StorageCraft product information
Manage Your Backups with ShadowProtect ImageManager
You may not know about it, but ShadowProtect comes with a handy utility called ShadowProtect ImageManager™. It comes with most versions of ShadowProtect, except ShadowProtect IT Edition™ and ShadowProtect Granular Recovery for Exchange™.
ShadowProtect ImageManager works with servers and with desktops and has several cool features that can really help you manage your backup image files. If you’re taking several backups each day, as you should, these backup image files can start eating up your disk space pretty fast, unless you have a way to manage them.
That’s why ShadowProtect ImageManager allows you to automatically consolidate point-in-time backup image files. Once you set it up, it can collapse all your daily images into one “daily” file. Then, each week it can collapse those “daily” files into one “weekly” file. And then it will collapse those “weekly” files into a “monthly” file. This helps minimize disk space. This is why we recommend that you set your ShadowProtect backups to perform “continuous incrementals.” Then it’s easy for ShadowProtect ImageManager to help you save disk space and collapse those incremental files each day, week and month.
In addition, ShadowProtect ImageManager will verify and re-verify your backup images. This way you can be certain all of your backups are in a good state, just in case you need them to recover your system.
Finally, you can also set up ShadowProtect ImageManager to track the status of your backups and notify you in the event of a backup job success — or failure. Now you can know right away if something goes wrong.
Earlier this year, StorageCraft also introduced a new version of ShadowProtect ImageManager, called ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise™. It’s designed specifically for servers and has two additional features – HeadStart Restore™ and image verification. In our next blog article, we’ll spend some time explaining those features and its additional per-server licensing requirements.
ShadowProtect 4.0.1 Is Available
A new version of StorageCraft ShadowProtect is available: ShadowProtect 4.0.1. It has several feature enhancements, including improvements to VirtualBoot™, an improved Recovery Wizard in the StorageCraft Recovery Environment and updated help links. There’s a lot more detail about the new things in ShadowProtect 4.0.1 in the ReadMe file, which you can check out online.
You can download a 30-day trial version of ShadowProtect Server, ShadowProtect Small Business Server or ShadowProtect Desktop from the ShadowProtect software trials Web page. You may also update your existing version of ShadowProtect from the ShadowProtect software updates page.
As always, if you need more information about a specific ShadowProtect product, you may visit one of the following product pages:
ShadowProtect Server™ – http://www.storagecraft.com/ShadowProtectServer
ShadowProtect Small Business Server™ – http://www.storagecraft.com/ShadowProtectSBS
ShadowProtect Desktop™ – http://www.storagecraft.com/ShadowProtectDesktop
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise™ – http://www.storagecraft.com/ShadowProtectIME
Setting up a Network
If you’ve ever thought about setting up a network at home or even been so ambitious as to set up a small office network, you know that it isn’t simple or straight forward. Getting everything running smoothly requires time, patience and several bottles of aspirin.
PC Magazine recently put together a how-to guide giving you some tips and tricks to make the process a little smoother. This guide explains the kind of storage to get and how to protect it.
You can set up your own local backup system given enough external storage space. If you’re going to take this course, we recommend creating not just a backup, but a whole drive image – that is, a backup of not just your data, but your entire PC – everything from your files to all the tweaks you make to your OS and apps so that they perform the way you want them to. The best software for this, hands down, is ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0.
Check out the entire article and pick up a few pointers. You may even have some of your own that the article doesn’t highlight. You can always share them here and give others the benefit of your wisdom and experience.
How SMBs Can Protect Critical Data
Maximizing business continuity while protecting critical data can be especially challenging for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Most data protection systems are designed for large enterprise environments, which do not work for SMBs. For smaller businesses, resources are especially limited, and administrators cannot afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for expensive continuous data protection (CDP) solutions. But having a server out of commission isn’t an option either.
In addition, many data protection solutions overlook the critical component of the recovery time objective (RTO). Your RTO is the maximum amount of time your systems can be out of commission – from when a disruption occurs to the moment your system is available again. Minimizing your RTO helps you avoid the consequences of a long-term break in business continuity.
Unfortunately, most backup and recovery strategies are bound by technological limitations. When your server has many terabytes (TB) of data that must be recovered – not to mention the operating system and applications – it takes many hours to restore everything from the original volume, even at relatively rapid disk speeds.
Cloud computing and off-site replication can help address concerns about data security and help ensure that information is available following a catastrophe. But again, these types of security solutions are often unavailable to SMBs due to their complexity and their costs.
Plus, IT administrators working for SMBs rarely have the time or the resources to managecomplex backup systems that require extensive certifications or hours of training to understand. But having a clear picture of your backup resources, knowing whether backups are successful and minimizing the resources required for ongoing data protection are imperative.
Download this white paper to learn more about each of these issues, why they are important for SMBs to address and how to resolve them while maximizing business continuity, protecting critical data and minimizing IT resources necessary to accomplish the demands of maintaining Windows servers.
Maximizing Business Continuity
Maximizing business continuity while minimizing business disruption can be especially challenging for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) following a server failure. Resources are limited, so there isn’t a lot of help to get systems back online. Having a server out of commission is never pleasant, but the consequences of business disruption are grimmer for SMBs than they are for large enterprises that can disperse the effect of a server meltdown.
That’s why it is vitally important to keep your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) at a level that helps you avoid the serious consequences of a break in the flow of your daily business. Your RTO is the maximum amount of time your systems can be out of commission – from when a disruption occurs to the moment your system is available again. Minimizing your RTO helps you avoid the consequences of a long-term break in business continuity.
