Symantec reveals de-duplication appliance, cloud storage service

Symantec has announced a new de-duplication appliance based on its existing software product. It also announced a cloud storage service for NetBackup and Backup Exec customers. The company also announced a new version of its archive software, Enterprise Vault 9.0, which combines email from Microsoft Exchange Online with on-premise archived content sources into a central repository for more comprehensive e-discovery capabilities.

Symantec's new NetBackup 5000 de-duplication appliance is aimed at NetBackup users that can de-duplicate up to 4.3TB of data per hour.

The NetBackup 5000 is a built-in, disk-to-disk replication appliance for disaster recovery as well as an alternative to tape backup. The appliance is configured for RAID 6 dual disk failure and comes with redundant fans and power supply. The appliance is compatible with today's NetBackup 7.0 or the previous NetBackup 6.5 version. The appliance can be expanded from 16TB to 96TB in capacity.

"We don't have grand plans to become a hardware company. We've been selling de-duplication in software for years, but customers want ease of deployment and we're responding to that need," said Brian Dye, vice president of product management for Symantec's Information Management group.

Dye said customers should expect to see a number of other purpose-built appliances from Symantec in the future, which will ease deployment of existing software products.

Symantec also announced a cloud-based storage service for NetBackup. The company has integrated its user interface with Nirvanix's Storage Delivery Network for automated and policy-based backup and recovery service. Users of Backup Exec and NetBackup will be able to select the "cloud-storage" option within the user interface, which will automatically connect their data to the service for backup.

"Even though you're sending your data to the cloud, we still know where it is. You still get centralised management, reporting, copy tracking and reporting. You don't lose control of your data when you put it in the cloud," Dye said.

Enterprise Vault 9.0 includes in its Discovery Accelerator tools a new feature called Discovery Collector. This tool aggregates information not already in a corporate data archive from desktops and laptops, as well as data that has not yet been archived from SharePoint Server and file shares. The data can then be aggregated based on key word searches, content origination and dates for e-discovery requests.

"Think of it as file data and application data. This is basically a set of scanning capabilities and application integration," Dye said. For example, Dye said, a corporate legal team might run a query for all content created by an employee relating to a specific topic.

Enterprise Vault 9.0 also comes with single instancing for email e-discovery, which removes duplicate emails to reduce the amount of time a legal team must sift through repetitive messages. Enterprise Vault 9.0 has also been integrated with Microsoft Exchange as a hosted service, which allows emails in cloud services to be archived for e-discovery purposes.

"It's the ability to get a journal feed out of the cloud-based email services so that you're still feeding the content into the on-premise content archive," Dye said. "Without this integration, if you move your email to the cloud, your discovery solution no longer has your email anymore."