Johannesburg, 15 Oct 2012
Acronis, a leading provider of disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, has announced that it has significantly reduced the time required to recover virtual machines in VMware virtual environments with the introduction of vmFlashBack, a new feature included in the latest release of Acronis vmProtect. In addition, Acronis has made a secure cloud backup strategy more achievable with the inclusion of multi-destination staging.
The new vmFlashBack feature reduces downtime by offering a fast, simple restore option that accelerates recovery times. This new technology copies only those data blocks that have changed, allowing for recovery times of up to 100 times faster than previously achievable.
According to research conducted at VMworld San Francisco 2012, almost 70% of VMware ESXi users have already, or are planning to back up their machines to the cloud*. To address this demand, Acronis has added disk-to-disk-to-cloud staging in this latest release of Acronis vmProtect. Administrators can now better protect data and machines by saving backup files to multiple locations - including off-premise private clouds through Acronis Online cloud.
This automated process in Acronis vmProtect allows for different schedules at different destinations, without user intervention, to more efficiently meet policy compliance and optimise the use of available bandwidth. Combined with the ability to remotely recover files from a cloud backup location through a Web-based interface, Acronis vmProtect can offer the "anywhere-access" benefit of a cloud-based backup strategy to enterprises of all sizes.
"Virtual environments are at risk," commented Dmitri Joukovski, vice-president of product management at Acronis. "As the use of virtual environments to support business-critical applications, and cloud-based models for delivery and collaboration expands, more businesses are playing roulette with their critical data. Acronis can support the accelerated pace of change within organisations, with the most comprehensive host and server protection for VMware environments."
International Paris-based fashion house Gerald Darel recently chose Acronis vmProtect as a comprehensive virtual backup and recovery solution after a rigorous testing process. Samuel Chemouni, technical director at Gerard Darel, explained: "During the testing of Acronis vmProtect, we found that the backup process only took a few clicks and was completed in less than five minutes. This was without any prior training of the team or any contact with Acronis for support. Compared to its competitors, Acronis vmProtect proved to be the easiest to use, the fastest for recovery and the most efficient solution."
At around R5 500 per CPU, and with unlimited seamless migration of workloads between virtual and physical environments, Acronis vmProtect 8 represents a comprehensive host and machine backup, data migration and disaster recovery solution for the expanding number of businesses moving to a VMware vSphere environment. Customers who have purchased Acronis vmProtect 7 with maintenance are entitled to a free upgrade to Acronis vmProtect 8.
Acronis solutions are distributed in South Africa and throughout Africa by Synapsys Systems. "This new release of Acronis vmProtect delivers the best performance and reliability at a very attractive price," says Arthur Williamson, managing director of Synapsys. "Acronis vmProtect 8 is up to 10 to 100 times faster because it digs into NTFS to back up only what is useful, stores data in an always-incremental format, and recovers only blocks that changed.
"It is very simple and lightweight, deployed as a virtual appliance in minutes and managed directly from vCenter UI or from a Web-based interface, and provides a crystal clear disaster recovery plan for unplanned events," adds Williamson.
"Acronis vmProtect 8 offers backup and recovery for VMs and entire ESXi hosts with all binaries and configuration, support for Microsoft Exchange (including recovery of individual mails), AD, SQL and SharePoint, and stores backups locally or in a cloud - directly or by automatically staging local backups," Wiliamson says.
* Survey of attendees at VMworld San Francisco 2012, conducted from 26 to 28 August 2012 by Acronis.