Barracuda Backup Server Boosts Replication Capabilities

In an effort to broaden its products' backup and restore features for its users, Barracuda Networks has enhanced its Barracuda Backup Server to add the ability for its tapeless backup appliances--which up until now have saved user data only to the cloud--to replicate data between sites.

The functionality is implemented in a version 4.0 firmware release for the company's backup appliances, which also include other backup and recovery functionality such as deduplication. Replications can be performed locally and between Barracuda Backup Servers, including from many servers to one and from one to several others.

Keith Maly, IT manager for the Washington Local School District, in Toledo, Ohio, says his organization, which has been using the Barracuda Backup Service for seven or eight months, has just purchased a second appliance so the district can replicate between them rather than backing up data to the cloud, due to cost concerns. "We were doing the cloud-based service, and it got to the point where it's costing us a bit much," he says.

Financially, it was about the same to make the capital expenditure and get a separate appliance rather than continuing to have the monthly charges, he says. The district has approximately 3,500 computers for a staff of 1,000 and an enrollment of 5,000 to 6,000 students, spread across 13 buildings, including eight elementary schools, two junior high schools, a high school, a career technology building, transportation and maintenance buildings, and the board of education office, Maly says.

The district began using Barracuda for its backup because it wanted to get away from tape backup, and was impressed by the fact that Barracuda would allow the district to back up its data to the cloud. Plus, Barracuda's costs were lower. "We were kind of shocked at the price others were charging," he says.Barracuda added the replication functionality, which has been in beta testing for two or three months, at the request of its customers, says Guy Suter, general manager of the backup division for the Campbell, Calif., company. Its users were saying that they liked the product but had a disaster recovery site of their own, and instead of using Barracuda's cloud to store their data, they wished to use their own, either because the company had already made an investment in a disaster recovery site or due to regulatory concerns regarding control of the data, he says.

Barracuda prices its products by having users buy the appliance and then charging a flat fee for a subscription service, with cloud-based storage on top of that. The appliance comes in six models, starting at $999, with a total of up to 24TBytes of addressable storage.

The flat fee includes support and maintenance software upgrades and a software license, and varies depending on the size of the appliance, starting at about $300 per year. Cloud-based data storage is available for 50 cents per gigabyte per month, and is sold in 100-gigabyte increments. The new firmware is available now.

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