Simplifying Backup And Recovery

There's a dizzying array of decisions to make when choosing the backup and recovery tools needed for a company's business-continuity process. UniTrends Software Corp. believes it has made the process less complicated and less expensive with the introduction of its Data Protection Unit, which is part of its suite of software that already includes cross-platform data protection. The new data-protection appliance is available now, with a starting price of about $6,000.

There are two variations of the Data Protection Unit. The Crash Recovery Appliance is a 1U rack-mounted device that lets administrators restore data from servers that have crashed. The Total Protection Appliance lets administrators backup, restore, and recover data from servers and clients on the network. The protection units also include BareMetal Plus software, which enables system administrators to restore PCs or notebooks within 10 minutes after they crash, as long as they're all connected to the network.

The new appliances will run across NetWare, Windows, and multiple versions of Unix, and the software can be integrated with backup and recovery software suites from several vendors, including Computer Associates and Veritas Software Corp.

The UniTrends Data Protection Unit is a "one-of-a-kind" device for backup and recovery, says Mike Karp, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates. "Customers can take what's usually very complicated technology, plug the DPU into the network, and just walk away," he says. "It pays you back the first time you have to use it" and gives users peace of mind, he adds.

An early Data Protection Unit customer plans to purchase more devices to establish a business-continuity infrastructure between California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Ottawa, Canada. James Doyle, IT manager at industrial machine manufacturer Toshiba Machine Co. of America, says a single DPU can move at the rate of 54 Gbytes an hour, while the fastest tape library he could find moved about 37 Gbytes of data in an hour. Doyle says he used to back up data nightly, but that precautionary step is no longer necessary because the DPU lets him take snapshots of data all day long. "I see the potential to change the jobs of administrators responsible for backups," Doyle says. "The process takes less time, and less of my life."