Symantec with Dell to Deliver All-in-One Data Protection Solution DL2000

Symantec Corp. announced that it is expanding on its decade-long partnership with Dell to deliver the industry’s first factory-integrated solution that provides quick and efficient, disk-based backup and recovery. Dell PowerVault DL2000 backup-to-disk appliance is a complete hardware and software data protection solution that includes pre-installed Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 and custom disk management features developed exclusively for Dell, allowing for easier management of backup to disk environments from a single console.

"Symantec and Dell are two industry leaders that have joined forces to engineer, develop, test and certify a single offering that provides IT organizations with a simple, integrated solution for backup and recovery," said Pat Hanavan, vice president of product management, Symantec Data Protection Group. "Symantec is the market leader in data protection and Backup Exec is trusted by more than 1.5 million customers to protect and manage their data and systems."

PowerVault DL2000 powered by Symantec Backup Exec is a disk-to-disk solution that completes backup jobs 50 percent faster and restores data 83 percent faster than tape. The appliance incorporates Symantec’s patent-pending Granular Recovery Technology to allow users to perform a single-pass, application or system-level backup of Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX environments while still maintaining the ability to recover individual objects, including files and folders. This technology is unique to the market and eliminates the additional time and storage requirements of a second file-level backup, enabling efficient data protection and faster restores.

As IT organizations continue to deploy virtualization into their production environments, they are faced with new challenges and an additional layer of complexity with managing data protection on virtual machines. Backup Exec 12.5, which is pre-installed on PowerVault DL2000, adds new capabilities to help users reduce their complexity by enabling them to back up an unlimited number of guest machines within a Hyper-V or VMware ESX host environment from a single agent. Backup Exec also uses several VMware technologies including VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) to reduce the amount of data end users need to backup.

Centralized Management Reduces Time and Complexity
Through the automated management console, the PowerVault DL2000 powered by Symantec Backup Exec eliminates the need for manual installation and configuration, and it can complete set-up and initial deployment in less than 20 minutes. This all-in-one appliance provides centralized management of backup and restore functionality, configuration utilities, and management in a single location, saving IT administrators’ valuable time managing data protection.

In addition, IT administrators can utilize the PowerVault DL2000’s integrated management console to set backup policies and conduct system monitoring and maintenance from a central location. This allows organizations to easily manage backups for remote offices without having an IT expert on site. Users can also seamlessly transfer their backups on disk to tape from the same management console for offsite disaster recovery with the Dell PowerVault tape drives and libraries.

"Customers are trying to deal with unprecedented data growth," said Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager, Dell storage. "At Dell, we deliver simple, capable and affordable storage solutions. Symantec is well known for Backup Exec, its advanced, industry-leading data protection software. The DL2000 takes simplicity to another level by combining both of these into one, integrated package to help automate backup and recovery."

Symantec Next Generation Technologies Provide Comprehensive Data Protection
PowerVault DL2000 users can also configure Backup Exec to continuously protect Microsoft Windows Servers, Exchange, SQL, and desktop and laptop systems by backing up changes to disk in real time. Backup Exec’s continuous protection capabilities improve the overall level of data protection and reduce administrative complexity by eliminating the need for full, incremental or differential backups. The system can also send alerts when available disk space reaches certain thresholds preset by administrators for the backup storage, helping prevent job failures due to low disk space.

"Organizations of all sizes have become increasingly reliant on electronically stored information to operate their businesses. Symantec provides powerful data protection tools to help these organizations eliminate the complexity of managing multiple ‘point’ solutions without compromising the capabilities that address customers’ data protection challenges," said Tony Palmer, Enterprise Strategy Group lab engineer. "The Dell PowerVault DL2000 Powered by Symantec Backup Exec is a simplified, cost-effective appliance that is easy to set up and manage, yet rich with powerful features. In particular, ESG Lab was impressed with the tight integration and granular recovery for Microsoft applications offered by the appliance as well as the agentless VMWare ESX integration."

PowerVault DL2000 powered by Backup Exec is expected to be available globally later this month.