CommVault Beefs Up Storage Management for Exchange, HSM

The Oceanport, N.J.-based software vendor plans to follow the news with other new storage management application releases next week, including an enhancement to its hierarchical data management application, an enhanced version of its high-speed data recovery application and a new application that improves the archiving of Microsoft Exchange data.

Kevin Reith, manager of strategic technology at Info Systems, a Wilmington, Del.-based solution provider, said he expects the new products to go a long way towards improving the management of his customers' data while making CommVault a formidable competitor. "I can't wait for CommVault to go public," he said.

Version 5.0 of the vendor's Galaxy backup and recovery application, which was unveiled this week, now works with a number new platforms, including Solaris 9, AIX 5.2, and NetWare 6.5, said Chris VanWagoner, director of product marketing for the company. Also new are client support for Macintosh OSX 10.2 and SGI's IRIX 6.5.15, he said.

To increase performance, the new Galaxy now offers tape multiplexing, which allows multiple clients to write to tape at the same time. The software also has an algorithm to figure out the most efficient way to restore specific files from tape, VanWagoner said. Also, while blocks of data can be backed up for best backup performance, individual files can be pulled from the blocks for restoring, he said. "Tape speeds are so fast today that a single host can't feed data fast enough," he said.

With Galaxy 5.0, customers can now specify how much bandwidth they wish to use for a backup. VanWagoner said this is an important capability especially for smaller customers or clients who have small backups, because they can decrease the amount of bandwidth allocated to the backup and use the excess for other purposes.

VanWagoner said customers can also buy an add-on, the Advanced Data Management Feature Pack. The pack includes VaultTracker, which sets up policies for keeping track of where data and tape media are stored off-site; Data Encryption, which prevents unauthorized access of data on a tape; Client Migration to simplify the transfer of data from one domain to another without the need to manually reassign client information and policies; and Archive Check, which verifies the data is available, he said.

Reith said the VaultTracker feature will be especially useful in setting storage policies to go with backups and restores, especially for customers who are keeping ever increasing amounts of data backed due to increased regulatory requirements. "We have customers with regulatory needs, retention needs of seven years or 30 years," he said. "So retention becomes more important than anything."

Reith said that adding data encryption capabilities is also timely as new regulations such as HIPAA take hold.

On Monday, CommVault is expected to introduce version 5.0 of its QiNetix DataMigrator software which allows fixed content files to be moved to less costly secondary storage to cut storage costs.

New to this version of the hierarchical storage management software application is support for the Solaris operating system and a doubling of the speed at which files can be recovered from secondary storage, VanWagoner said.

Next Tuesday, the company plans to introduce two more storage applications.

The first is version 5.0 of its QiNetix Quick Recovery software, which manages snapshots created by other applications to create point-in-time recovery volumes that can be used for quick recovery in the case disaster strikes a primary data center, said VanWagoner.

The software, which works with write once, read many (WORM) storage devices, now supports Oracle databases running on Solaris, as well as snapshots created by EMC's new SnapView 2.0 and Microsoft's new Virtual Shadow Service, he said.

Tuesday should also see the introduction of a new application, QiNetix DataArchiver. DataArchiver helps manage Microsoft Exchange by providing secure data stores for long-term retention and accessibility of e-mails, said VanWagoner.

The application also provides management of multiple copies of e-mails and retention schedules for individual e-mails, as well as the ability for authorized users to search and access archival data for compliance or discovery purposes, he said.

Management of Exchange data is increasingly difficult, Reith said. "With e-mails and Exchange, everybody has the pack-rat syndrome," he said. "No one likes to delete anything. As an Exchange database grows, it can take the server down."