EMC NetWorker adds de-dupe and CDP management

SNW EMC is teaching NetWorker, its long-in-tooth flagship backup and recovery application some new tricks in time for Storage Networking World in Texas.

The company is integrating de-duplication and continuous data protection (CDP) technology into the software via the new kids on EMC's lineup, Avamar and RecoverPoint software.

While the addition won't yet replace the stand-alone products, users will be able to set policies and manage them through the NetWorker environment.

The move will put NetWorker back in the spotlight as the center of its backup portfolio, said Rob Emsley, EMC senior director of software product marketing.

Avamar de-dupe is integrated with the NetWorker client to enable management for scheduling, policy creation, monitoring and reporting through the NetWorker Management Console. Through the same interface, customers can use RecoverPoint technology to do things such as schedule CDP snapshots, set policies and browse the index of RecoverPoint-based snapshots.

The integration comes from the fruits of EMC's $165m purchase of Avamar and the $153m buyout of Kashya last year.

More integration between Avamar and NetWorker is needed.

For instance, de-duped backups are directed at a Avamar target, while non-de-duped backups go to a NetWorker target. But Emsley points out that the integration is ahead of most backup rivals. Symantec's NetBackup has a PureDisk deduplication service, but no CDP yet. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager offers neither. The exception is CommVault, which puts de-dupe and continuous data replication into the Simpana suite.

EMC said the new features should be up in December.

Disk Library gets bigger

The company has also announced some improvements to the EMC Disk Library (EDL).

EDL will support 1TB SATA II disks, increasing the capacity by about 25 per cent over the previous max of 750GB disk drives. They're also getting an additional level of RAID protection — now configured with RAID 6. EMC is also putting in a new virtual tape migration tool to allow non-disruptive movement of data backed up on tape. ®