Unfortunately, most backup and recovery strategies are bound by technological limitations. When your server has many terabytes (TB) of data that must be recovered – not to mention the operating system and applications – it takes many hours to restore everything from the original volume, even at relatively rapid disk speeds.
In addition, the promise of virtualization may seem attractive for SMBs, particularly since virtualization can help address limitations on resources. But the reality of the cost and time expenditures to transfer data to virtual servers, in addition to the complexity of virtualization technology, makes this prohibitive.
Finally, upgrading to a new Windows server can frustrate IT staff with its complexity and potential for disaster. The migration process can place a heavy load on SMBs with limited IT resources.
Download this white paper to learn more about each of these issues, why they are important for SMBs to address and how to resolve them while maximizing business continuity and minimizing IT resources necessary to accomplish the demands of maintaining Windows servers.
Improve Your Recovery Time Objective with HeadStart Restore
Business won’t wait while you try to restore your server following a catastrophic failure. So a new feature in the award-winning StorageCraft ShadowProtect line of backup, disaster recovery and system migration software will help you improve your recovery time objective (RTO) – the maximum amount of time your server can be out of commission. HeadStart Restore™ (HSR) allows you to begin the server recovery process right away, before a disaster. Whether it’s a natural disaster that took you out or a RAID router meltdown, it doesn’t really matter. You have to get access to your data as quickly as possible and you have to get your business running again.
HSR is available in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise, the newest solution in the ShadowProtect family, and here’s how it works. ShadowProtect Server (or ShadowProtect Small Business Server) is taking regular backups of your data; these are snapshots of a point in time on your server. If you want to schedule your backups for every few minutes, you can do that. You can even set the scheduler in ShadowProtect to take incremental backups – just the deltas or small changes to your server – throughout the day.
Now you set ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise to create a restore job for a specific server. Once you’ve set up that job, ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise updates that restore job with the incremental changes that are made, so your restore job has all of the data updates that were made throughout the day. Here’s the really cool part: when a catastrophe strikes, you won’t have to wait hours and hours (or days and days) to get that server online again, because HSR has already been restoring the server. Recovery starts and is ongoing as your backups continue.
To get the server online, it will take just a few more steps. First, you finalize your restore job, which takes just a few seconds. Now you need to get it ready to restore into a virtual machine so you run ShadowProtect’s Hardware Independent Restore™ technology. Now you just reboot your server, and you’re up and running again. This process takes 15-20 minutes, even if you have a multi-TB volume of data.
There are other new features available in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise, such as replication, which allows you to send your backup images to an off-site location. You can find out more by visiting the ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise product page.
Time to Tackle Your Data
New reports show that data storage is growing larger all the time. EMC recently released a report predicting massive increases in the amount of data we’ll be storing in the next 10 years. Forget terabytes and petabytes — even 
exabytes; think zettabytes. How much is a zettabyte? It’s a trillion gigabytes. It’s enough to make your head ache. Even amid the recession, data growth increased phenomenally. That doesn’t mean we’ll see petabyte hard drives this year, but all this data means that it will happen eventually, and probably sooner rather than later.
So what’s an IT admin to do to manage all of that growth? How can you wrap your brain around that much information, let alone protect all of that data? EMC says that we’ll have 44 times the amount of data we have now in 2020, so ignoring the problem won’t make it disappear.
The best thing you can do is find the most elegant solution possible and enjoy the ride. Now is the time to plan for data explosion and figure out how you’re going to protect all of that information. Not just the information you’re using right now, but the information you’ll be using in five years. Plus, there will come a time a few years down the road when you’ll have to have access again to all your current information. Can you trust that your tape archive will cut it?
ShadowProtect Server 4.0 has a pretty cool feature in it called VirtualBoot™. One of the great uses for VirtualBoot is giving you access to legacy systems and data. Think you don’t have to worry about that? In six years, what operating system will you be using? Will all of the applications you’re currently running run on that system? VirtualBoot will allow you open your ShadowProtect backup image files and boot them into a virtual environment, for quick and easy access to all that data. Plus, it only takes one or two minutes to boot a large server volume, even one that’s a couple of terabytes in size. (Yes, that’s one or two minutes. It isn’t a typo.)
With ShadowProtect backups protecting your data, you won’t have to worry about your data getting out of hand. If you haven’t checked out features like VirtualBoot that are in ShadowProtect 4.0, we have all kinds of product information on the ShadowProtect Server page.
ShadowProtect Tutorial
There is a lot of new product information available to help you get to know all of the things that StorageCraft ShadowProtect 4.0 can do. We have a great online tutorial that walks you through the different product features: ShadowProtect Product Tour.
This product tour will help you understand the new whistles and bells, like VirtualBoot™ and the new management tools. But this tutorial also explains some of the features that have been in ShadowProtect all along — and how to use them. So if you know someone who needs to see how to set up a backup job or how to perform a complete system restore, this Webcast will walk them through it. Plus, in case you don’t want to watch the entire tutorial, you can skip to the part you need.
Let us know if there are any more Webcasts you’d like to see.
Don’t Upgrade that Server Without ShadowProtect
If a server upgrade is in your future, Tech Republic has a great list of DOs and DON’Ts when you’re upgrading your server. Check out this video:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/itdojo/?p=1732
We can’t stress the first two items enough. Always, always, always verify your backup first. And if you’re using ShadowProtect, it’s very easy to get that server back up again if something goes wrong. Plus the Hardware Independent Restore tools in ShadowProtect will help you if you need to migrate to brand new hardware.
