EMC (NYSE: EMC) has added replication reporting to its Data Protection Advisor backup reporting and analysis software, giving data storage users greater confidence in their ability to recover from disasters without the time and uncertainty of frequent disaster recovery testing.
EMC has now expanded the backup reporting software acquired from WysDM in early 2008 to cover NAS and SAN, virtual server environments, virtual tape libraries (VTL), tape, deduplication and business applications.
“It eliminates the need for disaster recovery testing,” said Ken MacDonald, EMC’s director of storage software product marketing. “It can tell you if you will be able to recover the replica.”
It’s a claim also made by Continuity Software, but MacDonald claims that EMC Data Protection Advisor stands out by adding application awareness.
Data Protection Advisor automatically collects data from applications, hosts and arrays and monitors for gaps in data protection and service level agreements.
The latest version adds support for EMC’s RecoverPoint network-based replication, along with replication support for Symmetrix and Clariion storage arrays. Data Protection Advisor discovers the application structure and associated storage, devices and replicas and records changes in the recoverability of any replicas.
MacDonald said EMC hasn’t looked at adding support for third-party replication products such as NetApp SnapMirror; for now, those products work with Data Protection Advisor through RecoverPoint.
The new version also includes additional support for VMware with vCenter Server integration, for detailed backup monitoring, alerting and reporting for individual virtual machines and ESX servers, and it also adds new chargeback capabilities for backup and replication.
Integration with Data Domain, Avamar and NetWorker offers insight into deduplication operations, and EMC’s Celerra unified storage also gets added support.
Pricing for DPA for backup starts at $3,000 for 20 clients. For replication, pricing is based on configuration. For example, replication pricing starts at $346 per TB for Symmetrix.
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