PHD Virtual has released version 3.5.6 of esXpress backup software. As the name suggests, it backups ESX hosts. As it states on the site, there is no support for ESX 4 (YET) but I was told that PHD Virutal is working very hard to make their product line ESX 4 ready ASAP. A trial can be downloaded here. Below you can find a list of “What’s new” in esXpress 3.5.6:
New in 3.5 Features
esXpress is Compatible with VMware ESX v3, v3.5 and (coming soon) vSphere4
Use esXpress out of the box with multiple version of VMware, no need to wait for a move vSphere4 to use virtual technology to back up virtual machines
Multi-User Global Deployment & Configuration Application
Automate the deployment and configuration of esXpress from our web-based application, integrated into the Virtual Infrastructure Client or accessible via a web browser. The Management Console and De-Duplication are delivered as virtual appliances for easy installation and setup. No additional software is required.
- Automatic deployment of esXpress
- Hierarchical and policy driven configuration
- Definable host groups with all hosts assigned to that group using the same standard configuration
- Hosts can inherit their configuration from global and group policies
- Host level overrides for esXpress configuration
- Centralized Backup Targets – create backup targets one time and assign to hosts and groups
Source-Side Global De-Duplication Across Entire ESX Farm*
Our groundbreaking new data de-duplication engine provides data de-duplication across all VM guests eliminating duplicate blocks across VMs before they are sent to the backup target, reducing network, I/O capacity and disk space usage.
- Greatly reduce LAN traffic and disk space usage by up 25:1 or greater**
- Use any VMware supported datastore and external NFS server for scalability
Up to16 concurrent backup streams per ESX host
- The fastest and most scalable solution available to backup up VMware
Multi-user File-level Restore
Quickly restore files, as compressed & uncompressed data to lessen LAN impact, directly back to the source.
Built-in Incremental Replication*
Replicate just changed blocks and inject them directly to into the replicated VM without having to do a full restore of the virtual machine
Smart Dynamic Export*
esXpress is the only solution with predefined date based directories, providing critical flexibility in deciding what data is exported to your medium of choice (tape, disk). The Smart Dynamic Export eliminates sending duplicative data to storage.
- Use up to 50% less tapes and tape library capacity
- Lower administrative overhead
but hope to find out soon.