You may want to read the Tech Republic article that gives the full list of things to remember when you’re upgrading a server. The article also recommends using an imaging solution, like ShadowProtect, when you’re tackling that upgrade. Short version: Don’t upgrade without it.
Virtual Backup
Many SMBs are flirting with virtualization these days. It isn’t just for large enterprises any more. That’s because it can help you maximize storage or give you a way to keep that server running while you’re repairing your physical hardware. In any case, a lot of people are looking into the ways virtualized storage can be a lifesaver. Fortunately, as a ShadowProtect user, you won’t have to change your backup solution if you decide to make the switch to the virtual world. That’s because ShadowProtect not only backs up physical systems, it backs up virtual systems as well.
In addition, ShadowProtect has the added advantage of allowing you to migrate from physical environments to virtual ones, and from virtual to physical — or any combination of the two (P2P, P2V, V2V or V2P). The cool Hardware Independent Restore™ technology in ShadowProtect allows you to change your environment no matter what kind of hardware you’re switching to. So upgrade that server without fear.
Plus, you’ll want to check out the new virtualization tools in ShadowProtect 4.0. The newest version of ShadowProtect has two really cool new features. The first is VirtualBoot™, which lets you right-click on a ShadowProtect backup image file and boot it as a virtual machine, usually in about two minutes (no matter how large the server). Another feature is the new Virtual Converter in the Backup Image tool, which lets you convert a ShadowProtect backup image into a VM — either .VHD or .VMDK.
If you’re exploring how to make the most of virtual technology to maximize your storage, be sure to see how ShadowProtect will help you get all your data into the virtual world — and to continue to protect it once you’re there.
SSG-NOW Analyst Sizes Up ShadowProtect 4.0
StorageCraft Technology’s ShadowProtect 4: A study in enterprise data protection
New server virtualization and quick server recovery features introduced
By Deni Connor
Principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW
April 2010
Protecting your organization’s most valuable assets – your data – should be a priority for any business. Whether those data assets are stored on physical or virtual servers or desktop PCs in your environment, it is important to be able to not only back this equipment up, but to recover it as well in the event of a disaster or server failure.
StorageCraft’s introduction of new versions of its data protection software — ShadowProtect Server4, ShadowProtect Small Business Server 4, ShadowProtect Desktop 4 and ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise 4– this month is focused on rapid server recovery, server virtualization and an enhanced management interface – each an enhancement that will help an IT administrator to better manage and protect the physical and virtual machines in his environment.
Quick server recovery
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise, available as an add-on to ShadowProtect Server and ShadowProtect Desktop, leads in the number of enhancements shipped. The software enables the consolidation of daily, weekly and monthly image backup files into a single image file to save on storage consumption and ease the management of the images maintained on the system. ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise consists of five critical capabilities: quick server recovery using HeadStart Restore (HSR) technology, image verification and re-verification, off-site replication, notification and consolidation.
Most important about the ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise software is its quick recovery of file and application servers. With HeadStart Restore technology, IT administrators can create jobs that capture a virtual machine image complete with incremental up-to-the minute changes. When a server fails, the virtual machine file can be selectively updated, the server prepared with ShadowProtect’s Hardware Independent Restore (HIR) technology and then rebooted to a VMware Disk Image (VMDK) or Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file. HeadStart Restore’s ability to apply the latest changes to the virtual machine file is optional as the last incremental backup applied to the virtual machine may include the problem that caused the server to fail.
HeadStart Restore is particularly useful in its ability to provide nearly instantaneous disaster recovery for servers, especially those containing large, terabyte-sized amounts of data. In this situation, when an IT administrator wants to recover the server, he or she can simply choose and finalize the last incremental backup taken and recover the server and its data and thus, eliminate the time it would take to restore the entire multi-terabyte server.
Further, the ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise software verifies and rechecks backup image chains to ensure that servers can be recovered into a known good state in the event of a disaster or failure. The software verifies the backup image by calculating an MD5 checksum and comparing it to the MD5 checksum generated when an image was created.
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise also allows off-site asynchronous replication over IP, which lets administrators vault point-in-time backup images to another location for disaster recovery or archival purposes. And, the software includes a notification process that alerts the IT administrator of the status of backup jobs based on e-mail configurations. (A “standard” version of ShadowProtect ImageManager ships with ShadowProtect Server, Small Business Server and Desktop without any additional cost. But it doesn’t include HSR or replication.)
Finally, ShadowProtectServer and Desktop now include the ability to restore server operating systems, data and applications to dissimilar hardware or virtual environments and to multiple targets via its Hardware Independent Restore (HIR) capability. Hardware Independent Restore can also be used to facilitate migrations to a new server or desktop or to consolidate servers and desktops to virtual environments.
Server virtualization
Other enhancements to StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect products focus on server virtualization. ShadowProtect Server 4, ShadowProtect Small Business Server 4 and ShadowProtect Desktop 4 introduce several improvements to virtual server backup, including VirtualBoot and Virtual Converter capability.
VirtualBoot allows the booting of virtual servers from a point-in-time backup image using Oracle/Sun’s open source VirtualBox virtualization technology (VirtualBox.org). This solution uses Virtualbox as a virtual machine environment for mounting the ShadowProtect image. VirtualBox links to the latest ShadowProtect point-in-time image and mounts “on-the-fly” to boot the physical machine as a virtual machine. When the virtual machine comes up, the backup job continues to run, creating a fast incremental image of the state of the machine.
