Backup Exec and NetBackup With De-Dupe

Here are the two news releases on the subject:

Symantec Delivers Deduplication Everywhere
to Mid-Sized Businesses with Backup Exec 2010

Symantec Corp. announced Backup Exec 2010 to help mid-sized businesses save time and money by protecting more data and utilizing less storage. Backup Exec 2010 offers fully integrated data deduplication and archiving technologies and is the first backup and recovery solution to offer granular recovery of Microsoft Exchange, SQL and Active Directory in VMware and Hyper-V environments from a single pass backup. Backup Exec also adds new support for Microsoft Windows 2008 R2, Hyper-V R2, Exchange 2010, Windows 7 and VMware vSphere 4.0.

“Organizations of all sizes are struggling to effectively manage information growth, particularly as they leverage virtualization technologies, creating new backup and recovery complexities,” said Pat Hanavan, vice president, Symantec Information Management Group. “Deduplication and archiving have primarily been enterprise-class technologies, but Backup Exec 2010 brings them to the masses to solve difficult IT challenges in an extremely simple and easy to use solution.”

According to industry analyst firm IDC, storage capacity is growing between 48-50 percent each year, placing more data at risk and making the disaster recovery process much slower. In fact, up to 70 percent of data is duplicate and has not been accessed in more than 90 days. Organizations that implement an integrated deduplication and archiving solution can realize up to 20-40 percent savings in storage costs and easily find and recover their critical information when they need it.

Deduplication Everywhere
Delivering on Symantec’s deduplication strategy, Backup Exec 2010 offers a flexible approach to eliminating duplicate data without adding complexity.  Backup Exec 2010 offers integrated deduplication technology at the client/source and media server, in addition to integrating with third-party deduplication appliances through the Symantec OpenStorage API. Deduplication allows organizations to dramatically reduce backup storage costs by consolidating and re-using existing storage resources, and client-side deduplication minimizes backup windows and reduces network utilization by up to 90 percent. Deploying Backup Exec deduplication technology is a simple three-step process that does not require an additional point product: install the deduplication option, define the deduplication storage location and then target the backups to that location.  

Backup Exec 2010 will also allow organizations to easily automate deduplicating backup sets from one media server to another over a WAN to reduce data across larger distributed environments, such as remote offices for disaster recovery purposes.  With integrated deduplication, smaller remote offices can now replace local tape-based backup with an off-site backup plan that targets a central Backup Exec media server or central NetBackup PureDisk environment, minimally impacting the network.   

Unified Archiving
Backup Exec 2010 also integrates two new archive options to provide unified backup and archiving for Windows file systems and Exchange environments by archiving data from the backup copy, rather than separately pulling data from the source. Powered by Symantec Enterprise Vault archiving technology, administrators can easily and more efficiently manage their data life cycles by setting automated retention periods to migrate older, less critical data over time to less expensive storage environments. The archive options also help optimize Exchange and File Server performance by eliminating redundant data at the server to further free up storage space, keep storage at predictable levels and reduce backup windows.  

Virtualize with Confidence
Backup Exec 2010 is the first backup and recovery software solution to offer granular recovery for virtual Microsoft applications from a single pass backup. This unique technology enables organizations to reduce business downtime by recovering Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and Active Directory in VMware vSphere 4.0, VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V R2 virtual environments in just seconds. Administrators can easily restore or redirect an entire application or recover individual emails, mailboxes or file/folders quickly from inside a guest machine – from a single system backup. Deduplication can also be applied to VMware and Hyper-V client backups to further reduce and consolidate storage resources.
    
Symantec delivers a range of services and support plans to help Backup Exec customers and partners install and upgrade quickly, train employees to leverage advanced functionality and maximize uptime.  

“As a growing mid-sized business, it was critical that we leverage new deduplication technology to reduce overall storage,” said Peter Lang, systems engineer, Government Employee Health Association. “Backup Exec 2010 delivers an extremely simple solution with integrated deduplication capabilities to eliminate redundant data and shrink our storage before we send it to our disaster recovery site, making the recovery process easier and faster.”
 
“Our customers are very excited about the new deduplication features in Backup Exec 2010,” said Symantec partner David Kramer, vice president of Advanced Internet Security (AIS). “They are facing budget challenges despite growing information stores so they are reluctant to buy more storage.  Backup Exec 2010 provides a great way for them to better leverage their existing storage, protect more data and reduce overall complexity.”

“Symantec is the first and only backup software provider to support advanced features for offsite data storage when utilizing disk-based backup.  ExaGrid is pleased to be the only disk-based backup vendor qualified for both basic and optimized duplication with Backup Exec 2010 via the Symantec OpenStorage program,” said Marc Crespi, vice president of Product Management, ExaGrid Systems, Inc.
 
“The seamless integration between Quantum’s certified DXi-Series deduplication systems and Backup Exec 2010 through the OST interface expands the respective capabilities of our product lines, enabling better integration of disk and tape tiers and providing advanced disk to disk functions,” said Janae Lee, senior vice president of Marketing at Quantumwww.quantum.com. “As a result of this integration, we can offer even greater value to our very large joint customer base.”

