Backups Without Using XenServer Snapshots

Quorum Software, Inc., provider of deduplicating archival solutions for virtualized environments, announced Q-Hybrid, a way to perform backups without using XenServer snapshots.

It leverages the powerful XenServer hypervisor-based backup capabilities in the QuorumSoft Alike solution with an agent-like approach, which conducts application-consistent backups within Windows VMs.

In addition to addressing longstanding limitations of XenServer snapshots, Q-Hybrid bypasses XenServer hypervisor-based snapshots altogether, reducing their storage overhead costs.

"We developed Q-Hybrid to solve the persistent problems confronting companies that use Citrix XenServer snapshot-based backups," said Phil Baskette, co-founder and CEO, Quorum Software. "Q-Hybrid solves two problems simultaneously. We reduce storage costs and we provide full application-consistent protection for all Windows operating systems."

Q-Hybrid combines the flexibility of and manageability of the hypervisor with the strengths of an agent-based backup. The new feature also protects volumes within VMs that are not visible to the hypervisor itself, including iSCSI-based guest drives.

The Q-Hybrid backup capability complements QuorumSoft’s existing Enhanced backup technology, a performance and scalable agentless approach. Together, these approaches provide flexibility, power, and coverage for backing up XenServer environments.

Q-Hybrid is being launched as a key capability in a new version of the Alike Backup and DR solution.

The new version, Alike v2.5, also delivers
other improved capabilities, including:

Backup performance reporting capabilities that assist with capacity planning and help you visualize your resource usage over time.
A more powerful deduplication architecture that boosts performance in high latency and other network environments.
New ease of use features, including simplified features for performing single, ad-hoc backups, and user interface features.

Alike v2.5 is available since September 24.