The Virtual Converter tool lets an IT administrator convert ShadowProtect backup images to either VMware disk image (VMDK) files or to Microsoft Hyper-V Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files for storage, reboot and server recovery purposes.
Simplified management
Finally, ShadowProtect 4 has a new management interface that allows centralized backup administration. From the management console, IT administrators can simultaneously push installations of ShadowProtect Server, ShadowProtect Small Business Server or ShadowProtect Desktop to all Windows machines. A new agent discovery function can automatically discover agents or clients on the system that ShadowProtect can be pushed to.
The management console also lets administrators check the status of system backups and import or export server information. And a new grouping function allows administrators to create groups of physical or virtual machines for simplified management.
SSG-NOW Assessment
StorageCraft’s data protection products rate at the top of the list for meeting the needs of small and mid-size businesses. The incorporation of rapid server recovery via the ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise functionality is particularly useful as it establishes an easy-to-implement way for SMBs to recover their Windows servers in the event of disaster or failure. StorageCraft has introduced a truly innovative feature in its product – its HeadStart Restore capability in ImageManager Enterprise starts restoring data as it backs up data, resulting in exceeding fast recovery. In addition, its implementation of server booting from the open source VirtualBox technology is truly an innovative approach to recovery and booting of virtual machines.
Note: The information and recommendations made by Storage Strategies NOW are based upon public information and sources and may also include personal opinions both of Storage Strategies NOW and others, all of which we believe to be accurate and reliable. As market conditions change however, and not within our control, the information and recommendations are made without warranty of any kind. All product names used and mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. Storage Strategies NOW, Inc. assumes no responsibility or liability for any damages whatsoever (including incidental, consequential or otherwise), caused by your use of, or reliance upon, the information and recommendations presented herein, nor for any inadvertent errors which may appear in this document.
ShadowProtect Desktop is available
StorageCraft is releasing ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0 today. Like ShadowProtect Server, it includes some of the same cool features in that are in ShadowProtect Server 4.0, such as VirtualBoot™ and backup verification and re-verification.
It’s also very easy to test drive it with the free 30-day trial version. The trial has all of the features of the full version, except for the recovery environment, which isn’t quite as restrictive as that may sound. For example, you can recover individual files and folders from backup images with the trial version, using the Explore Backup wizard and you can recover data volumes on your system, as well. You just can’t restore your system (primary) volume because you don’t have the bootable recovery CD.
So go ahead and test drive ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0. We have the trial up on our Web site, or you can download it from sites like PC World. Try it, you’ll like it enough to buy it.
StorageCraft Releases ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0
Backup, disaster recovery and migration software has new features to improve restore rates, virtual integration and centralized management
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DRAPER, Utah, U.S.A. – April 22, 2010 – StorageCraft Technology Corporation, a provider of innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, today released StorageCraft ShadowProtect Desktop™ 4.0. The newest version in the ShadowProtect™ line of award-winning backup, disaster recovery and system migration technology addresses the need to protect business assets – the data that resides on desktops and laptops throughout an enterprise – and improves virtualization technology while centralizing management of desktop backups throughout an enterprise.
ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0 includes several recovery options that allow you to improve business continuity by reducing the time desktops and laptops are offline. ShadowProtect gives you the flexibility of choosing granular recovery of files and folders or full bare metal recovery of a system in a matter of minutes. Hardware Independent Restore™ (HIR) technology makes it quick and easy to recover to the same system, to dissimilar hardware or to and from virtual environments. ShadowProtect’s HIR feature also makes system migration to new desktops or consolidation to virtual environments a straightforward process.
“Today’s business world is very decentralized as many workers rely on laptops as their sole computing environment,” said Deni Connor, principal analyst with Storage Strategies NOW, a research firm focusing on storage technologies. “Some small businesses conduct all business from desktops and laptops, choosing not to centralize their data to a server environment. Businesses need a solution, such as ShadowProtect Desktop, which can automate backups and restore systems very quickly in the event of a lost laptop, a drive failure on a desktop or some other disaster.”
Flexible Recovery
ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0 gives you several recovery options – bare metal recovery, recovery to dissimilar hardware and recovery to and from virtual environments for complete system restores – or simple granular recovery of files and folders in a matter of seconds.
ShadowProtect Desktop also improves on its virtualized technology features such as Hardware Independent Restore with new VirtualBoot™ technology to give administrators the ability to boot any ShadowProtect backup image into a virtual machine using Sun VirtualBox. The backup image file can be booted into a .VMDK or .VHD format. In addition, ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0 can convert any ShadowProtect backup image into a virtual machine without the need to use any third-party technology.
“VirtualBoot is an amazingly quick way to failover to a virtual machine,” said Brandon Nordquist, vice president of product management at StorageCraft. “There are several kinds of scenarios where VirtualBoot technology can be very helpful, including testing new applications, booting obsolete operating systems or recovering files from old systems.”
Backup Management
ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0 includes additional features which make it simpler to manage desktop and laptop backups across your system. ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0 includes a management console, at no additional cost, that allows IT Administrators to push install ShadowProtect simultaneously to multiple desktops and laptops, group machines, import or export node information or check the status of ShadowProtect backups.
ShadowProtect ImageManager™ allows administrators to verify and re-verify ShadowProtect backup image files as well as consolidate backup image files to minimize storage usage and streamline management. ShadowProtect ImageManager is also included at no additional cost.
Additional Features
ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0 also includes Resume on Interruption – the ability to continue a restore, even after it’s been halted by a power failure or other disruption. In addition, it has an updated user interface.
ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0 includes the following features:
· Hardware Independent Restore (HIR),
· Bare metal recovery,
· Granular recovery of files and folders in moments,
· Resume on interruption,
· Central management console,
· VirtualBoot,
· Virtual converter,
· ShadowProtect ImageManager,
· Image verification and re-verification,
· Image consolidation.
Pricing and Availability
ShadowProtect Desktop is available from authorized StorageCraft distributors and value-added resellers (VARs). Volume discounts are available.
For additional information about StorageCraft ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0, or to learn more about volume licensing, please e-mail sales@storagecraft.com, call +1 801 545-4700 or visit: www.StorageCraft.com/ShadowProtectDesktop.
About StorageCraft Technology Corporation
StorageCraft Technology Corporation provides innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops. StorageCraft delivers software products that reduce downtime, improve security and stability for systems and data and lower the total cost of ownership for servers, desktops and laptops.
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StorageCraft Releases ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise 4.0
Disaster Recovery software includes revolutionary technology to dramatically improve recovery, backup image management
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DRAPER, Utah, U.S.A. – April 21, 2010 – StorageCraft Technology Corporation, a provider of innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, today announced the release of StorageCraft ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise™ 4.0. The newest version in the ShadowProtect™ line of award-winning backup, disaster recovery and system migration technology dramatically decreases the amount of time required to restore Windows systems and improves central management of ShadowProtect backups.
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise includes a new feature called HeadStart Restore™ (HSR), which allows IT managers to automate recovery – getting servers back up and running in a matter of mere minutes, rather than hours. IT managers create a system restore job from their ShadowProtect Server™ or ShadowProtect Small Business Server™ scheduled backups. The HSR job begins the recovery process immediately – and the restore job is updated with incremental changes throughout the day. Following a disaster, the administrator is able to finalize the restore and get the server online again very quickly.
“System restores often involve terabytes of data, which means a realistic RTO is hours,” said Scott Barnes, chief technology officer at StorageCraft. “With HeadStart Restore, we’ve drastically reduced the time it takes to recover your systems and data because most of the system and data recovery occurred before there was even a failure.”
How HSR Works
To prepare a server for HSR, the IT administrator sets up a system restore job in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise, which begins recovery right away.
HeadStart Restore
Any incremental changes to the backup are also sent to the system restore job and applied. The Lag Time Apply feature in HSR also allows administrators to delay incremental changes – to account for corruption from malware or a virus. By default, this is set to three days, but this can be changed to suit IT requirements.
In the event of a disaster, the administrator finalizes the restore – which usually takes seconds to apply the incremental updates – then prepares the virtual environment, runs ShadowProtect’s Hardware Independent Restore™ technology, reboots the server, and is back up and running. The elapsed time is several minutes, not several hours.
“Being able to get a jump on the restore process with HeadStart Restore is a tremendous asset for our business and for our customers,” said Shawn Massey, director of NetAssist at Camera Corner/Connecting Point Computer Center. “We’re able to get servers up and running in a fraction of the time it used to take. Downtime is expensive, and knowing that it won’t take all day or all weekend to rebuild a server is invaluable.”
Additional Features
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise also includes replication technology, to allow you to send your backup images to a separate location, on-site or off-site. Once you’ve configured replication, you can send backup images to one or multiple locations. This feature also lets you save backups to an off-site location to meet compliancy and archival requirements.
In addition, ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise allows administrators to verify and re-verify ShadowProtect backup image files, consolidate backup image files to minimize storage usage and streamline management and set up e-mail notification to track the status of backup jobs.
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise has the following features:
· HeadStart Restore
· Lag Time Apply
· Image replication
· Image verification and re-verification
· Image consolidation
· E-mail notification
Pricing and Availability
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise is available from authorized StorageCraft distributors and value-added resellers (VARs). Volume discounts are available.
For additional information about StorageCraft ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise 4.0, or to learn more about volume licensing, please e-mail sales@storagecraft.com, call +1 801 545-4700 or visit: www.StorageCraft.com/ShadowProtectIME.
About StorageCraft Technology Corporation
StorageCraft Technology Corporation provides innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops. StorageCraft delivers software products that reduce downtime, improve security and stability for systems and data and lower the total cost of ownership for servers, desktops and laptops.
www.storagecraft.com
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StorageCraft Releases ShadowProtect Server 4.0
Backup, disaster recovery and migration software has new features to improve restore rates, virtual integration and centralized management
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DRAPER, Utah, U.S.A. – April 21, 2010 – StorageCraft Technology Corporation, a provider of innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, today released StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server™ 4.0 and StorageCraft ShadowProtect Small Business Server™ 4.0. The newest version in the ShadowProtect™ line of award-winning backup, disaster recovery and system migration technology addresses the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for businesses, the need to integrate disaster recovery planning with virtualized systems as well as centralizing management of backups.
ShadowProtect Server 4.0
“The new functionality is truly game changing for us and we look forward to utilizing ShadowProtect 4.0 in our managed services offering.”
ShadowProtect Server 4.0 includes several recovery options that allow you to improve RTO by reducing the time your systems and data are offline. ShadowProtect gives you the flexibility of choosing granular recovery of files and folders or full bare metal recover of your server in a matter of minutes. Hardware Independent Restore™ (HIR) technology makes it quick and easy to recover to the same system, to dissimilar hardware or to and from virtual environments. ShadowProtect’s HIR feature also makes system migration to new servers or consolidation to virtual environments a straightforward process.
