EMC simplifies continuous data protection, disaster recovery

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, has announced groundbreaking advances in its heterogeneous data protection software family for local and remote replication, EMC RecoverPoint.

EMC RecoverPoint provides customers with the ability to quickly and consistently recover data with minimal business disruption in the event of a disaster, corruption or other outage.

The solution attained commercial success in 2007, achieving triple-digit revenue growth, year-over-year, with close to 400 customers leveraging the solution.

EMC RecoverPoint contains key new features for customers in version 3.0 that improve data protection investments, installations and management.

Now, EMC RecoverPoint can protect and replicate the same data in local and remote-site combinations for operational and disaster recovery to maximise protection and minimise technology investments.

Also, EMC has added unique RecoverPoint functionality and integration with EMC CLARiiON CX3 networked storage systems that simplify RecoverPoint deployments, and broaden support for host operating systems and VMware environments.

EMC RecoverPoint's expanded integration with CLARiiON CX3 arrays now provides additional support for a number of servers including Windows, Linux, Solaris and VMware ESX environments. The RecoverPoint family is fully tested and qualified for replicating VMware File System data on CLARiiON CX3 arrays.

With this extended support, customers can now deploy RecoverPoint in three different scenarios, including:

* Heterogeneous storage environments where customers leverage intelligent fabrics via the EMC Connectrix family of products.
* EMC CLARiiON CX3 environments where customers leverage the storage processor to perform array-based splitting.
* Environments where customers utilise the host-based driver to perform the write-splitting function.

EMC RecoverPoint's new concurrent local and remote (CLR) data protection technology eliminates the need for separate solutions as it provides CDP and CRR of the same data. The solution now provides more flexibility to replicate and protect data in many local and remote-site combinations with less storage footprint - whether for production applications or for test and development.

In addition, EMC improves ease of use by supporting CLR in the software's graphical user interface (GUI), offering customers a new tree-view layout with single views of each consistency group and including workflow wizards for configuration, operation and failover.

Insurance.com, the leading online auto insurance agency in the United States, is a beta-tester of EMC RecoverPoint, version 3.0. Brad Springer, Database Manager of Insurance.com, said: "As our business grows, it's critical for us to maintain the highest level of operational readiness in the event of planned or unplanned downtime. Our early work testing the new version of EMC RecoverPoint has been very positive. We believe by leveraging the new concurrent local and remote replication technology, we'll be able to reduce the overall footprint of our disaster recovery operations, enabling our organisation to spend less and efficiently protect more. We're very excited by the potential of the updated solution."

EMC RecoverPoint's new integration with CLARiiON CX3 storage arrays simplifies deployment, offering a disaster recovery solution for new and existing CLARiiON CX3 networked storage environments by performing the write-splitting function in the storage array.

This new capability is supported across the entire family of RecoverPoint products including the entry-level version, EMC RecoverPoint/SE, which was introduced in 2007.

For CLARiiON CX3 customers, RecoverPoint deployments are simplified by eliminating the need to load host drivers, lowering installation and deployment costs, enabling rapid deployment of CDP and remote replication.

Finally, the CLARiiON CX3 array-based splitting function also enables CDP and CRR protection for iSCSI and Fibre Channel attached data volumes with RecoverPoint, further extending flexibility and management.

Hosted Solutions - a managed service provider (MSP) and current RecoverPoint and CLARiiON CX3 customer - is beta testing the integrated solution. Tom Cornwall, Storage Team Lead for Hosted Solutions, said: "With five enterprise-class data centres in three key markets in the east coast, it's imperative that our operations maintain 100% uptime while keeping operational costs at a minimum for our Windows, Solaris, Linux and VMware environments. Hosted Solutions continues to achieve tremendous success in selling high availability storage and disaster recovery solutions. The new CLARiiON-based splitting with EMC RecoverPoint enables us to expand our offering and more cost-effectively manage these operating environments supporting a broader range of operating systems and iSCSI hosts. As a result, we can offer our Hi-Touch disaster recovery solutions to a much wider market, broadening our opportunity by at least 50%."

"EMC is uniquely positioned in the market today with EMC RecoverPoint, which provides dual CDP and CRR for the same data through a single, enterprise-class appliance," said Mike Fisch, analyst with The Clipper Group in Wellesley, MA. "It gives customers significant value and flexibility in data protection and disaster recovery deployments. With the new integration of RecoverPoint and EMC CLARiiON arrays, enterprises can streamline the replication processes and reduce costs and complexities related to some intelligent-fabric deployments. This is a good example of how EMC is successfully integrating technologies from its acquisitions into its existing product portfolio."

Gerhard van der Merwe, EMC Country Manager, says: "The latest version of EMC RecoverPoint addresses many of the challenges common to data centres that use multiple, disparate products to implement local protection and remote disaster recovery solutions. The advances we've made to RecoverPoint significantly set us apart from vendors that only offer point products. In addition, our ability to complement the industry's most widely deployed storage platforms - like the EMC CLARiiON CX3 series - reinforces our ability to execute and provide customers with the most complete disaster and operational recovery solutions on the market."

EMC plans to make EMC RecoverPoint version 3.0 available in March from EMC and its authorised resellers. For more information on EMC RecoverPoint, please visit www.emc.com/products/family/recoverpoint-family.htm.