BakBone Software has announced a refresh of its host-based
replication software today, featuring improved support for Windows
and remote/branch office environments.
NetVault Replicator version 5.0's updates include a new and
separate Windows-based GUI, which one user, Matthew Wenzler,
product manager for Secure-24, a managed services provider in
Southfield, Mich., said will make a big difference in his
environment.
Secure-24, which manages close to 1 petabyte (PB) of storage, as
well as servers, security and disaster recovery for its customers,
has been using BakBone's replication product for Linux environments
but still has Double-Take for Windows. With 5.0, Wenzler said, his
"level 1" support personnel -- those who work on end-user helpdesk
tickets -- will have an interface they can work with.
"Helpdesk support guys are typically Windows guys, too," Wenzler
said. "They're not used to Linux or the Linux interface."
With the addition of the Windows interface, Wenzler said his
company was moving from the two-vendor replication system to a
standardization on BakBone for all its replication services.
BakBone's major claim to fame under the covers is already the
ability to support multiple operating systems without the need for
multiple software agents.
"It will be great to use one source for replication across both
Windows and Linux," Wenzler said.
Another timesaver included in the new release, according to
Wenzler, is a feature that will allow users to configure one
replication policy across multiple remote sites, which before was a
"very manual process," according to Jason Fisher, senior product
marketing manager for BakBone.
"Our biggest client has 150 terabytes (TB), and all our clients
have complex environments that are often subject to multiple
government and industry compliance regulations," Wenzler said. "We
want as much automation as possible."
Because of the often complex requirements found in his
customers' environments, Wenzler said the company will also be
using the capacity planning feature new to 5.0, which will allow
users to set up replication "situations," simulate the capture of
data and assess the amount of data it would send over the wire
within Replicator.
"We come to our customers as consultants," Wenzler said. "We
need to figure out what's acceptable for them, application by
application, in terms of recovery objectives and the amount of
resources committed, including the size of the storage and
computing horsepower behind them." There are separate products that
would do this for him, Wenzler acknowledged, but including it
within BakBone was another point for consolidation.
"We like to standardize on one vendor whenever possible,"
Wenzler said.
Finally, version 5.0 will incorporate a faster journaling
engine, intellectual property acquired with Constant Data Inc.
(CDI) last year. Previously, the product had been based on an open
source engine called SleepyCat, which Fisher said sometimes
presented a bottleneck with large files.
BakBone: Moving up in the world, but still with a ways to
go
When last
BakBone released a software update,
analysts' take was that it was a company squarely parked in the
midrange, but that picture may be changing. BakBone's NetVault
Backup software was recently the surprise winner of
Storage magazine and Diogenes Labs' backup software
Quality Awards, which included the enterprise. Secure-24 is
another example of a large company looking at moving to BakBone
from more established players.
According to Wenzler, the company is using EMC Corp. and Dell
Inc. storage, and still uses EMC's Legato software for backups. He
said that since switching from EMC's RepliStor to BakBone's
Replicator earlier this year because of issues replicating from
clustered servers, the company is testing NetVault Backup in an
effort to centralize all its software products on one vendor.
"We're committed to EMC and Dell for storage infrastructure,"
Wenzler said. "But we are toying with going to BakBone for backup
as well."
According to experts, the updates and BakBone's ambitious
Integrated Data Protection (IDP) framework are appealing more and
more to the high end of the market, but BakBone still has a few
features missing from its data protection product line.
"BakBone's heterogeneous support is really appealing to the
enterprise, and these new features show they have a good
replication and data capture engine," said Steve Norall, senior
analyst with the Taneja Group. "However, higher end data protection
products, like CA Inc.'s XOsoft and Kashya (now EMC's)
RecoverPoint, also offer features like localized continuous data
protection."
Replicator's functions have also not yet been made a part of
BakBone's framework, which is centralized in its NetVault Report
Manager software. The new Replicator will be integrated into the
next release of NetVault Report Manager, according to Fisher, who
said there was not yet a timeframe for that release. Replicator
version 5.0 is available immediately, priced at $1,499 per
server.