“Business continuity is key,” said Deni Connor, principal analyst with Storage Strategies NOW, a research firm focusing on storage technologies. “Having a disaster recovery plan, recovering data quickly with a minimal loss of productivity, can mean the difference between staying in business and closing your doors. That’s why backup and disaster recovery software such as ShadowProtect can be critical for maintaining access to your Windows servers and all of the business-critical applications and data on them.”
Virtualization Technology
ShadowProtect Server 4.0 improves on its virtualized technology features such as HIR with new VirtualBoot™ technology to give administrators the ability to boot any ShadowProtect backup image into a virtual machine using Sun VirtualBox. The backup image file can be booted into a .VMDK or .VHD format. In addition, ShadowProtect Server 4.0 can convert any ShadowProtect backup image into a virtual machine without the need to use any third-party technology.
VirtualBoot
“We could not be more excited about VirtualBoot and the other features that ShadowProtect 4.0 is bringing to the table,” said Sean Furman, president of STF Consulting. “The new functionality is truly game changing for us and we look forward to utilizing ShadowProtect 4.0 in our managed services offering.”
Centralized Management
ShadowProtect Server 4.0 includes a management console, at no additional cost, for central management of ShadowProtect on multiple servers. IT Administrators may push an agent simultaneously to multiple machines, group servers, import or export node information or check the status of ShadowProtect backups.
In addition, ShadowProtect ImageManager™ allows administrators to verify and re-verify ShadowProtect backup image files as well as consolidate backup image files to minimize storage usage and streamline management. Additional features are included in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise™.
Recovery Features
ShadowProtect Server 4.0 also includes Resume on Interruption – the ability to continue a restore, even after it’s been halted by a power failure or other disruption. In addition, it has an updated user interface.
ShadowProtect Server 4.0 includes the following features:
· Hardware Independent Restore (HIR),
· Bare metal recovery,
· Granular recovery of files and folders in moments,
· Resume on Interruption,
· Central management console,
· VirtualBoot,
· Virtual converter,
· ShadowProtect ImageManager,
· Image verification and re-verification,
· Image consolidation.
“The new features in ShadowProtect Server 4.0 will give IT administrators flexible options for getting their systems and data back online very quickly,” said Scott Barnes, StorageCraft CTO. “Backup is easy and everyone is doing it. Restoring massive amounts of data quickly and making it accessible is the difficult part. ShadowProtect’s advanced technology helps get business back online in minutes, not hours or days.”
Pricing and Availability
ShadowProtect Server and ShadowProtect Small Business Server are available from authorized StorageCraft distributors and value-added resellers (VARs). Volume discounts are available.
For additional information about StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server 4.0, or to learn more about volume licensing, please e-mail sales@storagecraft.com, call +1 801 545-4700 or visit: www.StorageCraft.com/ShadowProtectServer or www.StorageCraft.com/ShadowProtectSBS.
About StorageCraft Technology Corporation
StorageCraft Technology Corporation provides innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops. StorageCraft delivers software products that reduce downtime, improve security and stability for systems and data and lower the total cost of ownership for servers, desktops and laptops. www.storagecraft.com
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StorageCraft Launches ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise
StorageCraft released a brand new product this morning, ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise™ 4.0. ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise is an add-on feature for ShadowProtect Server™ and ShadowProtect Small Business Server™. It has a few more features than the basic product, ShadowProtect ImageManager, which comes with all of the ShadowProtect™ products.
The revolutionary feature in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise is HeadStart Restore™, which allows you to simultaneously restore your server backup images, while you’re still backing up your server.
“System restores often involve terabytes of data, which means a realistic RTO is hours,” said Scott Barnes, chief technology officer at StorageCraft. “With HeadStart Restore, we’ve drastically reduced the time it takes to recover your systems and data because most of the system and data recovery occurred before there was even a failure.”
With HeadStart Restore — or HSR — you set up a system restore “job” in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise to begin the server recovery right away.
ShadowProtect Server continues to back up any incremental changes that are made on the server, which also get sent to the HeadStart Restore job and applied. The Lag Time Apply feature in HSR also allows administrators to delay incremental changes – to account for corruption from malware or a virus. By default, this is set to three days, but this can be changed to suit IT requirements.
In the event of a disaster, the administrator finalizes the restore – which usually takes seconds to apply the incremental updates – then prepares the virtual environment, runs ShadowProtect’s Hardware Independent Restore™ technology, reboots the server, and is back up and running. The elapsed time is several minutes, not several hours. So you’re able to restore a server with even multi-terabytes of data in 15-20 minutes.
“Being able to get a jump on the restore process with HeadStart Restore is a tremendous asset for our business and for our customers,” said Shawn Massey, director of NetAssist at Camera Corner/Connecting Point Computer Center. “We’re able to get servers up and running in a fraction of the time it used to take. Downtime is expensive, and knowing that it won’t take all day or all weekend to rebuild a server is invaluable.”
You can find all kinds of additional information about StorageCraft ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise 4.0 on the ShadowProtect product pages, including data sheets and white papers. Or e-mail sales@storagecraft.com.
ShadowProtect Server 4.0 and ShadowProtect Small Business Server Available
StorageCraft released ShadowProtect Server™ 4.0 and ShadowProtect Small Business Server™ 4.0 this morning. There are some great new features in this new version that you will definitely want to check out.
In particular VirtualBoot™. With VirtualBoot, you can right click on any ShadowProtect™ image file and boot it as a virtual machine. 
