After the global launch of ShadowProtect V4 in Sydney last week, more than 3,300 people have registered for a 20-city, five-week road show and technical training through Australia and New Zealand, according to Greg Wyman, StorageCraft’s Regional Director Asia Pacific, 

StorageCraft has announced ShadowProtect Server 4.0 and StorageCraft ShadowProtect Small Business Server 4.0, the latest version of its backup, disaster recovery and system migration technology.

Version 4.0 (V4) addresses the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for businesses, the need to integrate disaster recovery planning with virtualised systems, and centralised management of backups.

According to Greg Wyman, using a new technology called VirtualBoot, V4 can restore a multi-terabyte server in 3-5 minutes, back to its full production state of 15 minutes ago, either remotely, using the newly-launched ImageManager Enterprise (see below) or locally; and it can eliminate tape with off-site backup and disaster recovery. If a server is failing, V4 will go on restoring data until the bitter end.

ShadowProtect Server 4.0 includes several recovery options that allow users to improve RTO by reducing the time systems and data are offline. ShadowProtect offers the flexibility of choosing granular recovery of files and folders or full bare metal recover of a server in a matter of minutes.

Hardware Independent Restore (HIR) technology makes it quick and easy to recover to the same system, to dissimilar hardware or to and from virtual environments. ShadowProtect’s HIR feature also makes system migration to new servers or consolidation to virtual environments a straightforward process using the new Virtual Converter technology that is included in v4.

ShadowProtect Server 4.0 improves on its virtualised technology features such as HIR with new VirtualBoot technology to allow administrators to boot any ShadowProtect backup image into a virtual machine. The backup image file can be booted into a .VMDK or .VHD format. In addition, ShadowProtect Server 4.0 can convert any ShadowProtect backup image into a virtual machine without using any third-party technology.

ShadowProtect Server 4.0 includes a management console, at no additional cost, for central management of ShadowProtect on multiple servers. IT Administrators may push an agent simultaneously to multiple machines, group servers, import or export node information or check the status of ShadowProtect backups.

In addition, ShadowProtect ImageManager allows administrators to verify and re-verify ShadowProtect backup image files as well as consolidate backup image files to minimise storage usage and streamline management. Additional features are included in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise.

Recovery Features

ShadowProtect Server 4.0 also includes Resume on Interruption – the ability to continue a restore, even after it’s been halted by a power failure or other disruption. In addition, it has an updated user interface.

“The new features in ShadowProtect Server 4.0 will give IT administrators flexible options for getting their systems and data back online very quickly,” said Scott Barnes, StorageCraft CTO.

“Backup is easy and everyone is doing it. Restoring massive amounts of data quickly and making it accessible is the difficult part. ShadowProtect’s advanced technology helps get business back online in minutes, not hours or days.”

ImageManager Enterprise 4.0 DR adds HeadStart Restore

StorageCraft has announced a dramatic reduction in time required to restore Windows systems with the release of ShadowProtect Image Manager Enterprise 4.0.

This version on the ShadowProtect line of backup, disaster recovery and system migration technology also improves central management of ShadowProtect backups.

ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise includes local, network and off-site (Internet) replication technology for moving backups off-site. Additionally, it adds a new feature called HeadStart Restore (HSR), which allows IT managers to automate recovery – getting servers back up and running in a minutes rather than hours.

Greg Wyman, StorageCraft’s Regional Director Asia Pacific, said: “With ShadowProtect v4 and ImageManager Enterprise, our customers are telling us they are finally able to eliminate tape from their backup, recovery and disaster recovery processes.

"Who actually wants to use tape? We now provide an alternative that eliminates backup windows, eliminates recovery windows, eliminates cost and complexity and reduces data loss to a maximum of 15 minutes instead of a whole day.

“We are hosting a series of technical training sessions where we demonstrate all these benefits – so far more than 3,300 people have registered for 18 events over five weeks – details can be found at www.storagecraft.com.au/v4.”

IT managers can create a system restore job from their ShadowProtect Server or ShadowProtect Small Business Server scheduled backups. The HSR job begins the recovery process immediately, and the restore job is updated with incremental changes throughout the day. After a disaster, the user is able to finalise the restore and have the server online again very quickly.

“The problem that no one really likes to talk about is that system restores often involve terabytes of data, which means a realistic RTO is hours,” said Scott Barnes, chief technology officer at StorageCraft. “With HeadStart Restore, we’ve eliminated the time it takes to recover a system and data because the recovery is happening as server backups continue.”

How HSR Works

To prepare a server for HSR, the IT administrator sets up a system restore job in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise, which begins recovery right away.

Any incremental changes to the backup are also sent to the system restore job and implemented. The Lag Time Apply feature in HSR also allows administrators to delay incremental changes – to account for corruption from malware or a virus. By default, this is set to three days, but this can be changed to suit IT requirements.

In the event of a disaster, the administrator finalises the restore, which usually takes seconds to apply the incremental updates, then prepares the virtual environment, runs ShadowProtect’s Hardware Independent Restore™ technology, reboots the server and is back up and running. The elapsed time is several minutes, rather than several hours.

ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise also includes replication technology, to allow users to send backup images to a separate location, on-site or off-site. In addition, ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise allows administrators to verify and re-verify ShadowProtect backup image files, consolidate image files to minimise storage usage and streamline management and set up e-mail notification to track the status of backup jobs.