Symantec Releases Veritas NetBackup 6.5

Unifies recovery management across all protection technologies with single platform, includes new disk-based data-protection solutions

• By James E. Powell
• 06/12/2007

Symantec Corp. today released Veritas NetBackup version 6.5, which unites data protection offerings including tape, virtual tape libraries (VTLs), disk backup, data deduplication, continuous data protection (CDP), snapshots, and replication across several major vendors.

Symantec says it has unified its enterprise data protection technologies into a single offering, using the NetBackup platform name, helping IT manage heterogeneous data protection technologies with a centralized management tool. The company says enterprises haven’t deployed newer data protection technologies because of the complexity of disparate point products, each using different agents, policies, schedulers, recovery processes, user interfaces, and reporting tools. NetBackup provides a single tool to manage products from different vendors with “a single approach to agents, policy management, recovery processes, security, backup reporting, and the data catalog.”

The company says benefits include reduced data loss and operating costs, shorter backup windows and recovery time, and enhanced manageability.

To help IT adopt high-capacity disk and improve backup operations, reduce recovery times, and shrink backup windows, NetBackup 6.5 features four new capabilities:

• Native data deduplication for everything from desktops and laptops to remote office servers (via Symantec’s PureDisk deduplication technology, which the company says can reduce deduplication rates by an order of 50 to 500)

• Disk backup capabilities include pooling, sharing, and backup over a SAN to a large shared-disk pool (using a new Flexible Disk Option)

• Integration with intelligent backup appliances and virtual tape libraries (in the latter case, by a process that directly copies data from VTL to tape in a “catalog-consistent manner”

• Heterogeneous snapshot and CDP management

Users can recover files at a granular level. NetBackup 6.5 can be used to recover databases and documents from the same backup source in Microsoft SharePoint environments. Shops using Microsoft Exchange can use NetBackup’s instant recovery feature to recover from a disk-based snapshot for a faster recovery with a minimal disruption.

More information is available at http://www.symantec.com.