Veritas Enhances NetBackup

Among the enhancements are instant recovery from system failures using point-in-time copies of data created with integrated data snapshot technology, said Rob O'Brien, product marketing manager for NetBackup.

A system crash can be recovered from data stored on hard drives or tape, O'Brien said. "If the system crashes, the software can point to the latest snapshot time and do an instant recovery. It doesn't move all the data to the new system, just all the changes," he said.

Also new is application support specifically for Microsoft Exchange and Windows Server 2003, O'Brien said. NetBackup now has the intelligence to know when multiple copies of the same attachment are being backed up and can back up just one copy of the attachment with pointers for the multiple users that have that attachment, he said.

Veritas also integrated disaster-recovery support into NetBackup, O'Brien said. Disaster recovery is automated with the addition of two new reports: Non-Vaulted, which shows what data is not vaulted off-site, and Vaulted Cost, which makes sure expired tape cartridges come back to customers from off-site locations for timely reuse, he said.

Patrick Kopins, president of Ociter Enterprises, a Sparks, Md.-based solution provider, said he expects interest in the enhancements to be high. "We've been piecing those functions together using a variety of tools and are interested in an integrated product," he said.

Brenda Zawatski, vice president of product marketing at Veritas, called NetBackup a "channel-heavy" product. Including fulfillment of sales from the direct channel, solution providers account for up to 70 percent of NetBackup installations, she said.

The software is available now, with a price of about $5,000 for Linux and Windows platforms and $10,000 for Unix platforms.