InMage expands support for XenServer, Hyper-V in DR-Scout

By Todd Erickson, News and Features Writer 13 Oct 2008 | SearchDisasterRecovery.com

News and trends in the storage industry Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

InMage also changed its licensing model and added reporting, data migration and role-access monitoring to DR-Scout.

More on DR CA overhauls ARCServe data protection server   IBM snaps up FilesX, adds CDP to Tivoli Storage Manager Creating a disaster recovery plan is just the first step   Data Domain dedupe powers DR services

DR-Scout uses machine-level agents, an onsite host server and a remote target server to provide local backup, CDP and application-level consistency, and remote-site replication for DR. DR-Scout is platform-independent, offers heterogeneous support for SAN, NAS and iSCSI systems, and can do point-in-time or event-based restoration.

The 4.2 release adds support for XenServer and Hyper-V to its existing support of VMWare. DR-Scout can also now export metadata, clone the virtual environment at the remote site and automatically re-create it when necessary.

DR-Scout is integrated into XenServer's and Hyper-V's hypervisor virtual machine (VM) manager, so that administrators can choose to protect either individual applications (through Microsoft's Volume Copy Shadow Service and other APIs), individual disks, individual virtual machines, groups of virtual machines or the entire physical server. While VMware doesn't allow integration of DR-Scout with its ESXi hypervisor manager, DR-Scout's VMware protection is similar to its XenServer and Hyper-V support.

Matt Reynolds, CIO of the San Francisco-based law firm Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, is a DR-Scout 4.0 user who welcomes the XenServer support of XenServer. "We're a big Citrix shop," he said. "In fact, Citrix is very much a part of our DR solution. We mirror the office desktop with XenApp Server, so when lawyers in remote locations log in and authenticate, they essentially see the same office desktop. There's no learning curve for remote access, they can be anywhere in the world."

According to Reynolds, DR-Scout's ability to perform rapid recovery helped when his company decided to move to a CDP and DR solution. "One of the features of DR-Scout which was incredibly attractive was its bidirectional replication," he said. DR-Scout allows quicker disaster recovery and requires less administrator intervention. "Now I'm limited just by the amount of bandwidth."

Beyond virtualization, InMage also extended DR-Scout's CDP and DR support to all editions of Microsoft Server 2008 (including 32- and 64-bit), Exchange Server 2007, SQL Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 on Itanium. DR-Scout also now offers file-level protection for Itanium versions of HP-UX 11iv3 and IBM AIX 6.1.

According to Rajeev Atluri, CTO for InMage, DR-Scout provides push-button failover support for most versions of Exchange, SQL Server, Blackberry Server and SAP, as well as new versions of Oracle, Oracle for Linux and MySQL.

InMage has also increased support of Microsoft SharePoint in DR-Scout 4.2. DR-Scout now treats the entire SharePoint farm as a single unit, so it can do push-button full SharePoint Server-level failover. Reynolds says that his law firm plans to add DR-Scout's suppot of SharePoint by year-end.

Other upgrades include improved reporting features, role-based access control, granular account monitoring, and a new capacity-based licensing model. "We added this [capacity licensing] because there are quite a few storage vendors that OEM our software, and it's easier for them to sell it as a capacity-based licensing mechanism," Atluri says. While a few OEMs are migrating to the capacity-based licensing model, Atluri says InMage will continue its host-based pricing model for most deals.

According to Lauren Whitehouse, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, the new features in DR-Scout 4.2 will help InMage "take advantage of the shifts in virtualization and platforms that are becoming catalyst events for people to take another look at their data protection. For a [dot] release, they actually have a lot of new features in the product." She added that InMage "excel[s] in being able to rapidly recover an environment and application data. They're not host-based, and they're not tied to a specific piece of hardware."

InMage recently announced expansion into Europe and the Asia Pacific Region, and recently closed a $15 million Series C round of funding led by Intel Ventures.

The company sells its software primarily through OEMs that integrate DR-Scout or re-brand the product into their own storage solutions. The company's OEM customers include Marathon Technologies (everRun), Quest Software (Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange), and iStor Networks Inc. (iS325 storage system). Its competitors include EMC's RecoverPoint, Double-Take Software and CA's ARCserve and XOsoft solutions.

InMage's host-based pricing model includes server and agent licenses. For virtual environments, InMage offers a server license that includes four agent licenses. Atluri says typical installation prices range from $10,000 to $100,000, depending on individual customer configuration.

Tags: Disaster Recovery Storage,  Disaster Recovery Planning/Management,  VIEW ALL TAGS

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

RELATED CONTENT Disaster Recovery Storage Disaster recovery strategies for virtual machines Users go for Simply Continuous cloud disaster recovery service with service-level agreements and data deduplication VMware VMotion between data centers could change disaster recovery A tutorial on self-healing data storage systems Disaster recovery news briefs: SunGard survey says virtualization has a role in disaster recovery Using data classification tools to aid in disaster recovery planning Array-based data replication: The pros and cons Disk array-based data replication: The pros and cons Data replication options for disaster recovery Data replication tools for disaster recovery Disaster Recovery Planning/Management Factoring business continuity/disaster recovery into data center relocation plans: A tutorial Disaster recovery strategies for virtual machines Disaster recovery strategies: Eight tips for better DR planning Outsourcing disaster recovery services vs. in-house disaster recovery Disaster recovery news briefs: SunGard survey says virtualization has a role in disaster recovery New Orleans law firm prepares for hurricane season with detailed disaster recovery plan Remote data center management for disaster recovery purposes Testing IT disaster recovery plans Best practices to help avoid and recover from security disasters Recovery time objective and recovery point objective in disaster recovery planning

RELATED RESOURCES 2020software.com, trial software downloads for accounting software, ERP software, CRM software and business software systems Search Bitpipe.com for the latest white papers and business webcasts Whatis.com, the online computer dictionary