Symantec releases faster next-gen NetBackup, Backup Exec software

Computerworld - Symantec on Monday unveiled new versions of its flagship NetBackup enterprise-class and Backup Exec midrange backup applications -- Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup v7.5.

The Backup Exec 2012 version includes a new user interface that can automatically configure backups based on the most common policies and settings used by Symatec customers.

The new interface allows for quick configuration with minimal effort, said Jason Fisher, director of product management at Symantec.

The updated Backup Exec offering is available through its traditional software distribution means, as well as in a pre-configured appliance and as a SaaS service.

Sean Regan, a senior director product marketing at Symantec, said about 1600 engineers worked on both products over the past two years in order revamp the products. The new features include the integration of incremental backups and deduplication to reduce I/O bandwidth and vastly reduce the time needed for backups, as well as to offer eDiscovery without having to first replicate data into a separate repository.

"Were taking what was formerly a four- or five-hour backup down to a one minute or two minute backup," Regan said. "This is not something you can compare to on the market today."

Robert Amatruda, an analyst at IDC, called the Symantec upgrades evolutionary, but said taken as a whole offer significant improvements that can increase the speed of backups and reduce management overhead.

"These are feature sets that may have existed in other products, but in v7.5 they're allowing you to kick off snapshots much more efficiently and also leverage that process to do things like eDiscovery. Not just more efficient recovery," Amatruda said.

A so-called V-Ray Edition of Backup Exec 2012 can back up data on virtual machines running either VMware and Microsoft's HyperV.

Additionally, backup administrators can add physical machines to V-Ray's backup capability policy, Fisher said, and manage both environments through a single console view.

Symantec said it also added bare metal backups and restore disaster recovery capabilities into Backup Exec 2012, which allow a failed system to be recovered to a physical server, or to a Hyper-V or VMware machine. The new disaster recovery features also allow entire virtual machines, single files, Active Directory objects, Exchange Emails, or SharePoint Documents from any single-pass physical, VMware or Hyper-V backup to be recovered.

"The current approach to backup is not working. The average customer has seven different backup solutions," Fisher said. "We're going to create a more unified state of backup by tying things together in Backup Exec."

The company also announced Backup Exec 2010 Small Business Edition, which allows firms with one to three servers to set up and execute backups in three steps.