CommVault Systems rolled out Simpana 8 today, adding block-level data deduplication for disk and tape and improved management of virtual machine backups.
Along with the long-awaited block-level dedupe, Simpana 8 introduces a single client for VMware ESX server and Microsoft's Hyper-V, which can be deployed at the host level rather than requiring a client on each guest.
Simpana adds block-level deduplication for disk and tape
Simpana 7 introduced file-level single instancing, but customers have called for block-level data deduplication in the backup application. Simpana 8 introduces global deduplication based at the Simpana host, so the deduplication can cut down on the amount of data written to disk and sent over the network. Simpana 8's dedupe works similarly to EMC Corp.'s Avamar and Symantec Corp.'s PureDisk.
The global deduplication with Simpana 8 also extends to tape, making it the first product of its kind to allow for writes to physical tape libraries without requiring reinflation of deduplicated data. "That's very appealing," said Paul Spotts, system engineer for Geisinger Health, a network of hospitals and clinics in central Pennsylvania. "We added a VTL [virtual tape library] because we were running out of capacity in our physical tape libraries, but we lease the VTL, so we're only allowed to grow so much per quarter."
A new feature called SnapBackup in Simpana 8 adds new integration with storage arrays so that array-based snapshots can be managed according to Simpana policies and through Simpana's catalog. "It's basically consolidating in the backup catalog all the different backup copies a user can recover from," Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Lauren Whitehouse said. "So users don't have to try and track down the most recent copy from different sources."
Simpana 8 also adds the ability to incorporate workstations into the central backup policy, similar to products like IBM's CDP for Files, which automatically send changes to a central backup server when a desktop or laptop logs on to a company network. "The only thing that bothers me about that feature is that it doesn't include local journaling," Whitehouse said. "So if you make versions of a file while you're not connected to the network, you don't have a local version history." This is a feature that CDP for Files offers, Whitehouse said.
Like other backup products for VMware, Simpana 8 integrates with VMware's Consolidated Backup (VCB) API to allow virtual machine backups from a proxy server. The client and management interface for both VMware and Hyper-V hosts is the same, and VMware images can be restored to Hyper-V hosts and vice versa. Simpana 8 will also include an autodiscovery feature to add new virtual machines in the environment automatically to backup policies.
