PHD Virtual Technologies pioneered virtual backup appliances (VBAs) back in 2006, using virtual machines to backup virtual machines and have since become an award-winning product of choice for data protection in virtual environments.

With the launch of the new esXpress product Version 3.5 in May 2009, System Professional can help companies who want to back up their virtual environment and deliver high performance and maximum reliability. Host based pricing with unlimited sockets means this can be achieved with a reduced total cost of ownership.

esXpress uses VBAs – small virtual machines – that can be deployed in minutes on an ESX server to autonomously conduct hot full or “virtual full” backups of all your Virtual Machines. esXpress VBAs operate outside of the ESX console, leveraging a virtual appliance architecture and innovative disk throttling so backups can be run during business hours with no impact on VM performance on the ESX server.

Tarquin Dunn, System Professional's Technical Director explained "Many of our clients have already benefited from their use of esXpress and the new version significantly enhances this technology. Through the use of features such as Fault Tolerant/VMotion compatibility, backups are assured even in the event of ESX host failure. Using Source De-Duplication backup ratios of 25:1 are commonplace, with some servers achieving ratios of over 1000:1 – greatly reducing the amount of data to be backed up!”

In summary, esXpress can help companies deliver the following virtual backup benefits:

• Hot Full and “Virtual Full” Backups

• Source-based Data De-Duplication

• 256-bit Encryption Security

• Backup Data Replication

• Full Disk and File-Level Restoration

• Web-based, centralised Management

esXpress was the recipient of a Best of VM World 2008 Gold Award for Data Protection – to find out how this can help with your own virtual backup challenges, call 01825 830000.