EMC's Whole New NetWorker
NetWorker 7.2, which EMC plans to unveil this week, now handles backing up data to any NAS devices that support the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) standard, including EMC's Celera and Network Appliance Filers, said Rob Emsley, director of software product marketing at the Hopkinton, Mass., vendor.
"Now customers can share devices and storage environments between NDMP and non-NDMP devices," Emsley said. "They can also restore direct from NDMP disk to the application without going through a server."
Also new to NetWorker 7.2 is support for the Documentum D5 Repository application, which allows hot backups of related data to disk or tape, and extended support for VMware GSX and ESX Server applications to allow backups of Exchange, SQL and Oracle databases at the VMware level, Emsley said. Dan Carson, vice president of marketing and business development at Open Systems Solutions, a Yardley, Pa.-based storage solution provider, likes how EMC is starting to bring together its various software offerings.
"It strengthens what EMC has been saying about upgrading their software and making them more compatible with each other, including Documentum and VMware," Carson said.
EMC's Retrospect software for small business is also getting a new face, including the ability to schedule backups, perform incremental backups as well as synthetic full ones, and handle disk-to-disk-to-tape backups, Emsley said. Also new is support for Red Hat, Suse Linux and Mac OS X.
EMC hopes to lure Veritas customers to move to Legato NetWorker with financial carrots including no-cost product swaps and reduced maintenance fees, said Kelly Polanski, vice president of product marketing at EMC.
Michael Fanelli, western regional manager at SSI hubcity, Metuchen, N.J., said he always sees programs to swap out one software for another. "If you say you threw Veritas out of 10 accounts, I can show you 10 accounts where Veritas threw out Legato, or 10 accounts where BakBone [Software] threw out Veritas, or 10 accounts where BakBone threw out Legato," he said.