BakBone Simplifying Virtualization Data Protection and Management

BakBone Software, Inc. is answering customer demand for broader, more integrated virtualization data management solutions with new offerings that uniquely address current and future virtual data protection challenges and lay the foundation for long term, scalable data growth across virtual environments. BakBone announced it is developing the essential building blocks for simplifying virtualization data protection and management including: support for multiple hypervisors and Windows and Linux guest virtual machines, advanced support of applications running within virtual machines, remote office data protection for virtual environments, and bare metal recovery enhancements optimized for virtual environments.

Leading the market with tightly integrated VMware support and script-free VCB backups, BakBone is one of the few backup vendors that has developed VMware data protection capabilities to fully comply with VMware’s program. In a separate announcement, BakBone announced formal certification by VMware for NetVault: Backup VMware Application Plugin Module (APM). Based on the technical innovation and development efforts of its VMware backup and recovery solution, BakBone was also recently awarded the VARBusiness Tech Innovator Company of the Year in the storage category.

As organizations increasingly turn to virtualization to reduce energy, hardware acquisition and floor space costs, they are enlisting BakBone to support the data protection needs of their virtual environments. “At First National Technology Solutions (FNTS), we are committed to giving our customers the best service possible with the highest level of security,” said Nick Britton, backup administrator, FNTS. “The functionality and power of NetVault: Backup are instrumental in helping us maintain the vast amount of data we protect every day. For companies that do a significant amount of virtualization, BakBone’s virtualization data protection capabilities greatly reduce data administration time and cost.”

Building a Foundation for Virtualization Data Management
As BakBone extends its virtualization support beyond core backup and recovery, the next phase of the company’s virtualization strategy includes taking advantage of BakBone’s unique ability to bring the following virtualization solutions onto additional platforms, such as Linux.

• Support for multiple hypervisors – As virtualization continues to gain in popularity and more companies are deploying virtual environments across multiple platforms, BakBone will be extending its hypervisor support to include Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XEN Server. Additionally, BakBone will be offering advanced protection purpose built for diverse environments, operating systems and applications within these virtual environments.
• Advanced application support within virtual environments – Traditional applications and Web 2.0 deployments are the main drivers of data growth in corporate environments, and as more applications are integrated into these virtual environments, customers require more comprehensive protection and management of these applications. Leveraging its expertise in application data protection, BakBone is uniquely able to address these concerns, specifically on the Microsoft platform, by giving customers various options to choose how they want to protect their virtual applications: Customers can perform full file-level protection of their applications, CDP-level protection of their environments for any-point-in-time recovery, or use Microsoft’s VSS to provide snapshot protection of any applications that support VSS within a virtual machine.
• Remote office backup for virtual environments – Organizations are deploying virtualization in many different ways, mainly to help consolidate the number of servers and environments an IT group might have to manage. More recently, companies have begun to leverage server virtualization as a means to improve disaster recovery and business continuity. With this in mind, BakBone will be expanding its disaster recovery options to include protection of virtual machines at remote sites. This is accomplished by utilizing BakBone’s replication technology to provide on-demand replication for remote VMs to a failover site. In the event of a failure of the remote system, the virtual machine at the failover site can be started and remote users redirected to minimize downtime.
• Bare metal recovery for virtual environments – BakBone is adding new functionality to NetVault: Backup and NetVault: Bare Metal Recovery to allow customers to recover physical systems to virtual environments, virtual environments to physical systems and virtual environments to virtual environment recovery, including movement between different hypervisors.

“As our customers have come to expect, BakBone is uniquely qualified to deliver a strong foundation of data protection products that provide a complete solution for customers to protect their virtual environments and know that they can properly recover them in the event of a disaster,” said Ken Horner, senior vice president of Corporate Development and Strategy, BakBone. “Especially at a time when customers are looking for solutions that offer the best price-to-functionality ratio, BakBone’s product line provides comprehensive yet simple and easy-to-use data protection capabilities that streamline operations and lower the total cost of ownership.”