The faster reboot time applies in both VMware and Microsoft environments, and allows new machines to be spun up in a couple of minutes.
Liau, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Barracuda’s Data Protection Group
Barracuda Networks has announced Barracuda Backup LiveBoot 2.0, an enhancement of the capability which has rapidly spun up VMware vSphere virtual guest machines from a Barracuda backup appliance or the Barracuda Cloud in the event of a failure with the primary storage system. Now it covers Microsoft Hyper-V as well. In addition, boot times have been significantly reduced in both vSphere and Hyper-V environments, and the user interface has been improved.
“MSPs are really happy with this,” said Tony Liau, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Barracuda’s Data Protection Group. “They have been waiting for functionality like this from us, especially since it comes from us at no extra cost. It’s part of the basic functionality.”
LiveBoot 2.0 extends protection to Microsoft Hyper-V environments for the first time.
“LiveBoot first came to market in 2013, when VMware was dominant,” Liau said. “We believe the Hyper-V market is now robust, and is gaining momentum on VMware, especially among smaller businesses.”
The extent of the Hyper-V protection is not the same as for VMware environments, however.
Chris Crellin, Senior Director of Product Management, Intronis MSP Solutions by Barracuda
“Hyper-V protection is for the cloud in particular,” said Chris Crellin, Senior Director of Product Management, Intronis MSP Solutions by Barracuda. “The VMware environment has a local component.”
“We decided to make a conscious trade-off in terms limiting LiveBoot to the cloud for Hyper-V,” Liau said. “By also making it faster and easier to set up, the value of the local LiveBoot would be considerably less. If the market demands a local solution as well, we can add that at some point in the future. Our bet is that this will be unnecessary.”
Speeding up the reboot time significantly has been done for VMware environments as well as Microsoft. Liau said that IT downtime costs enterprises $700 billion a year, and cited a study by Everbridge stating that the average cost of IT downtime is $8,662 per minute.
“The average cost of IP downtime is very expensive, and this release brings down RTOs in a very significant way,” Liau said. “Both the VMware and Microsoft environments are much, much faster.”
“The increased boot times mean you can spin up machines in a couple of minutes,” Crellin said.
“We have also improved the user interface quite a bit,” Crellin said. “You can now preconfigure it so that it is ready to use, and not have to set it up at the time of disaster. There is also a new VM Preview capability, that lets you see a snapshot of the bootup, so you know that it’s ready to go if there is a disaster.”
Crellin also said that bulk management tools, which let you spin all the VMs up in the cloud in the event that you lose all the VMs or your entire hypervisor, has also been improved.
Barracuda Backup LiveBoot 2.0 is available at no additional cost to active Barracuda Backup and Barracuda Backup – Intronis MSP Edition subscribers.
