EVault Throttles Down on iSeries Online Backups

Published: February 21, 2006

by Alex Woodie

EVault last week unveiled significant enhancements to its OS/400-based online backup and recovery software. With EVault iSeries version 5.3, the Northern California company has boosted its performance through better compression and parallelization, added support for Save While Active, and added support for more OS/400 objects. The company is also looking to ramp up its 1.5-year-old iSeries business, after its recent acceptance into IBM's ServerProven program.

EVault was the first company to offer an online backup and recovery service for iSeries servers when it launched its agent-based EVault iSeries technology in September 2004 (see "EVault Brings Online Backups to the iSeries"). At that time, disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) technology like EVault's was starting to gain steam as a way to reduce downtime, a trend that continues today.

With EVault iSeries, the Emeryville, California, company introduced a way for OS/400 shops to eliminate their reliance on tape-based backup systems, and speed backups and recoveries. The company does this by sending highly compressed "snapshots" of iSeries data to an offsite storage area network (SAN). These SANs can either be run by the customers, if they license the EVault Infostage software outright, or by EVault if the customer chooses to only install the iSeries agent, and let EVault manage their backup data.

EVault's InfoStage software is made up of Director and CentralControl components, while the agent software is licensed separately. The Agent is a small component that resides on the server being protected (in this case, the iSeries, although EVault also offers agents for Windows and other systems) and kicks-off backups according to parameters that have been set up for each backup task. The Director component authenticates and accepts data from the Agent and provides lifecycle management of data residing on the SAN, while the CentralControl software is used to configure and manage the various agents.

One of the key elements of EVault's enhanced iSeries Agent offering is DeltaPro, a technology component that takes snapshots of data and applies compression to the data. This minimizes the amount of data sent over the TCP/IP network and the amount stored on the remote SANs (which is important, because EVault charges based on the number of customer gigabytes it stores in its vault).

With version 5.3, the company says it has made substantial improvements to DeltaPro's compression capabilities. According to EVault, some customers will see their backups and restorations occur up to 1,000 times faster than tape-based backups as a result of these improvements (although this may be assuming the customer was running very, very slow tapes before). In any event, customers can expect a 10:1 compression of data as a result of the new DeltaPro compression algorithm, and some customers will see upwards of 15:1 compression, according to the company. EVault is seeking a patent on the improvements its made to DeltaPro, the company says.

The DeltaPro enhancements are just the beginning of the speed-fest that is EVault iSeries 5.3. With this release, the software has gained the capability to run in parallel, which means that customers can run multiple backup and restore tasks simultaneously across logical partitions.

Additionally, iSeries shops that are in a big hurry will be happy to hear that EVault has boosted its support for Save While Active, a feature of OS/400 that greatly minimizes (but doesn't entirely eliminate) the downtime associated with performing backups. With version 5.3, EVault iSeries now supports journaling and database trigger methods for performing saves with Save While Active, the company says.

iSeries shops can feel more comfortable with EVault iSeries as a result of the ServerProven validation that the product received from IBM last September. ServerProven validation, which is geared primarily toward iSeries software solutions, is given to products that work as advertised in real-world situations, including compatibility with IBM and third-party programs.

"We're proud to have achieved IBM's ServerProven status for our newest iSeries offering," says Richard Heitmann, senior director of product marketing at EVault.

EVault iSeries version 5.3 is available now. A full software license to use the EVault Infostage in-house starts at about $16,000, while the EVault iSeries Agent (which is required on each server to be backed up) is priced based on the model of iSeries and starts at $975. For more information, visit www.evault.com.