Breaking the Backup Window: A Plan for the Future

Symantec outlines its vision for backup, releases V-Ray for virtual machine protection and announces the upcoming release of new cloud and appliance backup solutions

Symantec Vision 2011 –Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) has outlined a plan to modernise the way organisations of all sizes backup, recover and discover their data. Information explosion and the rise of virtualisation have created unique pressures on the data centre, while companies have the same or less time to backup dramatically larger systems and new, higher density virtual environments. Meeting backup windows and successfully protecting data on a daily basis continue to be major pain points, putting recovery and business continuity at risk. While recent technologies have provided some relief to these problems, they have also created new challenges that impact both the recovery and discovery of information.

“In our new world of virtualised IT, big data and electronic discovery, traditional approaches to data protection no longer work. However, organisations still want the ability to recover data with greater ease and lower costs,” said Deepak Mohan, senior vice president of the Information Management Group, Symantec. “Symantec recognises these challenges and is defining a new vision to help organisations smash backup and recovery windows, drive down costs and reduce complexity.”

“Server virtualised platforms are becoming the norm, and organisations are putting mission critical workloads into them and are deploying hundreds and even thousands of virtual machines,” said Dave Russell, Vice President of Storage Technologies and Strategies at Gartner. “The industry is looking for the same level of visibility into and control of virtual environments as it has in physical estates, while reducing complexity.”

Symantec’s Vision for the Future of Backup:

• The End of the Dark Ages for Virtual Machine Protection: Available today, Symantec V-Ray technology embedded directly into core Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec gives IT administrators X-Ray vision into their virtual environments. V-Ray provides transparency of backup images across physical and virtual environments with a single solution, ensuring all systems and applications are efficiently protected making it easier for customers to confidently expand their virtualised infrastructure. Symantec V-Ray puts an end to labour-intensive file and application recovery efforts, and drives down escalating backup storage costs with content-aware deduplication across both physical and virtual systems.

• The End of Integration Complexity: Announced today, Symantec will extend its leading backup solutions, Backup Exec, to the cloud with Backup Exec.cloud, and a preconfigured backup appliance that will remove the need for hardware and software integration for small business end users. Backup Exec.cloud and the backup appliances are scheduled to be available starting from later this year as part of a phased launch and continue to deliver on Symantec’s strategy to redefine backup deployment options with simplicity as the end result. Earlier this year, Symantec announced new NetBackup appliances for its enterprise customers.

• The End of Snapshots in the Dark: While snapshots provide a quick fix for backing up a large amount of data, recovering individual files or applications from a snapshot can be as difficult as searching for a needle in a haystack in the dark as administrators have to recover the entire image. Symantec plans to solve this problem by building a recovery model around snapshots that allows administrators to more easily recover individual files or folders, combining the best of snapshots with the best of centralised backup and recovery.

• The End of the Backup Window: If an IT administrator or IT service provider cannot back up data within 24 hours, that organisation can lose business critical information. Newer technologies such as deduplication reduce the amount of data moved to address some backup challenges, but large amounts of data still require a substantial amount of time. Symantec plans to destroy the backup window and transform large-scale recovery with the introduction of a new technology that is anticipated to perform 100 times faster than backups today.

• The End of Roll the Dice Recovery: Symantec also plans to bring to market self-service recovery and discovery technology for large organisations with NetBackup. For organisations using backup as their primary tool to recover data, new search capabilities will provide better control and help them identify data that needs to be held for eDiscovery purposes. Symantec Enterprise Vault will supplement those search capabilities as a complete archiving and eDiscovery solution for the legal and IT user.

Resources
• Vision 2011 Press Centre
• Enterprise Vault
• Enterprise Vault 10 Beta
• Enterprise Vault 10 Box Shot
• Backup Exec Product Family
• NetBackup
• SlideShare Presentation: Information Management Group Vision 2011 News
• Bio: Deepak Mohan
• Bio: Brian Dye
• Bio: Sean Regan
• Bio: Amit Walia

About Storage from Symantec
Symantec helps organisations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, email archiving, backup and recovery solutions.

About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

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