CA also offers data protection management capabilities within ARCserve Backup 12.5. Traditionally, backup/restore software has focused on fundamental backup/recovery processes. The software usually did not monitor or report on what was happening within the environment during backup or recovery process, leaving those issues to data protection management software, such Bocada and WysDM (which has since been acquired by EMC). Understanding why backups or recoveries fail (or might be in the process of failing) is important. So getting proactive recommendations, such as correcting the "shoe shining," which results from the improper streaming of backup data to tape, provides critical insight into ensuring that tape drives perform properly.
ARCserve supports monitoring and supporting via a dashboard that displays key performance information, and uses storage resource management (SRM) functionality to track and report on physical and virtual components of the environment, including production servers, memory, networks and storage. The nice thing is that the information can help administrators react to problems that have already occurred, but can also be used to spot potential service level impacting events before they occur and proactively implement corrective action. The integration of monitoring/reporting capabilities in ARCserve Backup 12.5 should prove worthwhile to both backup customers and their storage administrators.
CA XOsoft High Availability 12.5 and CA XOsoft Replication 12.5 - Complementing ARCserve Backup 12.5 are two products; 1) CA XOsoft High Availability 12.5, for local recovery from operational problems (high availability), and, 2) CA XOsoft Replication 12.5, for remote recovery from disasters (replication). These complementary capabilities are important for so-called zero data loss solutions such as continuous data protection, which is gaining popularity because of its ability to restore data from any point in time. CA's announcement includes numerous enhancements for these products, including support for virtualized environments and Microsoft SharePoint 2007.
However, another issue of import is automated or non-disruptive disaster recovery (DR) (i.e., no rebooting of servers). Automated DR has been around for awhile, and is now available for both CA XOsoft products at no extra charge. That may not seem like much, but is really a big deal. Why? Because proper DR testing (because it tends to be disruptive to normal processing, because it is complex, and because it is an IT administrator burden) is something that many IT organizations ignore and would like to sweep under the rug. Anything that makes effective DR testing feasible and easier is to be welcomed and CA's decision to incorporate these capabilities means that companies are much more likely to gain the advantage of proper DR testing.
In addition, CA is offering an "X-tra Value Pack" bundle for CA ARCserve that incorporates CA XOsoft replication, but not the high availability product.
