Backup and Data Storage News

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CommVault has agreed to a new deal to allow Incentra Solutions to offer data protection services using it's Galaxy Data Protection Software. Incentra has been using CommVault's software for the last five years. Since September of 2002, the two companies have gained over 1400 customers worldwide.

As the volume of data that small businesses and home office workers use and manage increases. Keeping safe and secure backups is not only a challenge, but a compliance issue. Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and other laws and regulations require privacy, retention and recoverability. Vendors like Mozy, Remote Backup Systems, and Rhinoback are providing a much needed solution.

Cincinnati Bell Inc. says it has acquired the assets of GramTel USA Inc. for about $20M. GramTel expects 2007 revenues of about $5M. GramTel provides off-site data protection and disaster recovery services.

When your Exchange server database grows, backing up the Information Stores can become a challenge. Exchange 2007 brings a new feature that can reduce the need for daily full backups. Local Continuous Replication (LCR)offers protection against hard disk failures and data corruption.

Times have changed. Hard disk drive capacities are huge compared to a few years ago. Backing up your entire hard drive is not practical in most circumstances. Software programs use incredible amounts of disk space. Backing up your program files may not be worthwile. If your hard drive is lost, you will most likely need to re-install your software from the original media.

Fujitsu Siements has developed a lower-cost alternative to clustering for midsize businesses running up to 50 Microsoft Windws Server 2003 systems. The new system is named x10sure and pricing starts at $12000.

In an analysis of Googles use of hard disk drives, diagnostics only predict about half of the drive failures. Newer drives have built-in Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART). These drives include electronics that monitor a variety of information about the health of the drive itself. The Google researchers found that SMART diagnostics are not as useful as they are supposed to be. You can't depend on SMART to give you advanced notice of when your hard drive is going to fail. A good backup system with offsite storage is still the only way to ensure that your data will not be lost.

Symantec recently issued a warning that hacker exploit code is circulating on the Internet for a known security hole in Computer Associate's BrightStore ARCServe Backup software. CA issue a patch to address the issue in January 2007.

Microsoft's Windows Storage Server continues to gain market share. Microsoft is now the leading vendor in server storage space market. More IT directors and planners are opting for the Microsoft server and storage solutions.

Most large and small businessess alike have embraced information and communication technology. Without efficient information technology, many organizations would become chaotic and lose their ability to operate and make a profit. Data loss can occur through a variety of reasons including hardware failure, humman error, fire viruses, and natural disasters. Creating backup copies of data is essential to facilitate a succesful recovery from a disaster. Advanced planning is required for data backup and recovery to be effective.

A review of 10 popular consumer backup software packages. Compare the featurs and capabilities of these software backup solutions. See them compared side-by-side and determine if any of these are the right solution for your pc data backup needs:

• Genie Backup Manager
• Acronis True Image
• NTI Backup NOW
• PowerBackup
• Norton Ghost
• AISBackup
• Turbo Backup
• Handy Backup
• PC Backup
• WinBackup

NEC Corporation of America plans to launch a grid-based disk backup system during the first half of 2007. This grid-based storage system features smart deduplication and compression technology. Grid storage systems are scalable and consist of nodes sharing resources in a distributed fasion. The demand for this type of technolgy is growing as some large corporations are buying disk drives by the truck-load to contain their growing data stores.

High profile data security breaches have CIOs looking for enterprise solutions to prevent confidential data from leaving the control of their IT operations. Several companies develop and market technology to detect and prevent data leaks. Many organizations are at risk because they backup data to tape and disk media without encryption.

Verbatim announced several new USB drives at CES 2007 in Las Vegas this week, including a 12 GB USB drive. The device is similar to a thumb drive, but is based on a 1-inch hard drive and is about teh size of a business card.

A new survey shows that 90% of DBA's expect their database storage requirements to grow in 2007. One of the big problems with growing databases is the need for for backups. Larger databases require larger backup capacities and more time to backup the data.