Symantec has announced the latest version of its NetBackup solution, bringing new functionality to protect the largest scale VMware-based environments as enterprises move to a software-defined data centre architecture.

NetBackup 7.6 is the only backup product designed for enterprise level scale, which can accommodate hundreds of thousands of virtual machines and petabytes of data while giving customers 400x faster virtual machine recovery than a standard restore.

IT organisations can now simplify and automate the protection of massive and complex physical, virtual and cloud environments that are the building blocks of a modern data centre.

Today’s IT leaders are modernising their data centres in response to the need for more agile, scalable and heterogeneous computing. At the same time, data is growing at 60 to 70% yearly, according to Symantec’s State of
Information Report.

This growth, combined with the proliferation of virtualisation and flat or declining budgets, is forcing CIOs to address the new reality where traditional protection models are inadequate. Modern enterprise solutions must provide faster and automated application protection, give insight into large, complicated virtual environments and provide the foundation for partners and service providers to deliver backup-as-a-service.

NetBackup 7.6 delivers these benefits so that enterprise organisations can ensure a modern software-defined and fully protected data centre.

New feature highlights:
* 400x faster recovery of VMware vSphere virtual machines by booting directly from backup storage, compared to the hours or days that could be required for a traditional restore. The solution’s NetBackup Instant Recovery for
VMware environments allow customers to increase productivity and performance by powering on virtual machines from within NetBackup, making them 100% available in vSphere during the restore.

* NetBackup Accelerator for VMware eliminates the need for full backups by leveraging integration with VMware Changed Block Tracking. The result is a complete, automated backup that is 35 times faster than traditional
approaches, allowing customers to increase performance without compromising budget.

* Customers can protect 300 virtual machines in 300 seconds, proactively backing up and recovering data with NetBackup Replication Director for VMware by leveraging NetApp array-based snapshots to protect virtual
environments without giving up recoverability.

* Additional features include multi-tenant hosting options for channel partners and managed service providers to improve scalability; and automated disaster recovery from a physical to a cloud platform to ensure data is always
protected and available.