Unitrends Trends Toward CDP

Unitrends is banking that near is far enough when it comes to delivering continuous data protection (CDP) to the SMB crowd it targets with its appliances.

Early next year, Unitrends will add an application it calls continuous system protection (CSP) to its appliances to help customers restore their systems faster and with less data loss than previously. The application will run on Unitrends Data Protection Units (DPUs) for local backup and Data Protection Vaults (DPVs) for off-site vaulting.

CSP doesnt continuously save data for "any point in time recovery" like true CDP, but instead allows customers to take snapshots at a selected interval -- hourly, daily, or weekly, for instance. CSP can restore individual files or whole applications, such as Exchange, Oracle, or SQL Server.

CSP installs as an agent on protected servers and stores snapshots of files, applications, and operating systems on Unitrends' DPU hardware. For disaster recovery, the snapshots can also be written over the WAN to a remote DPV. If a server fails, Unitrends claims it can restore the operating system, applications, and data within 30 minutes locally and within hours from a remote vault.

At least one customer has confidence in the proposed product. “We know that at some point, one or more of our systems will fail,” says Kevin Hughes, business manager at Sharonview Federal Credit Union in Charlotte, N.C. “Unitrends assures us the information we need will be available within minutes.”Since CSP can restore applications as well as files, it should compare favorably against the files-only near-CDP offered by Microsoft Data Protection Manager and Symantec’s Continuous Protection Server. However, it can't match the flexibility of enterprise CDP products sold by Revivio and Mendocino Software -- which EMC and Hewlett-Packard offer through partnerships. (See Microsoft and Symantec Cut SMB Tape.) These enterprise CDP products allow restoration of applications from any point in time rather than from the last snapshot. (See EMC Pulls Forward With Backup), HP Picks Mendocino , and Revivio Shows Database Restoration .)

One analyst says Unitrends’ "all in one box" approach to CDP fits in with its targeted audience of SMBs and small enterprises. “The key thing about Unitrends is they have designed product from scratch for smaller customers,” says Arun Taneja of the Taneja Group.

Unitrends’ centrally managed appliance approach makes it unlikely to fly in large enterprises, which usually prefer systems that integrate with larger storage infrastructures. Data Domain found this out when it tried to sell its disk-based backup in the enterprise. This week, that vendor came out instead with a gateway that lets customers use their own storage. (See A Storage App Without the Storage.)

Unitrends' CEO Sterling Wharton says he’s dedicated to going after the smaller organizations that can’t afford enterprise-strength storage systems for their disaster recovery. “The guys trying to duke it out without hundreds of servers, their data is just as important,” he says.

Unitrends began selling its data protection units in late 2002 and has been adding software capabilities, such as bare metal restore, replication, and remote vaulting, since then. It added the data protection vault in 2003. (See Unitrends Joins Remote Trend, Unitrends Supports Evaults, Unitrends Bundles Hot Bare Metal, Unitrends Unveils Backup Upgrade, and UniTrends Unleashes Mass Replication.).As with its previous applications, Unitrends will not charge extra for continuous protection when it becomes available in the first quarter of next year. Its DPUs start at around $10,000 for 1.2 Tbytes, and the DPVs begin at $14,750.

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch

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