Upcoming Features in Acronis Backup & Recovery

Acronis International GmbH announced at VMworld 2012 that an upcoming feature in the next release of its Acronis Backup & Recovery will give IT organizations a new edge in data protection by allowing them to better leverage the cloud for backup and recovery.

The ability to remotely recover files from a cloud backup through a web-based interface offers the ‘anywhere-access’ benefits of a cloud-based backup strategy to enterprises. In addition, Acronis has reduced the time and effort required for using the cloud as a backup target by introducing disk to disk to cloud staging into the Unified Platform.

Acronis was demonstrating the cloud capabilities of the latest Backup & Recovery beta build in the VMworld 2012 exhibition hall.

The new version release is expected to be available by the end of Q3 2012.

Using the cloud as a backup target has previously been a manual process requiring a longer backup window. The staging features, being introduced, are providing automation of disk to disk to cloud backup, shortening the backup window for the live physical or VMs, and simplifying management of both destinations. IT administrators can now get the benefits of both local and cloud backup in an unified experience.

"As enterprise environments become more diverse and management options more complex, IT leaders are looking for cost-effective and easy-to-use solutions that enable them to manage greater portions of their infrastructures through a single pane of glass," commented Dmitri Joukovski, VP of product management for Acronis. "The volume and velocity of corporate content creation and mobile computing adoption are introducing new data challenges for IT organizations, and, as a result, they need uncomplicated strategies for data protection and storage optimization. Acronis is addressing these needs with solutions optimized for increasing enterprise cloud adoption."

To further reduce backup and DR management complexity, Acronis is adding support for Exchange, Active directory, SQL Server and SharePoint within the Backup & Recovery unified platform.

Backup & Recovery is a unified platform, from which an organization can centrally manage data protection and DR tasks for physical, virtual and cloud environments from a single management console. This can offer a reduction in management overhead and TCO, as the platform can manage Windows and Linux, and all major hypervisors including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, vSphere, Hyper-V, Citrix and Parallels, and integrates with Acronis Cloud storage in one installation.