Altaro Software Brings Hyper-V Backup to SMBs

Based in Malta, Europe, Altaro Software, developer of backup solutions for SOHOs and SMBs, and a Microsoft BizSpark Partner, announced the availability of its Hyper-V Backup for SMBs.

The product has been developed to make Hyper-V VMs backup simple and affordable yet effective, allowing organisations to protect their VMs with a few, quick easy steps. The freeware version, available to backup up to two VMs, is the industry’s first instance of free backup software for Hyper-V.

Built upon Altaro’s philosophy of combining performance with usability, Hyper-V Backup was developed from the ground up with two main objectives in mind: to allow SMBs to suitably protect their VMs without investing in costly solutions and/or expensive specialized IT staff, and to enable them to minimize VMs backup time. The software is Hyper-V aware, takes just five minutes to install and configure and does not require knowledge of the inner workings of Hyper-V. This is for small and medium-sized businesses that often do not have large IT support staff.

In addition, by taking advantage of Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) technology, Altaro’s offering allows hot backups, ensuring that the virtual machines can keep running smoothly even during the actual backup process. In addition to this, Hyper-V backup also supports CSV clusters, often deployed by SMBs to create high-availability environments.

Femi Adegoke, IT Director at the West Gastroenterology Medical Group, said: "An easy to use solution that does exactly what it says on the tin," while David Wilson, IT Manager at the Belgrave Heights School commented: "I love how simple everything is, it just works first time every time."

"The development of Hyper-V Backup came about from our own necessity; we found all other Hyper-V backup solutions falling into two, insufficient, extreme categories. They were either overly simplistic yet required the administrator to understand all the ins and outs of Hyper-V, or they were bulky and expensive and, although they did the job, they were very complex to configure," said David Vella, CEO at Altaro. "We therefore realized that there was a huge gap in the market for a user-friendly, well-priced Hyper-V backup solution, and that’s what we created."

Altaro Hyper-V is available in three editions:

• standard edition ($345/ €245/ £245*): protects up to five VMs
• unlimited edition ($445/ €345/ £345*): protects an unlimited number of VMs and supports clusters
• freeware edition: protects up to two VMs

*pricing is per host.