EMC Adds VMware Support To Retrospect

EMC launched its 7.7 Retrospect backup and recovery release for small and medium businesses featuring integration with VMware Consolidated Backup and other new and upgraded capabilities.

Announced Tuesday, the VMware backup feature enables Retrospect to perform off-host backups of active virtual machines.

"By integrating with VMware Consolidated Backup, EMC Retrospect is able to provide complete backups of virtualized systems without impacting the performance of those systems," said Peter Wharton, VP of marketing at EMC's consumer and small business products division, in a statement. "This functionality allows SMBs implementing virtualization to enjoy a similar level of protection seen in the enterprise."

Other features in the 7.7 release include protection for computers operating Microsoft Windows 7 and a Retrospect Emergency Recovery CD for quick disaster recovery of Windows servers and PCs. The bootable-CD recovery feature was previously sold as an add-on with earlier versions of Retrospect.

Retrospect adds wake-on-LAN technology for improved energy conservation as well as support for additional processors and operating systems. A new 64-bit engine enables the release to utilize more than four gigabytes of RAM for backup.

The 7.7 release is available now from resellers or the Retrospect Web site. The Retrospect Emergency Recovery CD can be downloaded as an ISO image and will start up most computers running Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2008, or Server 2003 and allow restoration directly with Retrospect.