Another VMware virtual infrastructure backup option. Options are good! This product works with both ESX as well as ESXi (requires VCB).
Licensing: One license ($5,495) covers all VMs and ESX hosts. Comparably speaking, another 3rd party virtualization management vendor charges approximately $500 per ESX/ESXi host CPU socket and also requires VCB for ESXi hosts. VCB licensing aside, in this comparison, iBac becomes attractive for infrastructures having 5+ 2-socket hosts, or 3+ 4-socket hosts (thankfully we don’t get dinged for multi core processors yet – who will be the first brave vendor, after Oracle, to license this way?)
From Idealstor:
“Idealstor, a leading developer of disk-to-disk backup solutions, announced today the release of iBac VIP for VMware Virtual Center. iBac VIP for Virtual Center was created to simplify VMware backups by offering a single license that backs up every virtual machine regardless of how many ESX hosts have been implemented.
Nandan Arora – Chief Technology Offer at Idealstor is quoted in this release
“Virtualization offers a unique set of tools that enables companies to consolidate servers but also to quickly provision new server instances as needed without having to incur the costs of implementing a physical server. Most software companies on the market today ignored this and released VMware backup solutions that are tied to the number of virtual machines, physical processors or ESX hosts running on the network. iBac VIP for Virtual Center was designed to turn this licensing model upside down. VIP for Virtual Center lets you backup any number of virtual machines regardless of the number of processors or ESX hosts being run.”Idealstor, a leading developer of disk-to-disk backup solutions, announced today the release of iBac VIP for VMware Virtual Center. iBac VIP for Virtual Center was created to simplify VMware backups by offering a single license that backs up every virtual machine regardless of how many ESX hosts have been implemented.
“iBac VIP was launched in 2008 and offers an enterprise backup solution for VMware virtual servers. The goal of iBac VIP was to offer an easy to use and easy to license backup solution for VMware virtual environments. The original release of iBac VIP was licensed based on the number of ESX hosts that were being run regardless of the number of VMs or processors on the host server. With the release of iBac VIP for Virtual Center, Idealstor seeks to further simplify VMware backups by offering backup administrators the options to choose between licensing the product per ESX host or Virtual Center. Suggested retail price for iBac VIP for Virtual Center is $5495.00.
iBac VIP ties into the VCB framework provided by VMware. Rather than having to run scripts or purchase expensive backup agents to backup each virtual machine, iBac VIP offers an easy use interface that allows backups administrators to efficiently manage their VMware backups. VIP backups can be managed from the proxy/backup server or from a remote machine running the VIP management console. Scheduling, advanced logging and email reports are available for all backup jobs. Recovery can be done at the file level or entire virtual machines can be recovered on the proxy or a specific ESX host.
“When we entered the VMware backup market we realized that most backup vendors were ignoring the flexibility and cost savings that were inherent to virtualization”, said Nandan Arora, chief technical officer at Idealstor. “Virtualization offers a unique set of tools that enables companies to consolidate servers but also to quickly provision new server instances as needed without having to incur the costs of implementing a physical server. Most software companies on the market today ignored this and released VMware backup solutions that are tied to the number of virtual machines, physical processors or ESX hosts running on the network. iBac VIP for Virtual Center was designed to turn this licensing model upside down. VIP for Virtual Center lets you backup any number of virtual machines regardless of the number of processors or ESX hosts being run. The only limitation is that the backup proxy server will need to be able to handle the load, but we feel that iBac VIP is affordable enough that if another proxy server needs to be added to handle the load, we will still be far more competitive than the existing players in the VMware backup space.”
About Idealstor
Idealstor manufactures removable/ejectable disk backup systems that are designed to augment or completely replace tape as backup and offsite storage media. The Idealstor Backup Appliance has been on the market for over 5 years offering a fast, reliable and portable alternative to tape based backup systems. Each Idealstor system uses industry standard SATA disk as the target for backup data and as offsite media. Systems range from 1 removable drive up to 8 and can be used by a range of businesses from SMB to corporate data centers. Disk capacities mirror that of the major SATA manufacturers. Uncompressed capacities of 200GB, 320GB, 400GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB and 1.5TB are currently available.”
