Symantec Revives 'Veritas' For New Unified Storage

The second major change to NetBackup is deep integration and management of backup appliances, Ward said. That includes a VTL tape option for devising policies to automatically create an additional archive copy of data as it's backed up to a VTL, as well as an open storage disk option that lets data be backed up to disk in its original format instead of being streamed as if it's going to tape.

The open storage disk option will be done via partnerships with companies such as Network Appliance, Sun Microsystems, Sepaton, Copam and others, Ward said.

"This will let customers streamline the backup direct to disk without thinking of it as tape," he said. "This takes out a lot of overhead. We can also turn on and control certain features of the disk arrays related to creating replicas of the data."

The third addition to NetBackup is native disk backup and SAN sharing, including a new flexible disk option that Ward said enables customers to create storage pools from their current storage devices without having to buy specialized hardware. Symantec is also including SAN sharing so multiple users can access the data, as well as load balancing, he said.

Also included with the new addition is the PureDisk storage option, based on the PureDisk de-dupe software Symantec introduced a little over a year ago. PureDisk can be purchased as an option to NetBackup 6.5, and stand-alone versions of PureDisk can be bought to do data de-dupe in remote offices in conjunction with NetBackup 6.5 installed in a central office, Ward said.

NetBackup 6.5 also now includes the ability to back up virtual machine images created with VMware. That allows customers to put Symantec's PureDisk de-dupe clients on applications support by VMware so the virtual machine images or files created by those virtual machines can be de-duped, Ward said.

It also allows VMware consolidated backup so that virtual machine images and data can be backed up in one pass, with the complete images or individual files able to be recovered.

Symantec, too, has simplified its licensing model, and now offers only three client and agent options, much lower than the 30 previously offered, Ward said.

The NetBackup 6.5 Standard Client includes the NetBackup application, a PureDisk client, bare metal restore and a data encryption client at no charge, Ward said. However, there's a separate license fee to use PureDisk.

The NetBackup 6.5 Enterprise Client, for which there is an additional charge, includes the SAN Media Server, SAN client, snapshot client and VMware consolidated backup client.

Customers can also order the application and databases pack, which allows NetBackup 6.5 to work with all applications, except SAP, without the need to order specific interfaces.

In addition, customers can continue to buy the components separately. "But the new model saves money for most customers," Ward said.

Along with its per-server licensing model, Symantec is offering per-Tbyte licensing, which lets customers pay based on their storage capacity, he added.