EMC Upgrades NetWorker For Performance, Clouds

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EMC on Tuesday enhanced its enterprise backup and recovery product with increased scalability and performance, as well as further integration with its deduplication appliances from Data Domain.

EMC Networker 8.0 includes a new architecture that increases performance, the ability to backup application clients directly to disk, integration with the Data Domain Boost deduplication acceleration feature, and additional support for Microsoft applications. In addition, the new version of NetWorker includes a multi-tenancy feature that allows service providers to provide support for multiple clients in the cloud.

EMC claims that more than 23,000 customers use Networker. According to IDC market share numbers, EMC ranks second after Symantec with 13.6% market share. Symantec leads with 28.7%. The company last had a major restructuring of Networker in 2003 with Networker 7.0, when it acquired Legato Software.

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The new Networker is based on an architecture that requires less CPU processing and adds more than three times the scalability of the previous product. Instead of managing backup devices from a centralized server, management has been distributed among all storage nodes, thus improving scalability. Networker also now uses a relational database to manage is backup jobs instead of the flat file database previously used, and thus consumes 80% fewer systems resources, the company said.

A Client Direct feature also speeds processing. It allows customers to backup application clients directly to the storage device and improves backup performance by as much as 50%.

Multi-tenancy is a big part of Networker 8.0. With this built in feature, management can logically zone data, devices and users in shared backup environments. This feature allows customer data to be securely separated or partitioned, while giving the capability of being backed up from one source.

In the new Networker, EMC has introduced the concept of Restricted Datazones, which enforce a separation of clients from all the other clients in the system. In addition, a new audit logging function has been built-in and new roles-based access controls can be used to determine a user's or group's access to backup jobs and procedures.

Further, Networker now supports integration of the Networker application or file client with the Data Domain acceleration technology, DDBoost, which speeds system performance and minimizes network traffic in deduplication environments.

Finally, Networker supports SQL Server 2012 and Granular Level Recovery for Exchange, SharePoint and Hyper-V. The product is available now and sold on a capacity-based license model.

Deni Connor is founding analyst for Storage Strategies NOW, an industry analyst firm that focuses on storage, virtualization, and servers.

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