Altaro Software has started shipping Hyper-V Backup, a product designed to make it easier for small and medium-size companies to protect the data on their virtual servers.
As more small companies start using virtualization, other product areas like storage also have to be adapted for companies with limited IT resources and know-how. When Altaro looked at what was available for handling backup duties, the company felt existing products "were either overly simplistic yet required the administrator to understand all the ins and outs of Hyper-V, or they were bulky and expensive and, although they did the job, they were very complex to configure," it said in a statement.
With Hyper-V Backup Altaro hopes to address these deficiencies. It can be installed and configured in five minutes, according to Altaro. For example, the software is installed directly on the Hyper-V server, and works without users having to install anything directly on each virtual machine.
Features include the ability to back up live virtual machines without any downtime; restore virtual machines to a different Hyper-V host; and restore files without having to recreate a whole virtual machine.
Many startups in the virtualization sector begin with implementing support for VMware, since it is the biggest vendor. But Altaro believes that in the long run, Microsoft will be the virtualization leader in the SMB space, which is why the company decided to focus solely on Hyper-V, it said.
Altaro Hyper-V is available in three editions: standard, unlimited and freeware. The free edition can be used to protect up to two virtual machines. The standard version can protect up to five virtual machines and costs US$345 per host. The unlimited version protects an unlimited number of virtual machines, supports clusters and costs $445 per host.
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