Storage Toolkit

Symantec goes virtual with backup

Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 15 Sep 2008 16:57 BST

Symantec announced on Monday the upgrade of its two core Backup Exec products, which now support virtualisation — but on systems from only two suppliers.

Backup Exec 12.5 is the company's core product for backing up files so they can be recovered when needed — after a system failure, for example. Backup Exec System Recovery 8.5 is the latest version of Symantec's core product for recovering failed systems.

The key difference in these latest versions, according to Symantec, is that they now offer backup and recovery features for virtualised software. The key issue with the newly launched products is likely to be that they only support virtualised systems running with EMC's VMware or Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor.

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Symantec's vice president for product management, Pat Hanavan, said that the company was looking at supporting Citrix's virtualisation platform XenServer. "Citrix is already supported in Backup Exec," he pointed out.

Hanavan said that Backup Exec offers protection for "the complete portfolio" of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 products, including Windows Server 2008 Backup, Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008, as well as Hyper-V. Other features in the software are flexibility in incorporating NAS devices, the addition of a remote media agent when using Linux, and the ability to move Linux and Oracle data directly to attached storage devices.

Prices for Backup Exec products start at £311 for single server support on a small-business system and go up to £512 for a single DB2, Domino, Oracle or Microsoft SQL or Exchange Server. At the top end, backup for multiple servers can cost £3,137.