CommVault’s Simpana 8.0 Offers Global Embedded Software Deduplication

Simpana 8.0 offers new data protection and recovery features, Global Embedded Software Deduplication, virtual environment management features.

Megan Keller

January 27, 2009

3 Min Read
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The latest version of CommVault’s data management software, Simpana 8.0, is now available. Simpana uses the Backup, Archive, Replication, Resource Management, and Search modules, which are individually licensed, to manage data and perform tasks such as content indexing and encryption. “And what’s nice is that customers can start with one module; they can license additional modules as needed, which provides a lot of investment protection and flexibility. And that’s managed within a single user interface,” says Mike Marchi, a vice president of product and segment marketing for CommVault.

Simpana 8.0 provides enhanced recovery management, data reduction, virtual server data protection, and content organization capabilities. “One of the keys is that we will now be offering a records management solution,” says Randy DeMeno, chief evangelist and Microsoft Partnerships for CommVault. According to DeMeno, Simpana 8.0 also lets you search your data across multiple releases.

This release offers the industry’s first Global Embedded Software Deduplication, which lets you deduplicate data no matter where it’s stored in your organization and store deduplicated on tape or disk. The new SnapBackup Enabler included in Simpana 8.0 creates persistent application and data consistent recovery copies from snapshots, according to CommVault.

This product offers a single virtual client that supports both VMware’s VMware Infrastructure and Microsoft’s Hyper-V. “We’ve also added what we call 'top-down management' of Hyper-V/Virtual Server environment, so you get much easier management capability for an entire Hyper-V environment, as well as individual virtual machines, and that would include application support in those virtual machines,” says DeMeno.

Also included in Simpana 8.0 is a content classification engine that automatically organizes content based on the rules you define and your search patterns. And Simpana 8.0 offers an integrated workflow, new recovery options that have been optimized for mission-critical systems, and new ways to transfer compressed and encrypted data between remote and branch office locations.

“Something that sometimes gets overlooked is that every time CommVault sells a solution, we embed a copy of SQL Server," says DeMeno. "That started with SQL Server 2000; right now the current version of SQL [Server] that we release with Simpana 8 is SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition.”

Item-level recovery is also available in Simpana 8.0. “But where we really differentiate … the same solution that does that way cool item-level recovery also does what we call archiving. So we put rules in place that allow SharePoint items to be archived out," says DeMeno. "So we said they can basically do it on a server, they can do it on a site, they can do it on a folder [and] say 'all of these items over 20K in size and over 30 days old, archive those out to secondary sites.' Now we’re really smartly, and astutely, managing a SQL database here. But we’re allowing that large amount of data to be farmed out to cheaper, less expensive secondary storage, but we leave a web part behind such that a user can actually recall that data any time they like.” This functionality lets the administrator still manage the data, but allows for faster, better performing SharePoint servers and SQL Server systems

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