Veritas unveils data protection tool

Veritas has launched its latest data protection product, Veritas Vertex, with claims that it will virtually eliminate back-up windows, and significantly reduce downtime and disruption on the production server.

Veritas has launched its latest data protection product, Veritas Vertex, with claims that it will virtually eliminate back-up windows, and significantly reduce downtime and disruption on the production server.

The clustering software company is using snapshot back-up technology to minimise the time needed for data recovery and to reduce downtime on the network.

John Maxwell, senior director of product management for data protection at Veritas, said Vertex would protect increasing loads of data while still maintaining data availability.

Vertex is made up of a set of products from Veritas's NetBackup technology. It will include the NetBackup ServerFree Agent, designed to work with storage area network architectures with no downtime and no impact on production servers.

Frozen image back-up technology is the process of making a 'point-in-time' data copy for back-up and restoration.

With the ServerFree Agent a data snapshot is created in seconds and then backed up directly from disk to tape, therefore bypassing the user's network.

Veritas estimates that annual data growth in corporate IT environments is between 100 and 400 per cent, meaning increased downtime while back-up takes place.

Back-up performance is marred by the needs of online 'always on' ebusiness applications and data can be slow and cumbersome to retrieve.

Chris Boorman, marketing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Veritas, said: "Vertex is aimed at the large corporations and will be good news for network managers as data won't be corrupted over the network."

Speaking at Vision 2000, Paul Sallaberry, European vice-president of field operations at Veritas, said: "The value of data availability has become equal to product attributes. The concept of downtime is unacceptable."

In reference to Veritas's data availability solutions Sallaberry said to "never underestimate the power of the force", setting the tone of the annual user's conference.

Maxwell confirmed Veritas's belief that snapshot technologies represent the future of data protection. "The technology represents a viable solution to protecting online applications," he said.

First published in Network News