $3500 per tape drive which includes protection of unlimited servers, NAS devices and Oracle Databases. This is in sharp contrast to comparable products which charge additional fees for advanced functionality, number and size of server and even more fees if the host is a database server.

"The amount of data in organizations has and is continuing to grow exponentially from one year to the next. Lost backups are the leading cause of data breaches," said Vipin Samar, vice president of database security development, Oracle. "By ensuring their tape backups are encrypted, organizations are mitigating one of their biggest security risks. Oracle Secure Backup 10.3 delivers enterprise class data protection across the entire IT environment – while delivering significantly faster Oracle Database tape backup at less cost than comparable products."