Symantec says the new NetBackup 7.6 upgrade will bring new functionality to protect the largest scale VMware-based environments as enterprises move to a software-defined datacentre architecture. Symantec claims 7.6 is the only backup product designed for enterprise level scale, which can accommodate hundreds of thousands of virtual machines and petabytes of data while giving customers 400x faster virtual machine recovery than a standard restore. IT organisations can now simplify and automate the protection of massive and complex physical, virtual and cloud environments that are the building blocks of a modern datacentre.

A ESG study revealed that improving backup and recovery, increasing server virtualisation, and managing data growth will remain some of the most important priorities for IT. ESG notes it continues to see “tolerance to downtime” shrinking, the sheer numbers of VMs per environment growing and the increasing use of snapshots in combination with (and managed by) backup systems to achieve the protection and recovery-agility that customers need.

“ESG performed hands-on testing of NetBackup 7.6 for VMware to test Symantec’s ability to meet those customer demands – and found NetBackup to exceed expectations. This combination of NetBackup 7.6 and VMware appears ready to deliver the protect-ability that highly virtualized large enterprises are seeking,” said Jason Buffington, senior analyst for Data Protection at Enterprise Strategy Group.

According to Symantec’s State of Information Report data is growing at 60 to 70 percent annually. This growth, combined with the proliferation of virtualization and flat or declining budgets, is forcing CIOs to address the new reality where traditional protection models are inadequate. Modern enterprise solutions must provide faster and automated application protection, give insight into large, complicated virtual environments and provide the foundation for partners and service providers to deliver backup-as-a-service.
NetBackup 7.6 offers 400x faster recovery of VMware vSphere virtual machines by booting directly from backup storage, compared to the hours or days that could be required for a traditional restore. The solution’s NetBackup Instant Recovery for VMware environments allows customers to increase productivity and performance by powering on virtual machines from within NetBackup, making them 100 percent available in vSphere during the restore.

Additional features include multi-tenant hosting options for channel partners and managed service providers to improve scalability; and automated disaster recovery from a physical to a cloud platform to ensure data is always protected and available.