* What's inside Veritas and Microsoft's continuous back-up products?
For many years, the name “Veritas” has been almost synonymous with backup and archiving. Veritas’ Backup Exec is used in a large proportion of Windows networking sites as an integral part of their disaster recovery plans as well as their archival/audit systems. Microsoft has generally stayed out of the archival business, developing instead technologies that partners, including Veritas, could exploit in order to enhance the value of Windows networks. But a recent release from Symantec (Veritas’ owner) called Backup Exec 10d, is being overshadowed by news that Microsoft has released its own full-featured tool, called System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM).
Both tout “continuous” backup (they aren’t continuous, but more on that in a moment) and both are built on the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSCS), a major part of Windows Server 2003 (see “How file services could save your bacon”).
VSCS works by taking “snapshots” of the file system and storing them on another hard drive. This can’t be done more than once an hour, nor more than eight times a day. Both the Veritas and Microsoft products work by backing up these snapshots. So while the archiving is frequent, it’s hardly continuous. Microsoft does claim the software can help recover a file close to 12x faster than when using tape and related back-up software and can run an incremental backup close to 4x faster than with tape. Anyone who has ever restored a file from tape won’t find that hard to believe.
Not to be outdone (or at least outmarketed), Symantec named the new release “Backup Exec 10d.” The “d” stands for disk, and the application works in essentially the same way as Microsoft’s DPM. That’s not surprising, though, as both use the VSCS technology that you’ll remember.
What I think of as the best feature, though, is also available in both products: self-service file restore. Users are able to “point-and-click” to restore their own files. Microsoft’s DPM uses a Windows Explorer interface while Backup Exec uses a browser-based interface. In either case it should take a huge load off the shoulders of the always overworked IT staff. If you’ve ever had to search through a shelf of tapes to find that one copy of a spreadsheet that someone may have overwritten last week (or last month, or last year), you’ll understand what I mean. Find a way to get one of these products installed on your network.
