EMC Delivers World's First Direct Disk-To-Tape Backup and Restore Solution for Windows NT Data - EMC Data Manager enhancements - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, August 2, 1999

EMC Corporation, the world's leading provider of enterprise storage systems, software and services, Monday announced significant enhancements to EMC Data Manager (EDM), the company's premier solution for extremely high-speed, flexible backup and restore of enterprise data. The company announced the addition of Windows NT support for the highest-performance EDM configuration - EDM Symmetrix Connect.

EDM Symmetrix Connect now serves the high-speed backup and restore needs of the exploding amounts of online Windows NT data. Customers now can use EDM Symmetrix Connect to protect their centralized Windows NT data with no impact to either host CPU cycles ("Server-less") or network bandwidth ("LAN-less",) enabling Windows NT applications like Microsoft Exchange, SQL server and Oracle to continue processing and servicing users across the network. EMC has been shipping "Server-less" and "LAN-less" backup and restore capabilities through its EDM Symmetrix Connect for UNIX servers for more than two years.

EDM Symmetrix Connect now offers high-speed, consolidated backup and restore for Windows NT data, providing users with faster recovery time. Because it is consolidated in one location, users can locate and restore their data more quickly than with traditional stand-alone tape drive solutions. In addition, centralization of Windows NT data backups provides ease of management and enables reductions in both administrative resources and capital costs.

Michael C. Ruettgers, EMC President and CEO, said, "The rapid consolidation of widespread Windows NT data is having a sweeping effect on business. The most adept companies will grab onto this trend, quickly build the infrastructure to exploit it, and use it to their advantage. EMC Enterprise Storage solutions like EDM are playing a central role in shaping this infrastructure to ensure that information, regardless of platform, is available to run the business all day, every day."

EDM Symmetrix Connect user Glenn Mallard, Technical Specialist at Capital Health, said, "Capital Health comprises 7 major hospitals, each demanding 24x7 system uptime and the ability to perform backup and restore without impacting network or server performance. EDM handles these requirements with ease. This is particularly important for Windows NT applications, like Microsoft Exchange, which have reached mission critical status for our business.

"The speed of the new EDM Symmetrix Connect for NT is nothing short of amazing," Mallard added. "For instance, where previous methods ate up a 7- or 8-hour dedicated backup window, we're now able to back up our entire Microsoft Exchange environment in fifteen minutes with the InfoStore offline for approximately ninety seconds, or one hour with the InfoStore online the entire time. And with the new interface and ease-of-management features, we now can dedicate fewer technical people to manage backup configuration and operation."

According to an October 1998 study published by Dataquest, storage functions previously associated only with traditional data center operating systemsdata integrity, disaster recovery, and backups while applications remain onlineare now the top three criteria being demanded to support Windows NT environments. In many instances, the lack of advanced high-performance backup solutions has restricted the amount of storage that could be connected to NT servers. Through today's announcement, EMC now provides very high-speed EDM Symmetrix Connect backup and recovery for consolidated Windows NT data.

EDM Symmetrix Connect enables customers with large volumes of data stored on EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems to overcome the performance restriction imposed by traditional backup methods. EDM Symmetrix Connect provides backup for terabytes of information on multiple Symmetrix systems at hundreds of gigabytes per hour, exponentially faster than possible over the IP network. Through tight integration with EMC business continuity software, including EMC TimeFinder and Symmetrix Remote Data Facility, EDM Symmetrix Connect performs backups with no impact to the production environment.

Finally, EMC introduced greater flexibility and ability for customers to leverage existing investments through EDM support for ADIC Scalar 1000 tape libraries, IBM Magstar and Quantum DLT tape devices, and ADIC Scalar 218 tape libraries with Quantum DLT devices. Also, EDM now supports partitioning of Sony Petasite library drives via auto-configuration, enabling different drives to be reserved for different EDM systems connected to the same library, thus simplifying identification of files.

EDM is a centralized, high-speed, high-capacity open systems backup and restore solution comprising unique EMC software, hardware and professional services. EDM configurations include: 1) EDM Symmetrix Connect, providing "server-less" and "LAN-less" (direct disk-to-tape) backup and recovery of Symmetrix-resident Windows NT data and very large UNIX databases at hundreds of gigabytes per hour; 2) EDM Symmetrix Path, providing open, "LAN-less" backup and recovery of large UNIX and Windows NT databases at server-channel speeds, including Symmetrix- and non-Symmetrix-resident data (host-resident data can reside on the host or in non-EMC storage devices and be backed up by EDM Symmetrix Path); and 3) EDM Enterprise Network, an online network-based EDM solution for simultaneous backup and restore across the network for all major UNIX operating systems as well as Windows NT, Novell NetWare, IBM OS/2 and others.