(and a special offer exclusively for AccessFlow customers)
By Bryan Dickson, VCP
AccessFlow focuses on the transformation of physical IT infrastructures into virtualized datacenters that can meet the current and evolving needs for greater operational agility, efficiency, recoverability. We have spent significant time and resources researching and validating the most efficient, flexible, and reliable backup solution. We wanted something that would not only provide the basic ability to backup and restore data, but that would enable easy replication and restore of that data under any circumstances including disaster recovery. After working with, and through, several of the leading products, AccessFlow settled confidently on PHD Technologies’ esXpress software. While esXpress does not have the replication speeds available with some of the (vastly) more expensive backup solutions that can replicate changes at the byte level, it offers reasonable replication performance along with a backup speed and stability beyond any solution weve found at any price.
esXpress is a unique tool for creating and replicating hot backups of VMware virtual machines. The backups are portable and self contained meaning virtual machines can be extracted and restored without backup software on any VMware server platform including VMware Server, GSX, ESX2, or VI3 systems. This feature, combined with advanced customization through scripting and the ability to support multiple backup targets simultaneously, allows for powerful disaster recovery solutions to be built on VI3 and esXpress.
There are several features that make esXpress really stand out from the other ESX backup tools we’ve used, but the most prominent is it’s packaging as a virtual backup appliance. This seems like an obvious model given the whole virtual infrastructure environment, yet none of the competition seems to have thought of it. In addition to not requiring a physical server (or separate OS package), the virtual appliance model of esXpress offers the following advantages:
The offloading of the backup processing from the service console. Running in, and being scheduled from, the virtual machine layer provides increases performance and reliability while reducing burden on the service console.
esXpress installs itself as a fully functional virtual appliance including all OS and application licensing. By running as a virtual backup appliance, esXpress does not require any additional physical severs, software or OS licensing making it an affordable and easily deployable solution.
esXpress is licensed per HOST instead of per CPU creating a simple and affordable licensing scheme with increasing value as CPU core density increases – raising the VM to license ratio and reducing the per VM backup costs.
By using the appliance model, esXpress provides full compatibility with VI3 features maintaining uninterrupted backup continuity throughout VMotion and DRS activity. Using the VI3 High Availability feature combined with backup target failover maintains a VM backup system with no single point of failure.
Along with the benefits afforded by the Virtual Backup Appliance model, esXpress has several other features that make it the clear winner for virtual machine backup, replication, and recovery. These additional features include:
Supporting a variety of transport protocols and targets (scp, ftp, iSCSI, SAN, NAS, DAS) including multiple simultaneous backup targets. This enables concurrent backup copies to be stored locally for restore and at a remote location for disaster recovery.
In addition to standard full vmdk backups, esXpress supports fast and efficient creation and restoration of accurate block level differential vmdk backups allowing multiple daily backups and efficient use of replication bandwidth.
esXpress creates portable self extracting delta backups which can be restored to VMware Server on a Windows or Linux host increasing portability and recovery options as no running copy of the backup software is needed to restore.
A mass auto restore/replication feature. One-to-Many. Complete Data Center Replication
Gary Lamb, CTO of AccessFlow, says that esXpress utilizes the most remarkable technology hes seen from any VMware ecosystem company. At $999 per ESX host, esXpressPro is an exceptional value. It includes four Virtual Backup Appliances VBAs, product upgrades and gold (24/7/365) support for a year. Or, you can pay $1,249 a license and get a free upgrade to esXpress Enterprise when it ships (targeted this quarter). Normally $1,499, esXpress Enterprise includes encrypted backups, 8 VBAs
And, AccessFlow has an exclusive offer: if you order four copies of either esXpress Pro or Enterprise by March 20, 2007, you will receive a fifth copy free of charge! This offer is only good for one free esXpress and is not valid for clients receiving the VMworld 207 special. To order or try a free evaluation down-load, contact sales@accessflow.com.
