Suppliers Focus on Getting Data Back After Disasters

Software vendors FarStone Technology and Acronis are pushing backup technology that could ease users worries about lost laptops, viruses, and hard drive failures.

FarStone, for example, launched version 5 of its DriveClone Network software this morning, which it is touting as a way for firms to restore both servers and desktops in the event of a crisis.

The software takes a copy of end users’ hard drives and uses this to create a system image. This is then used to restore PCs and servers to their original configurations, something which could be critical in the event of a virus attack or disaster scenario.

”Let’s say that your computer gets infected with a virus, or you lose a hard drive -- you’re going to need bare metal restore or image-based backup,” says Henry Baltazar, an analyst at the 451 Group. “This is all about ‘how do I get my machine up and running as fast as possible.' I think that it’s a very important market, and I think that it’s something that might be a little bit overlooked. There are tools out there for bare metal recovery, but it is not as popular as it should be.”

The previous version of DriveClone was aimed at small office and home office users, although FarStone is now broadening its focus by aiming at the enterprise server market. Pricing for the Drive Clone Enterprise Server software starts at $700, compared to $80 for the workstation version.Rival Acronis already offers a server restore product, True Image Echo Enterprise Server, although this is priced significantly higher, at $1,000 for a single license. Acronis’s low-end offering, True Image Echo workstation, is priced the same as FarStone’s offering, at $80.

451 Group analyst Baltazar nonetheless feels the there are currently two camps in the disaster recovery market, with server/desktop software specialists FarStone and Acronis on one side, and data backup/restore service providers like Iron Mountain, Mozy, and Carbonite on the other.

Mozy, which was bought by EMC for $76 million last year is typical of these vendors, according to Baltazar. “For the most part, this is just data backup, not OS and system backup, but that leaves a gap -- what if I lose my laptop or get a virus?” he says.

At this stage Baltazar sees only one vendor, Symantec, as having a foot in both data and systems backup camps, largely thanks to its LiveState Recovery offering, although the analyst thinks that vendors such as FarStone and Acronis will eventually broaden their strategies.

“Their best move would be to try and figure out a way to hook up with the online backup services like Mozy or Amazon S3,” he says, explaining that this would add another layer of security to their offerings.“The big gap [for FarStone and Acronis] is that most of their backups are localized backups,” says Baltazar, and system restores are usually sent to a local server or even a USB drive. “You could do your image-based backup and have it localized, but also have it in ‘the cloud’ in case something really bad happens.”

FarStone is not the only vendor with disaster recovery on its mind this week, and a number of firms have used the week prior to SNW to unveil new wares. Iomega, for example, unveiled its REV 120-Gig removable hard drive, and NetEx enhanced its HyperIP product for disaster recovery replication.

Switch vendor Sanrad also took the wraps off a souped-up version of its V-Switch hardware, claiming improved DR for virtual environments. De-dupe specialist Data Domain also got in on the recovery act earlier this week, announcing its OpenStorage offering, which integrates with Veritas NetBackup.

Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.