InMage vContinuum Software for SMBs

InMage announced vContinuum, a software product designed for disk backup and disaster recovery of VMware ESX/vSphere virtual machine (VM) environments.

Based on continuous data protection technology, InMage vContinuum offers small and medium-sized businesses a single solution for backup and replication in virtual environments.

Highlights of vContinuum include:

• elimination of backup windows (data is backed up to disk real-time 24×7);
• application consistency (on Windows and Linux);
• long-term data retention on disk; file-level recovery within seconds; and
• optimized utilization of target storage capacity (target VMs are thin provisioned).

"We were initially looking to perform array-based replication and SRM, but compatibility was a big issue given our mixed storage environment," said John Etheridge, IT Director, Neimann Capital Management. "InMage vContinuum is platform-agnostic, performing exceptionally well in heterogeneous IT infrastructures with mixed platforms and storage. It was affordable and quick to implement, which made it even more attractive for our needs. We are currently using InMage vContinuum to replicate about 35 virtual machines and plan to expand our use in the future."

vContinuum’s wizard-based graphical user interface (GUI) offers a way to perform application aware protection and recovery at the VM level. It automates VM discovery, creation of protection policies, operational recovery scenarios and performs push-button failover and failback operations. Additionally, vContinuum’s host-offload architecture minimizes impact on production VMs. This model can scale easily to accommodate increased production VMs or storage capacities by pointing them to an existing vContinuum server or provisioning additional ones as required. vContinuum can also accommodate any underlying hardware, storage architecture (DAS, SAN, NAS) and storage technology (SCSI, iSCSI, FC). This provides businesses with flexibility in planning and provisioning a cost-effective secondary infrastructure for backup or replication.

"Small and medium-sized businesses are rapidly moving towards virtualizing their physical servers using VMware," said Jerome Wendt, analyst, DCIG. "As they do, they’re also looking to minimize the cost, complexity and overhead that backup of VMware servers introduces while increasing their ability to recover their newly virtualized applications. InMage’s new vContinuum software addresses these needs by providing zero impact backups with near real-time recoveries."