Atempo Improves VMware Support with Time Navigator 4.1

Published: October 3, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Atempo last week launched Time Navigator version 4.1, a new release of its backup and recovery software for Windows, Unix, Linux, Mac OS, and OS/400 servers. With this release, the Silicon Valley company has increased support for VMware's virtualized environments, and boosted the flexibility of Security and Compliance Manager, an optional module for encrypting backups conducted by Time Navigator.

Time Navigator is designed to address the fuller spectrum of information lifecycle needs, which extends beyond backup and recovery to include tier-storage for regulatory compliance. The product is highlighted by its user interface, which makes it easy for individual users to recover any file to any point in time. This comes in handy if a user accidentally deletes an important file or a programmer mistakenly writes over a production object. In addition to this continuous data protection (CDP) capability, Time Navigator also supports the increasingly popular disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) method.

With Time Navigator 4.1, Atempo is bolstering the product's usefulness in VMware ESX Server hypervisor environments. While the product previously supported operating system images run within ESX Server via standard backup agents, the company has come out with a new agent in version 4.1 that's tailored specifically for ESX Server and the VMware file system (VMFS) and enables Time Navigator users to back up entire virtual machines without interrupting the work on these machines. This release also includes its own VMware GUI where users can restore data, support for D2D2T in a VMware environment, and pre-canned reports for monitoring VMware backup activities and performance.

Atempo also announced Time Navigator Security and Compliance Manager (SCM) version 2.0, an optional module designed for organizations concerned about the security of their backups, which Atempo launched 10 months ago. SCM helps users protect their backups through the use of file and network encryption and decryption, digital signatures and audit trails, hierarchical key management, and pre-configured compliance templates.

With version 2.0, the company has opened up the encryption options available to customers, and introduced support for evolving security standards. Users now have the option of utilizing their own Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) and crypto-libraries or using the PKIs and crypto-libraries provided in SCM.

The new release also adds support for additional security protocols, including the OpenSSL encryption library, the X509v3 digital certificate standard, and the Personal Information Exchange Syntax (PKCS#12), which is the piece that helps Time Navigator work with customers' existing PKIs.

Marylise Tauzia, director of product marketing at Atempo, says encryption products like SCM could have prevented some recent security incidents. "In light of recent security breaches, lost tapes and stolen computers, organizations are realizing that simply backing up data is not enough; strong encryption and security features need to be integrated into the data protection architecture," she says.

Pricing for the Time Navigator 4.1 server with 10 agents and one storage node starts at $4,600. The VMware agent costs $800 per ESX Server. Pricing for the SCM console starts at $2,600; each SCM agent costs $300. For more information, visit www.atempo.com.

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