ACADEMIA

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- VERITAS Software Corporation (NASDAQ:VRTS) today announced a new, enhanced version of VERITAS(TM) Bare Metal Restore(TM), software designed to automate the rapid recovery of heterogeneous server environments. Bare Metal Restore software cuts recovery time by automating system and software configuration processes, bringing systems quickly back online. The new version 4.6 includes "dissimilar system restore," which helps get critical business data back online faster and more cost-effectively than traditional recovery methods. The new dissimilar system restore feature allows users to recover a Windows system that has crashed or failed to completely different hardware than the hardware on which it was originally installed. The new system may include different network interface adapters, mass storage devices, video adapters, motherboards, and CPU quantities and types, even components from competing hardware vendors, helping users to control contingency hardware costs. Bare Metal Restore 4.6 also includes the ability to restore a server to a point in time before the last backup, which is critical for data corruption or virus situations. By automating routine data protection processes, VERITAS Bare Metal Restore 4.6 helps companies deliver higher service levels at lower costs, providing a foundation for the availability and automation aspects of utility computing. "Organizations continue to take a hard look at ways to cost-effectively increase their resilience to unplanned downtime, including downtime caused by disasters or just routine hardware failures," said Dianne McAdam, senior analyst and partner, Data Mobility Group. "Principal to reducing the cost of downtime is software that can automate recovery of the organization's data from one server to another, even if the two systems are not identical. This capability reduces the time to get systems back up and running without requiring the CIO to keep a data center full of unused systems at the ready." Bare Metal Restore automates the steps needed to recover entire servers from component or server failures -- processes that otherwise require platform- or hardware-specific expertise. With an intuitive, browser-based interface for IBM AIX, HP-UX, Windows and Sun Solaris server recovery, Bare Metal Restore simplifies recovery on multiple platforms, eliminates the need to manually reinstall operating systems and, through automation, reduces system recovery to as few as two simple steps. The new version of Bare Metal Restore can now restore a Windows server when the target server's CPU configuration, network interface cards or disk controllers have changed. Because Bare Metal Restore's dissimilar system restore allows users to restore to target systems from different hardware vendors, Bare Metal Restore can be used to migrate or upgrade entire Windows environments much quicker than using manual processes. It is also effective when hardware components fail and need to be replaced with components on hand. Organizations no longer have to maintain a store of spare hardware components from the same vendor to help them configure a server to be recovered. "Our goal is to help organizations both minimize downtime and simplify complex IT administration," said Bob Maness, senior director of product marketing, VERITAS Software. "Bare Metal Restore leads the market in this respect by making it faster and simpler to respond to hardware component failures, using a common interface across platforms. Integrated with NetBackup(TM), our industry-leading backup and recovery software, Bare Metal Restore offers fully automated restore for complete data protection in multi- platform environments."