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Significantly reducing system recovery delays

May 9, 2007

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Symantec has developed new backup software that it claims can significantly reduce system recovery time. Symantec's new software also simplifies the relocation of applications from physical to virtual machines, the company says.

Recently, a hosting services provider said these new features were helpful for dealing with a systems crash. Ohio-based Rampant Inc. hosts databases and email servers for various organizations and its clients.

Rampant said it was beta-testing the Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 7.0 at the end of 2006 when one of its client's systems suddenly went down.

Jerry Leskiv, IT administrator at Rampant said "fully restoring all of our customer's functionality would normally have taken up to twelve hours, but Recovery 7.0 helped us get our client up and running within only a couple of hours."

For privacy reasons, Leskiv didn't identify his client, but said the speedy system restoration probably saved the firm a lot of angry customer calls and a lot of lost revenue."

Symantec's Recovery 7.0 really performs when it comes to enabling physical to virtual (P2V) machine transitions, says at least one Canadian analyst.

According to John Sloan, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group says "overall, the biggest benefit the product provides is the ability to switch from a virtual to physical realm, and restore a system in a totally different environment."

Rampant, which has been beta testing Recovery 7.0 since Oct. 2006, says the product simplifies and greatly automates the restoration process. The new disk-based system, Leskiv said, removes the need for manual recovery process by taking snapshots or capturing an exact copy of a system, including the operating system, applications, system and user settings and data, all in a single recovery point.

Sloan added "in case of a failure, IT administrators simply select the recovery point from where they want to initiate restoration."

By contrast, manual recovery procedures entail completely reinstalling and reconfiguring the operating system, all applications and the system's original settings. The process may even involve several system reboots and could take anywhere from four hours to several days, said Leskiv.

He said system snapshots can be set by various administrators to suit various operational and business needs. Recovery points can be scheduled for overnight capture, or as often as 15 minute increments.

In particular, Windows applications are often times plagued with problems when they are restored to a different machine, according to Sloan. "In the event of a crash it's not easy to restore Windows onto a different machine. Windows is device-specific and tends to often freeze up when relocated."

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Source: IT World Canada