Zmanda Drives Down the Cost of NDMP and VMware Backup

Zmanda introduced an upgrade of its product – Amanda Enterprise Version 3.1. The open source backup product now offers features and functions that make it optimal for protecting modern data centers – including Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) and VMware Backup – at one tenth the price and complexity of proprietary solutions.

Zmanda also announced the availability of the Disaster Recovery (DR) Option for Amanda Enterprise. This option enables IT managers to create a remote disaster recovery solution by replicating the backup server itself. This avoids the need of replicating each individual data set, thus drastically reducing the cost of DR. Data from all critical platforms and applications can be replicated without having to buy and deploy replication technology for each specific platform and application.

"Zmanda continues to bring down cost and complexity of backup and disaster recovery processes for small to mid size companies," said Arun Taneja, founder, Taneja Group. "Amanda Enterprise should be on the short list of any IT manager looking for a backup solution."

With the addition of NDMP support, Amanda Enterprise 3.1 now delivers high performance backup and recovery of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices such as NetApp Storage Systems. NDMP allows the backup data to be transported directly from the NAS device to the backup device without passing through the Amanda Enterprise server. This speeds up backups in many environments, thus reducing the backup window, as well as minimizes the demands placed on the corporate LAN.

VMware Hypervisor support allows Amanda Enterprise users to efficiently manage the backups of virtual environments. Now users can take an image-level backup of the entire virtual machine from the Amanda server without the need to install client software on each individual virtual machine. This significantly reduces the overhead cost of installing and managing the backup architecture and improves performance by requiring fewer applications to be installed and running in the virtual environment.

According to a recent report from analyst firm Gartner, half of all workloads will be running in virtual machines by 2012 and small business is the fastest growing sector for virtualization. Being able to efficiently and affordably address backup needs of these virtualized environments will be key to this adoption.

"With the introduction of NDMP and VMware backup support, customers can look to Amanda Enterprise to provide high end features and functions at an affordable price," said Chander Kant, chief executive officer, Zmanda. "These features were previously only available in enterprise solutions at premium prices and taxing complexity, but can now be enjoyed by the masses."

Other enhancements in Amanda Enterprise 3.1 include:

• XML Reporting – In addition to providing visual backup reporting through the web-based Zmanda Management Console, Amanda Enterprise 3.1 adds support for exporting backup reports in XML schema. This opens up the reports to be integrated with various reporting and management tools.
• Microsoft Exchange 2010 support – The latest version of Microsoft Exchange has been added to the ever increasing umbrella of supported applications and platforms.

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 3.1 is immediately available through Zmanda’s online store at a starting price of $100 per client and $300 per application agent.