CommVault today is adding a web-based subscription backup and troubleshooting service to its Simpana software suite.

The Remote Operations Management service (ROMs), as it's called, automates data center error sniffing for overnight, weekend and holiday monitoring.

ROMs services use per-server licenses that come in three flavors of mineral: gold, platinum and diamond.

A gold license offers system monitoring, reporting to the admin via e-mail, the possible cause of the error weighed against CommVault's knowledge base and troubleshooting suggestions.

Platinum adds alert verification from a CommVault engineer, who will grab the relevant log info and open a service ticket.

At a Diamond level, the CommVault engineer calls the network admin and can offer remote support.

The software running on the CommCell is licensed at 25 per cent of the cost of the server per year. The service, as well as client licenses, are sold month-to-month at $6 for Gold, $8 for Platinum, and $10 for Diamond. License levels can be moved between systems, but the number of licenses cannot be reduced once they're purchased. Madness!

CommVault's backup monitoring scheme is shared by some heavy hitters such as IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager and Symantec's NetBackup environments. EMC also jumped into the backup software-as-a-service game last week with MozyPro. ®

Related stories

• Dell bulks up with block-level dedupe (5 June 2009)
• HDS adds CommVault dedupe (13 May 2009)
• CommVault first to de-dupe to tape (26 January 2009)
• Dell's sticks with dual de-dupe strategy (5 November 2008)
• CommVault and McAfee team to fight gorilla (21 October 2008)
• Dell's disk-to-disk backup box (7 October 2008)
• Symantec Vision '08 Symantec fluffs up its backup getup (10 June 2008)
• EMC limps into SaaS game (22 January 2008)
• Feel the burn: in the aftermath of year's biggest hype (27 December 2007)
• Symantec releases new NetBackup (14 August 2007)
• Vision 2007 Symantec back ups backup software (12 June 2007)