CA Releases New BrightStor Modules

Enterprise software maker Computer Associates has launched the latest release of BrightStor Enterprise Backup, version 10.5, which is geared at helping storage administrators more effectively store data based on the value of that data to the business.

As systems vendors such as IBM , HP , and Sun roll out on-demand utility-like computing services, CA is among major enterprise software providers also moving to offer software “by the drink,” to use an on-demand analogy.

One of the most significant changes in the latest BrightStor product is the modular nature of the software, which the company says will help organizations scale their data protection costs with the value of that data.

Company officials say BrightStor Enterprise Backup 10.5 provides policy-based management backup functions that allow storage administrators to assign virtually every type of data across the enterprise to any available and appropriate storage resource. The idea is to enable organizations to minimize both business risk and storage infrastructure expenditures.

“One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to data protection,” asserts Bob Davis, CA’s vice president of BrightStor solutions. “With BrightStor Enterprise Backup 10.5, no customer need ever waste $10,000 to protect $1,000 worth of data, or put data worth $500,000 at risk by backing it up on an inadequate low-end system.”

The enterprise backup product is geared to help give storage administrators more flexibility with their data-recovery needs, such as the most expensive hot backup, lesser-priced near-line, and cheaper taped backup storage.

BrightStor Enterprise Backup integrates with CA’s other enterprise management products, such as BrightStor ARCserve Backup, as well as various other third-party offerings, including Iron Mountain, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, and Microsoft, according to Ed Cooper, Product Manager BrightStor Solutions.

Integrated into the new BrightStor Enterprise modules are portal software that helps provide a “dashboard” view of common management and a cross-server reporting feature for all enterprise storage resources.

Cooper says that BrightStor Enterprise Backup will allow enterprise storage policies to be defined from a centralized console across all major platforms, including Windows Server 2003/2000/NT, major UNIX derivatives and Linux distributions, NetWare, and Open VMS.

And in another example of CA’s moves to offer software packages that integrate with open architecture systems that underpin Web services , company officials report the latest BrightStor release provides high-performance backup and recovery of Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange, Oracle, Lotus Notes, Sybase, SAP R/3, Advantage Ingres, Informix, DB2, and other key applications.

The cross-platform approach supports corporate on-demand computing initiatives, whereby enterprise resources are managed as a holistic utility that can be flexibly and dynamically allocated based on changing business needs, says Cooper.

CA reports BrightStor Enterprise Backup 10.5 has been benchmarked as the fastest recovery and backup solution for multi-terabyte databases. In testing with Microsoft Corp. last fall, a beta version of BrightStor Enterprise Backup 10.5 achieved 2.6 terabyte-per-hour archival backup of a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database running on Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. Cooper says the results turned a process that usually takes days and weeks to recover data to just minutes.

“Organizations have huge amounts of data, but only limited budgets for data protection,” says David Hill, vice president of storage research at The Aberdeen Group. “It is therefore essential for them to appropriately assign protection resources to data selectively, based on well-defined risk factors. CA’s BrightStor Enterprise Backup provides a means of accomplishing this important objective.”

This story originally appeared on Internet News.

Back to Enterprise Storage Forum