FastNeuron Announces Release of BackupChain 2.2 An Affordable Virtual Server Backup Tool for SMBs

Nov. 4, 2010 - PRLog -- FastNeuron Inc., a provider of innovative computer backup solutions, announced today the release of BackupChain Backup Software 2.2 (http://BackupChain.com), which enables smaller and medium-sized organizations to back up their virtual machine hosts at a fraction of the cost compared to other backup solutions on the market.

One of the most interesting market trends of recent years is the adoption of virtual machines in organizations worldwide. The proliferation of free virtualization platforms, such as Microsoft’s Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and VMware, is also evident of this widespread utilization of virtual hosts in smaller businesses. The dramatic increase in the number of virtual machines in productive use came the need for efficient and yet affordable disaster recovery. A virtual server may be hosting multiple virtual machines at the same time; hence, the risk and costs of data loss due to a hardware fault or a natural disaster are now several times higher than before.

The needs of smaller businesses regarding virtual server backups are different than that of multinational corporations. While large organizations have the resources and infrastructure necessary to invest in intricate and consolidated backup data centers, smaller organizations require efficient stand-alone solutions that are affordable.

BackupChain was developed with needs of IT professionals and SMBs in mind and met the demands of smaller organizations with a flat licensing model and an innovative virtual machine compression technology: Delta Compression.  Unlike other virtual server backup solutions on the market, BackupChain is licensed per host and backs up an unlimited number of virtual machines on the host. SMBs, hence, do not need to worry about increasing licensing costs when new virtual machines are added to their infrastructure.

Delta Compression is a technology that provides efficiency to large file backups, regardless whether backups are made locally or remotely via FTP. Since virtual machines are stored in large image files, they require specialized handling that takes into account their size and internal characteristics. BackupChain’s Delta Compression drastically reduces the backup load of daily backups by determining the data change per backup cycle through a quick scan. FastNeuron’s Chief Technology Officer Savas Papadopoulos explains: “Our statistics indicate that on average, a 300 GB virtual machine will require less than a 1 GB per day in backup storage, depending on the percentage of write activity in the VM. This drastic reduction in size makes it feasible to send virtual machines to an off-site backup location on a daily basis, such as an FTP site or a VPN-attached network share.”

Online backups of virtual machines are no longer a luxury limited to large corporations with deep pockets. BackupChain enables small businesses to set up their own private and secure remote virtual machine backup at no cost, since it is shipped with a built-in FTP server. Two office locations can therefore set up a backup chain where each server sends its files to the other—other the Internet or local area network—which effectively eliminates the need for backup media.

Apart from remote backups, external hard drives are perhaps the most cost-effective way for SMBs to back up their virtual servers. BackupChain’s Delta Compression enables smaller businesses to back up to USB, eSATA, and FireWire drives and benefit from the lower cost per gigabyte offered by these high-speed backup media.

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FastNeuron develops backup solutions for the SMB market and specializes in virtual server, database, and file server backups.