PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress data protection and recovery software for virtual machines, has released esXpress version 4.0. This new release of VMware backup software adds changed block tracking to reduce the amount of time required to create backups and a unified central restore GUI to restore data faster.
PHD Virtual said that the new version adds enhanced support for VMware vSphere 4 in addition to ESX 3.x, including the ability to track changes to each VMDK using VMware’s change tracking API.
According to PHD Virtual, by reading only the blocks that have changed, and not scanning the entire virtual disk each time a backup is performed, esXpress shortens the backup window and uses less data I/O while also reducing overall loads on network and SAN resources.
The company said the new version 4.0 has also added the ability to initiate VM restores from within the Configuration and Deployment Virtual Appliance GUI. The GUI appliance provides unified management of virtual machine recovery tasks, bypassing the need to connect to each individual ESX host’s Service Console.
Ron McKelvey, CTO of PHD Virtual, said: By utilising the changed block data API to do incremental backups, esXpress 4.0 significantly reduces critical backup windows and lowers storage contention. This allows for greater scalability and more frequent backups to meet any virtual environment’s data protection objectives.
