Syncsort's Backup Express provides for the Enterprise a client/server backup technology that can be leveraged for both single file restores or disaster recovery of entire machines (I.E., O/S, settings, etc.).

At the core of the product's capabilities is the vendor's AdvancedClient technology, which leverages block-level (image-based) backups that operate directly at the disk level (bypassing the file system). These backups are incremental in nature; the client platform examines the data blocks on the disks and transfers to storage only those that have changed since the last snapshot. De-deplication is applied at the client side of the data stream, not the storage side. The vendor states that the ability to interrogate the blocks directly results in improved performance and thus bills the platform as a "Near-CDP" application. It is these snapshot-based backups that are then used as the core data collections for all of the recovery features provided by the platform; i.e., whether restoring a single file or a full bare-metal restore the application leverages the same snapshot-based data backup repository.

Two primary platforms are offered in Backup Express based on the above-described block-level incremental strategy: XRS (Express Recovery Server) based systems for backups to Windows-hosted storage (multiple flavors of storage are supported by XRS servers, including direct attached, SAN, SCSI, or iSCSI); and AdvancedClient(OSSV) (Open System SnapVault) for backups to NetApp storage. Both platforms offer somewhat similar feature sets; contact the vendor for complete and current details of differences.

Among the product's key features as listed by the vendor are:

- ExpressDR: A separate bootable CD that can be loaded into a machine to facilitate disaster-recovery (bare-metal) restores. The CD provides the necessary interface to connect to the storage/snapshot repository and recovery a full system from a previous point in time.

- Instant Availability, or the ability to store and assemble the backed-up data as virtual volumes that can be directly accessed when necessary (I.E., as local read/write drives) by client machines via iSCSI target technology. The vendor notes that such virtual volumes can be operational in as little as one minute, and include support for Exchange, SQL Server, and Oracle volumes.

New to Backup Express is its support for Novell's OES (Open Enterprise Server) 2.

Backup Express is available now; contact the vendor for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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