This feature makes it very easy to test new software in your server environment or boot legacy systems for archival purposes.
“We could not be more excited about VirtualBoot and the other features that ShadowProtect 4.0 is bringing to the table,” said Sean Furman, president of STF Consulting. “The new functionality is truly game changing for us and we look forward to utilizing ShadowProtect 4.0 in our managed services offering.”
VirtualBoot uses Sun VirtualBox to boot the file into .VMDK or .VHD format.
Other features in ShadowProtect Server 4.0:
- Central management console,
- Virtual converter,
- ShadowProtect ImageManager™,
- Image verification and re-verification,
- Image consolidation,
- Resume on Interruption,
- Hardware Independent Restore™ (HIR),
- Bare metal recovery,
- Granular recovery of files and folders in moments.
Check out the ShadowProtect product pages for additional information, including data sheets, white papers and product tours.
Upgrading Your Server
Tech Republic has a great server upgrade list of things to think about before you start the big task. The article starts off with the most important step – backup. The real key is to make sure you not only have the data, but everything on the server.
When upgrades go south, disk images can help recover not only data but a server’s complex configuration in a hurry.
If a server upgrade is in your near future, check out this great list, and make sure you start out with ShadowProtect Server (or ShadowProtect Small Business Server). The Hardware Independent Restore (HIR) technology helps make upgrading your server much easier. You can use HIR to migrate to new hardware or even virtual hardware without worry.
If you’re planning a server upgrade to new hardware, you’ll also want to read this Hardware Independent Restore article in the Knowledge Base at the StorageCraft Support Center.
Simple Way to Avoid Data Loss
We’ve been saying it, and you’ve heard it time and again: Back it up! It’s the sure-fire way to avoid the nightmare of a fried hard disk. A recent article on Gizmodo.com ( The Five Stages of Data Loss Grief ) is a perfect reminder of the whole reason to back up your data — to avoid the disaster altogether. The article is pretty funny, taking you through the stages you go through, much the same way that therapy takes you through the stages of grieving the loss of a loved one. The problem here is that this is an issue that’s entirely avoidable. A simple backup plan will eliminate the need to go through any of these stages. Instead, you’ll experience something like this:
1. Oh, no! My hard drive crashed.
2. Boy am I glad I backed up my data. Now it will just take a few minutes to restore my system.
Now that wasn’t difficult at all, was it? The reality is that while technology is great, it’s also prone to failure. Hard drives die, so back them up.
If you don’t already have one, buy backup software (like ShadowProtect, of course) that you can automate. Install it and set up a schedule. How often should you back up your data? The answer lies in how often you’re making changes to your drive. For most of us, a few times a day is more than sufficient, especially if your backup is running in the background so you don’t notice any change in your efficiency. But if you’re a power user or writing the great American novel, you may want to schedule backups several times an hour. Save your backups to a removable hard drive and then set it up to e-mail you in the event your backup fails. That may be your first indication that your hard drive is dying.
Next, make sure you have a separate backup of your hard drive saved in a remote location; update your off-site backup periodically. You may feel secure taking your off-site drive to a friend’s house for safekeeping. But if you’re protecting secrets that could bring down nations, you may want to secure that backup in a location such as a safety deposit box. If your friend’s home burns down (or the bank floods), after empathizing with your friend, make a new backup.
These steps may take a little time to plan and accomplish, but in the long run, you’ll sleep better and be much happier when your drive fails. Think of all the time you’ll save then.
Speed Up Your Exchange Recovery
This webinar occurred in the past. For more information visit the Exchange backup page on the StorageCraft web site.
Due to popular demand, we’re adding additional online training sessions to introduce StorageCraft ShadowProtect Granular Recovery for Exchange. Many of our reseller and solution provider partners were not able to attend our previous Webinars, so we’ve added three — one this week and two next week. Here’s the schedule for the training sessions:
Thursday, March 11th: 2:00 – 3:00 PM EST
Tuesday, March 16th: 2:00 – 3:00 PM EDT
Thursday, March 18th: 2:00 – 3:00 PM EDT
(The daylight time versus standard time designation should remind you that Daylight Saving Time begins Sunday. And it’s the dreaded “spring forward” when we lose an hour of sleep. Sorry.)
The training sessions will explain how ShadowProtect Granular Recovery for Exchange will help you recover lost mailboxes, e-mail messages and e-mail attachments, quickly and easily. It will also help you search for specific information in your Exchange environment (like e-mail messages containing certain words), migrate to a new Exchange server simply and easily or run reports on your Exchange environment. We’ve heard from some of our partners that software that does all that sounds “too good to be true” — but it really works. It will save you a lot of time and help you avoid many headaches.
What’s Your Second Line of Defense Against a Virus?
The headlines are always scary: “Conficker Worm Strikes Police Department,” “Botnet Attack Launched on Government Web Sites” and “Computer Virus Brings Down Hospital.” The way viruses, malware, spyware and denial of service attacks are striking businesses on a regular basis show that they’ve almost become a way of life for us. These problems constantly put us on the defense, so it’s a good idea to make sure you’re doing all you can:
- Implement solid anti-virus software across your business. Make sure virus definition files are updated frequently for all your users.
- Put up firewalls and make sure they’re adequate for the latest kinds of attacks.
- Educate your users. Tell them that the Web sites they visit — even reputable ones — might be infected. So they shouldn’t download software unless they’re sure it’s safe.
- Make sure you’re backups are up to date.
