Quest vRanger Pro

Quest Software, Inc. announced vRanger Pro, with three key data protection capabilities added:

Integrated backup and replication, one console with flexible deployment and licensing
Native cataloging, with integrated restore to easily locate and restore individual files
Fibre restore: to speed recovery and eliminate LAN traffic by using Fibre Channel infrastructure

vRanger Pro also now includes all of the capabilities of Quest Software vReplicator, which gives organizations both comprehensive and flexible VMware protection in one easy-to-use console. With the vRanger and vReplicator product family, Quest allows customers to license and deploy the level of protection they need: low impact application and Web servers may need backup-only licensing while mission-critical servers receive a combination of backup and replication coverage.

"vRanger is a lifesaver," said Andrew Gahm, systems and security engineer for South Jersey Healthcare, a coalition of three hospitals and doctors’ offices, based in Bridgeton, N.J. "We protect exactly what we need to-no more, no less. This allows us to get more from our licensing spend, choosing exactly what we need from a mix of backup and replication options. And with backup and replication converged together within the new version of vRanger Pro, we save time and effort by being able to manage both functions through one console."

The new version of vRanger Pro features patent-pending cataloging capability that provides a native, catalog of every image in the backup repository so administrators can quickly and easily find and restore files, even among large amounts of virtual data. vRanger Pro also now features one-step catalog-based recovery, including search options and right-click recovery selection directly from the management console. This capability speeds the restore of individual files from virtual system images.

"Time is a critical factor for recovery, as well as backup, and reducing the time to recover without slowing down the backup process offers huge value to customers," said Barb Goldworm, president and chief analyst at FOCUS, LLC. "The vRanger Pro catalog is a great time saver during search-and-restore disaster recovery operations. Fibre restore can also improve recovery time by restoring directly over a Fibre Channel SAN. These kinds of enhancements, along with features like NFS support, and incorporating vReplicator, are ongoing examples of why vRanger customers continue to give Quest high marks."

The new Fibre restore feature offered by vRanger Pro also speeds recovery and lowers the impact of recovery on business users by sending restored data over a Storage Area Network (SAN) Fibre Channel, rather than the business network. Fibre restore, combined with the ability of the vRanger Pro Data Protection Platform to stream multiple protection jobs simultaneously, gives customers performance advantages, and ensures scalability for environments with multiple VMware servers.

Additional New vRanger Pro Features:

Linux File-Level Recovery: enables businesses to quickly restore a single file from a backup image in the repository through a one-step process. FLR works now on both Linux and Windows guests
NFS Storage Support: Enables Network Attached Storage devices to be used as targets for both backup and replication.
FTP Storage Support: Enables the use of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) repositories.

"The convergence of vReplicator capabilities within the vRanger Pro Data Protection Platform allows our customers to now manage all image-based backup, replication and recovery capabilities through a single console," said John Maxwell, vice president, data protection products, Quest Software. "This simplifies and accelerates the administration of image-based data protection, while providing all required capabilities for local protection and wide-area disaster recovery."

vRanger Pro 5.0 is available. Also available from Quest Software is vRanger Standard Edition (SE), which provides affordable backup and recovery for smaller organizations.