Availability and Pricing
Symantec Backup Exec 2010 is scheduled to be available worldwide on Feb. 1, 2010 with a suggested price of $1,174 USD for a media server license and Basic Maintenance. The two new Backup Exec 2010 Suites that include deduplication and archiving options have a suggested price of $2,708 – $3,888 USD with Basic Maintenance.

Symantec Simplifies Information Management
for Enterprise Organizations with NetBackup 7

Symantec Corp. announced NetBackup 7 to help enterprise-level organizations protect, store and recover information with greater efficiency and reliability through a single, unified platform. The latest release of NetBackup enables organizations to simplify information management while reducing data stores and network traffic by integrating deduplication everywhere – at the client, media server and on third party hardware appliances – thus reducing overall costs. NetBackup also delivers complete virtual machine protection to increase backup and recovery speeds of data within virtual environments and adds new backup replication for fast, cost-effective disaster recovery.
 
“IT administrators are making backup and recovery a high priority in 2010  to help manage growing data stores and reduce complexity as they add virtual servers into their IT environments,” said Brian Dye, vice president of product management for Enterprise Information Management, Symantec. “NetBackup 7 helps organizations manage those challenges by protecting both physical and virtual servers with one solution, reducing storage through deduplication and providing lightening fast recovery speeds.”

Deduplication Everywhere
With NetBackup 7, Symantec delivers on its data deduplication everywhere strategy to help organizations reduce overall storage consumption in physical and virtual environments by adding data deduplication technology into the backup client and at the media server. By integrating deduplication closer to the data source at the client, NetBackup increases the speed and efficiency of backups in remote offices, data centers and virtual environments and reduces network traffic by up to 90 percent. Deduplication built into the backup client eliminates the need for additional specialized hardware and configuration since customers just need to upgrade to the latest version to realize dramatic storage savings.   

NetBackup also helps enterprises to better leverage third party storage appliances from hardware partners through the Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) program. According to the 2010 State Of The Data Center report, 62 percent of survey respondents said deduplication should be both built-in to backup software and implemented in deduplication appliances. Integration with NetBackup through OST allows organizations to also leverage deduplication hardware from a wide range of partners, including Data Domain (EMC), Quantum, Exagrid and Falconstor.

Simple and Complete Virtual Machine Protection
As the adoption of virtual technologies increases, so do backup challenges and complexities. NetBackup simplifies virtual server data protection by standardizing backup of Hyper-V and VMware, increasing the backup speed of virtual environments through both deduplication and block-level incremental backup technology, and delivering efficient single file restore capabilities.

In the 2010 State Of The Data Center survey, organizations cited granular recovery within virtual machine images as the biggest challenge in virtual machine data protection. NetBackup 7 delivers instant file recovery from a block-level incremental backup for VMware vSphere environments and easy recovery of an individual file or folder from an image-level backup of a Hyper-V virtual machine. By leveraging NetBackup’s deduplication and incremental backup technology within virtual environments, organizations can dramatically increase the speed of backups while reducing storage for virtual machine backups up to 95 percent. NetBackup also helps IT administrators reduce the impact of backup operations on virtual machines by using off-host for Hyper-V and block-level backup technologies for VMware.  

Improving Disaster Recovery With Integrated Replication
Newly integrated replication technology within the NetBackup platform allows organizations to transfer up to 95 percent less data between various locations. This ensures quick and easy recovery of applications and backup data anywhere and at any time, reducing costs and management cycles associated with tape-based disaster recovery. NetBackup also adds backup catalog replication as a standard feature within the main console, which further simplifies and streamlines disaster recovery.

To help customers centrally manage their data protection environments and provide a single view of their backup and recovery operation, NetBackup 7 introduces a built-in reporting and management console called OpsCenter. This new console standardizes monitoring and reporting of both backup and archive information for key Symantec products including NetBackup, NetBackup PureDisk, Backup Exec and Enterprise Vault.  Organizations can also leverage advanced analytical features and report on third party backup products using OpsCenter Analytics.  This combined functionality allows organizations to reduce disaster recovery risks across locations and standardize how they view both backup and archive information.

“As the only Level One trauma facility in the region, we cannot afford to have data loss interrupt our business,” said Al Schipani, manager of server engineering, Westchester Medical Center. “Symantec NetBackup protects our information so it is readily available and reduces backup times with minimal hardware costs. Our environment is 70 percent virtual, and NetBackup enables us to access remote files in less than 30 minutes, a process that used to take up to two days.”

“We strive to provide our customers with the best solutions to  effectively manage their increasing data volumes and ensure information can be quickly and easily accessed during a disaster or outage,” said Kurt Klein, president and CEO of Computer Media Technologies, Inc., a Symantec Platinum partner and member of the NetBackup 7 early adopter program. “With NetBackup 7, we’ll be able to standardize our customers’ backup and recovery operations across both physical and virtual environments, helping them simplify their information management while minimizing risk and maximizing storage resources to keep costs down.”

Symantec NetBackup Services
Symantec offers a broad array of services to help organizations deploy, integrate and operate highly effective NetBackup environments.  NetBackup Services help organizations get the most from their NetBackup investments by improving storage efficiency, infrastructure use and recovery times.

Availability and Pricing
Symantec NetBackup 7 is scheduled to be available worldwide on Feb. 1, 2010 with a suggested price of $7,995 USD for an Enterprise Server and five client licenses.