Unitrends Adds OS/400 Support to D2D Backup Appliances

Published: July 11, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Unitrends, a company with a history of developing Unix backup utilities, last month announced it will soon deliver support for OS/400 with its disk-to-disk (D2D) backup and recovery appliances. With its new agent for OS/400, Unitrends is able to support the iSeries and System i with its Rapid Recovery system, a series of rack-mountable appliances that provide speedy backups and recoveries for local offices, as well as for off-site locations.

Unitrends is best known for its early work in Unix backup and recovery software, as well as bare metal recovery, the process of completely rebuilding a system after a fatal crash or other disaster. In December 2005, the Columbia, South Carolina, company launched its Rapid Recovery series, a collection of X86- and Linux-based appliances that come pre-loaded with the company's backup and recovery software. The company plans to deliver support for OS/400 in the fourth quarter.

Unitrends' Rapid Recovery system is composed of two parts: the Data Protection Units (DPUs) and Data Protection Vaults (DPVs). DPUs are designed to back up on-site data, whereas the DPVs are designed to protect data by moving it off-site.

DPUs are pre-configured appliances that provide on-site backup and recovery capabilities, including recovery of 25 operating systems--including their applications, drivers, passwords, and registries--as well as data. Once a master snapshot of the OS, its settings, and data has been made, users can set the incremental backups to occur according to their schedule.

DPVs work in tandem with DPUs to provide organizations with an additional layer of protection from computer crashes, power outages, and natural disasters. Whenever a backup is performed from a DPU, only the blocks of data that have changed (changed data) is compressed and sent off-site via the WAN to the DPV, an asymmetric replication process Unitrends calls Secure Data Synchronization (SDS). Unitrends includes a Web-based central reporting and status tool with its Rapid Recovery systems.

DPVs and DPUs are very similar, and DPUs can also function as DPVs, a setup that Unitrends says is common among organizations with two sites. The main difference between the DPUs and DPVs are capacity, as the DPVs can scale up to 92 TB, whereas the DPUs top out at around 8.8 TB.

Unitrends says its Rapid Recovery solution can deliver true "lights out" data protection capabilities by eliminating manual and tape-based processes. Additional benefits, the company says, include quicker backups and recoveries, as well as cost savings compared to subscribing to an off-site tape vaulting service, such as Iron Mountain or EVault

Unitrends says its DPUs and DPVs deliver "true D2D," as compared to a virtual tape library (VTL) D2D solution. The solutions differ, the company says, in that a true D2D solution uses a full file system, whereas VTL D2D relies on tape constructs such as headers and sequential data access. If everything goes as planned, a DPU can recover a full operating system within 20 minutes, as part of its Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) and "master snapshot" process, the company claims. It also can be used to create a rapid recovery boot CD.

Unitrends added support for OS/400 in response to requests from its customers, such as the Hillsdale Community Health Center in Michigan. "The addition of i5/OS support will eliminate the need for us to learn additional procedures for backing up and recovering our data, since it combines IBM-proven methods with Unitrends' point-and-click simplicity," says Darrell Hoag, IT administrator for the hospital. "That is vitally important with a limited IT staff, giving us an even higher degree of confidence that if we lose key data or hardware we can be back in business in a fraction of the time it would take otherwise."

DPU and DPVs are licensed based on the amount of user data protected. The DPU line starts with the stand-alone DPU SFF, which supports up to 400 GB. Larger organizations have three rack-mounted appliances to choose from, including the 2U DPU 2000, which supports up to 2 TB of data; the 3U DPU 3000, which supports from 250 GB to 4.4 TB of data; and the DPU 5000, a 5U appliance that backs up from 250 GB to 8.8 TB. Pricing starts at about $5,000.

Unitrends offers three DPV versions, all of them rack-mountable. These include the 2U DPV 2000, which protects up to 2 TB of data; the 3U DPV 3000, which protects up to 88 TB; and the 5U DPV 5000, which protects up to 92 TB. The company also sells expansion units for DPVs and DPUs called the Data Protection Storage Unit, as well as industry-specific solutions for organizations in healthcare, financial, and government. For more information, visit www.unitrends.com.