Veritas Software announces first Vertex Initiative innovation: Server-free backup that reduces overhead, maintains availability

VERITAS Software, The Data Availability Company, today revealed the first crucial component of the VERITAS VERTEX Initiative, VERITAS NetBackup 4.0V, including the VERITAS NetBackup ServerFree Agent.

Designed for storage area networks (SANs), this new off-host backup solution which will be available in January 2001, reliably reduces the overhead of backup and recovery on production servers while maintaining the data availability increasingly critical to businesses today. "An integral part of the VERITAS NetBackup 4.0V data protection solution, the VERITAS NetBackup ServerFree Agent allows backup data to move from disk directly to tape in a SAN environment, without the involvement of the application or database server," says Nick van Noordwyk, regional director, Middle East and Africa at VERITAS Software.

"Organisations implementing storage area networks need software solutions, such as VERITAS NetBackup ServerFree Agent, to fully realise the resource-sharing and performance benefits of SANs and to update traditional backup techniques that simply can`t keep up," says Steve Widen, director of storage software research, International Data Corporation.

Snapshot to data movement process includes crucial data mapping step for reliability VERITAS NetBackup ServerFree Agent combines multiple snapshot backup methods with data movement technology to provide users with increased flexibility and reliability in protecting enterprise environments. Snapshot or "frozen image" technology, the process of taking a "point-in-time" copy of data for backup, is enabled from either the VERITAS NetBackup FlashBackup driver or from VERITAS Software`s core volume management and file system products, VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS File System.

After a data snapshot has been taken, the VERITAS Server Free Agent maps the data (linking logical names to physical data blocks) so that its physical location is known, a critical step in producing a reliable backup. "When the snapshot and mapping operations are completed, the data is ready to be moved from disk directly to tape via the SCSI Extended Copy Command, a block-oriented command that resides either in SAN hardware devices or in a VERITAS NetBackup server," says van Noordwyk.

For VERITAS VERTEX Initiative products, VERITAS Software intends to offer widespread support for all major operating systems, SAN devices, and both hardware and software snapshot technologies. Several manufacturers are announcing their support for the VERITAS VERTEX Initiative and VERITAS NetBackup Server Free Agent this week at VERITAS VISION2000, the Company`s fourth annual user`s conference in Las Vegas.