That last one may seem strange, but it’s something you can do that proactively addresses the next possible attack. After all, there is no “current” defense for the next virus, adware or malware.
Consider that your backup can be another kind of “anti-virus” tool. With a point-in-time solution like ShadowProtect, you can recover your server (or a desktop or laptop) to a known, good state before the attack took place. Plus, your backup should allow you to restore quickly, otherwise it’s just as much a problem as the virus that took you down. Waiting around while you restore terabytes of data, isn’t an option. You need a solution that can get you up and running in a matter of minutes, not hours.
The next time you’re updating your anti-virus software or fine-tuning your firewall, consider that you might want to make sure you have a plan in place in case your first line of defense doesn’t hold.
StorageCraft Offers Competitive Upgrade Pricing for ShadowProtect
BakBone customers who switch to ShadowProtect will receive discounted pricing
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DRAPER, Utah, U.S.A. – Feb. 18,2010 – StorageCraft Technology Corporation, a provider of innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, today announced it will offer competitive upgrade pricing to those who choose to switch to the StorageCraft ShadowProtect™ line of disk-based backup, disaster recovery and system migration software for Windows servers, desktops and laptops.
StorageCraft is offering this special pricing discount to current users of BakBone NetVault software who wish to purchase StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server™ or ShadowProtect Small Business Server™.
“ShadowProtect makes it very easy to protect your systems and data – whether they’re physical systems or virtual systems,” said Curt James, vice president of marketing and business development at StorageCraft. “Many resellers and IT administrators are switching to StorageCraft solutions because they offer ease of use and they are incredibly reliable.”
ShadowProtect has the following advantages:
* Bare metal recovery of Windows servers in minutes.
* Ability to restore or migrate backup images to and from physical systems and virtual environments (P2P, P2V, V2P and V2V).
* Hardware independent restore of backup images to different systems.
* Support for online backup applications such as Exchange and SQL.
* Ability to schedule automatic full and/or incremental backups.
* ImageManager™ tool to limit storage consumption and simplify archiving.
* Ability to compress and encrypt backup images.
How to Receive Upgrade Pricing
Competitive upgrade discount pricing is for existing BakBone NetVault Backup, Bare Metal Recovery and Real-Time Data Protector customers. The competitive upgrade discount is 35 percent off the list price when customers switch to ShadowProtect Server or ShadowProtect Small Business Server. To obtain competitive upgrade pricing, resellers should send an e-mail message to discounts@storagecraft.com or a fax message to + 801.999.7650, and include one of the following: a copy of their license certificate(s), a copy of their purchase receipt or an e-mail confirmation from a download purchase. In addition, customers may mail their product CD as proof of purchase to StorageCraft Technology Corporation, 121 W. Election Road, Draper, Utah, 84020.
This offer is available until March 15, 2010 in North America and South America only.
Pricing and Availability
ShadowProtect Server and ShadowProtect Small Business Server are available through Lifeboat Distribution authorized resellers, managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs). Volume discounts are available.
For more information about ShadowProtect or to learn more about becoming an authorized StorageCraft Reseller, please call +1 801 545-4700 or visit: http://www.storagecraft.com/shadow_protect_server.php.
About StorageCraft Technology Corporation
StorageCraft Technology Corporation provides innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops. StorageCraft delivers software products that reduce downtime, improve security and stability for systems and data and lower the total cost of ownership for servers, desktops and laptops.
www.storagecraft.com
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ShadowProtect, ShadowProtect Server, ShadowProtect Small Business Server and ImageManager are trademarks of StorageCraft Technology Corporation. Other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
StorageCraft ShadowProtect in PC World
StorageCraft ShadowProtect is mentioned in a success story in PC World about virtualizing blade servers. PC Troubleshooters in Rhode Island is using ShadowProtect Server as part of its backup and disaster recovery solution to protect the systems and data on the servers in their data center.
We created our own backup and disaster recovery system by deploying a network-attached storage device onsite and using StorageCraft ShadowProtect software to image servers on an hourly basis. Each image is encrypted and sent to two separate storage facilities in Maryland and Colorado.
Check out this case study and find out how you might be able to use StorageCraft ShadowProtect as part of your backup and disaster recovery offering, whether you’re protecting physical servers, virtual servers, or both.
Final Discount Pricing Offer
StorageCraft is now offering competitive upgrade pricing for BakBone customers who decide to make the switch to ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software. The discount offer is for current users of BakBone NetVault Backup, Bare Metal Recovery and Real-Time Data Protector.
To get the competitive upgrade discount pricing — which is 35% off list price — customers have to show proof of license, like a copy of their license certificate, a copy of their receipt or an e-mail confirmation of a software download. Send an e-mail to discounts@storagecraft.com or send a fax to +1 801 545-4705 along with your proof of purchase. (You can mail in your product CD as a proof of purchase, too.) The offer is available in North America and South America only through March 15, 2010.
Latest Competitive Upgrade Pricing Offer
StorageCraft is now offering competitive upgrade pricing for Acronis customers who decide to make the switch to ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software. The discount offer is for current users of Acronis True Image and Backup & Recovery.
To get the competitive upgrade discount pricing — which is 35% off list price — customers have to show proof of license, like a copy of their license certificate, a copy of their receipt or an e-mail confirmation of a software download. Send an e-mail to discounts@storagecraft.com or send a fax to +1 801 545-4705 along with your proof of purchase. (You can mail in your product CD as a proof of purchase, too.) The offer is available in North America and South America only through March 15, 2010.
We’ll be announcing one more competitive upgrade discount later this week.