Productive Corporation

CA released CA ARCserve Backup 12 on February 7, 2008.  The update streamlines the management and also increases support for remote and branch offices, and provides better integration with applications acquired from XOsoft in 2006.

The biggest change in version 12 is that CA centralized the back-end database on SQL Server instead of using a proprietary back-end catalog database for each media server. This allows customers to centrally manage all ARCserve servers in an enterprise, including remote and branch offices. It also allows customers to centrally manage ARCserve backup with CA's XOsoft replication and XOsoft high-availability software.

The centralized database will improve ArcServe's scalability by adding 64-bit support and streamlining throughput, according to Frank Jablonski, CA recovery management marketing director. The new version of ARCserve will also support multithreading and up to tens of millions of files, although there are no official numbers on how the throughput will be affected, he said.

Administrators can now monitor XOsoft replication jobs through the ARCserve GUI, although drilling down into those jobs for management still requires a separate interface. Also, ARCserve can now make tape backups from XOsoft replicas.

XOsoft replicator and XOsoft high availability now have a new assessment mode, which shows how changes to the replication environment will be affected by available bandwidth. XOsoft's Assured Recovery feature, which tests disaster recoverability from replicated data, now allows users to drag and drop files from replica servers to production servers. An improved synchronization design will let XOsoft trigger the reboot of a clustered server node without requiring resync. Version 12 also allows customers to upgrade ARCserve and XOsoft without having to reboot.

ARCserve now has centralized device monitoring and management for backup hardware devices, such as virtual tape libraries (VTL) and tape libraries built in, and support for VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) and AES 256-bit encryption. Version 12 also provides the ability to track tape drive throughput statistics and identify clients with failed backup attempts.

 Learn more about the newest features.  

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