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Industry Moves: PHD Virtual Technologies Ramps Up Engineering Team

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PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, as announced that it has expanded its engineering team. To help lead this expanding team, which has doubled in overall R&D capacity in the past month, Vladimir Hrabrov has joined the company as vice president of engineering and Alex Mittell has been named director-senior virtualization architect.

Hrabrov joins PHD Virtual from Hewlett-Packard and has over 30 years of experience designing and developing enterprise-scale configuration management systems in entrepreneurial environments as well as established organizations. As a Certified Scrum Practitioner, he brings valuable experience in building strong, agile engineering teams, as well as a proven, disciplined approach to release, risk, and product quality management. At HP, Hrabrov was an R&D and program manager in charge of OS deployment for HP Client Automation. He joined HP as a part of the Novadigm acquisition where he was a senior architect and project manager. Before his work at Novadigm, Hrabrov worked at Legent Corp, Spectrum Concepts and the Ukrainian Ministry of Standards, where he held key management and development roles. He holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.”

Mittell joined PHD Virtual in 2008 and is a widely known technical expert and thought leader in the virtualization community. He is a co-founder of Xtravirt, the UK provider of virtualization solutions throughout the technology lifecycle. While at Xtravirt, Alex authored many of the free virtualization tools that are available on the PHD Virtual web site. Prior to co-founding Xtravirt, he worked at Oxford University in the UK as a virtual architect, where he designed and configured the university’s virtual infrastructure.

PHD Virtual Extends esXpress Support To VMware vSphere 4

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PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, today announced that esXpress has been extended to support VMware vSphere 4.

This new release of esXpress version 3.6 also includes significant enhancements for all versions of VMware’s ESX platform version 3.0.2 and above. An optimized deduplication engine dramatically increases backup speeds and fuels performance for file-level restores, as well as VMDK restores and data archival via a Windows Share.

esXpress, with new support for vSphere 4, performs backup and recovery using the virtual environment itself. By creating virtual backup appliances (VBAs) – small virtual machines – the solution can be deployed in minutes on VMware servers, and provides the most scalable environment for backing up virtual machines. New performance enhancements include:

  • Improved file level restore speeds are now up to four times faster
  • Data Restoration and Archival via Windows’ Shares are now up to four times faster
  • Improved PHDD deduplication image-level restore speeds up to twice as fast
  • Accelerated deduplication engine provides initial backups that are seeded at double the previous rates

esXpress continues to support up to 16 concurrent backup/restore streams per host and all backups can be self-restored without using esXpress or other proprietary virtual machine infrastructure. esXpress’ block level backups are de-duplicated source side, ensuring data is compressed and deduped before it every leaves the host. This ensures that network traffic is kept to a minimum even while backing up over a WAN link.

Quantum Debuts esXpress Software Module

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Quantum has unveiled Quantum esXpress software module, which optimizes Quantum’s DXi-Series disk backup and replication systems to back up and restore VMware ESX virtual servers.

Extending the power of Quantum’s patented data deduplication technology, esXpress and the DXi-Series together eliminate the need for physical servers to initiate a backup job and move data, and make WAN-based replication more affordable, providing an automated approach to replicating files to remote disaster recovery sites. This valuable combination lowers the cost of VMware data protection and optimizes the virtual infrastructure.

Quantum’s esXpress software module is available for the entire DXi-Series of deduplication and replication solutions, which dramatically reduces bandwidth and disk requirements for transmitting and storing data. The DXi-Series provides powerful advantages for virtual environments, eliminating duplicate data that virtual machines create, reducing storage needs for end users and streamlining backup. While the DXi-Series supports all of the leading backup software applications, the new esXpress software module is specifically designed to offer optimized backup for VMware servers.

With esXpress and the DXi-Series, Quantum combines innovative backup software with deduplication and replication technology to shorten backup windows, without adding servers to support data backup and restoration. Quantum’s esXpress also features a policy-based approach to installations and configurations which can significantly reduce deployment times when adding ESX servers. With its powerful deduplication technology and intelligent replication capabilities, Quantum’s DXi-Series is a compelling solution for organizations with both traditional and virtual backup needs, addressing cost, bandwidth and scalability concerns.

Quantum and its network of value-added resellers offer two versions of the esXpress software module: the Professional and Enterprise editions, to provide a range of capabilities for managing concurrent backup jobs per ESX server. Every DXi2500-D, DXi3500, DXi7500 Express and DXi7500 includes the right to a license for a free copy of esXpress Professional software, intended for use on one VMware ESX server regardless of the amount of storage or the number of virtual machines protected, which can support up to four Virtual Backup Appliances (VBAs). This esXpress Professional license is included at no additional cost, and phone-based installation is provided free of charge. Subsequent esXpress Professional licenses (MSRP $950) also support up to four VBAs each and for $950 can be upgraded to esXpress Enterprise (MSRP $1,850) which supports up to 16 VBAs per ESX server.

Release: PDH Virtual Patch Downloader 6.0

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PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, today announced availability of Patch Downloader 6.0, a new freeware solution to simplify patch downloading for various VMware ESX versions. Patch Downloader is the fifth free virtualization utility to be offered by PHD Virtual as part of its longstanding commitment to the virtualization community.

Patch Downloader v6.0 eases the pain of downloading patches for various ESX versions from the VMware support site by automating the process for users that cannot use the VMware Update Manager. Now, rather than downloading each patch manually through a Java Download manager, VMware administrators can simply select the version of ESX from the Patch Downloader drop down menu, and select the file repository (including folder, drive map, SMB share, etc.) to download the patches to. The new freeware solution will list all of the available patches and information about the patches including severity of the problem it corrects, what the impact on VM/Host uptime is, and a description of the problem fixed.. Downloads of selected patches are performed with a simple click making it easy to keep the ESX patch repository up to date.

Patch Downloader joins PHD Virtual’s suite of other free VMware ESX utilities which include:

· VMNetBac 1.2.0 – VMNetBac allows customers to backup and restore the network configuration of a virtual machine. VMNetBac is a quick recovery tool to minimize the risk of losing network configurations when intrusive or mass-upgrade type tasks are performed.
· Virtual SAN 1.0.0 – This Virtual SAN appliance for VMware ESX 3 Server provides the benefits of shared VMFS storage without the cost of a SAN. It utilizes, otherwise unused, local storage in the ESX server to facilitate enterprise-level features such as vMotion, DRS and HA.
· SnapHunter 0.5.3 – SnapHunter is an ESX 3 Service Console utility which reports back on the Snapshot status of virtual machines from multiple ESX Servers.
· KS QuickConfig 1.3.0 – KS QuickConfig is a Windows GUI utility that reduces the time needed to deploy and configure VMware ESX 3 servers, and to eliminate inconsistencies that can arise with manual operations.

Also available on the PHD Virtual website is a full-featured trial download of the company’s award winning, scalable esXpress data recovery and data protection solution for virtual IT. esXpress v3.5 uniquely uses the virtual environment to backup itself without requiring any additional hardware or software, making it the most scalable and cost effective VMware backup solution on the market.

PHD Technologies Becomes PHD Virtual, Gives Away Virtualization Tools Free Of Charge

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PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress high availability data protection solution for virtual IT, was unveiled today as the new corporate brand for PHD Technologies. Along with the new corporate identity, PHD Virtual is also introducing its new website, featuring free virtualization utility downloads (originally developed by xtravirt).

They include:

  • VMNetBac 1.2.0 – VMNetBac allows customers to backup and restore the network configuration of a virtual machine. VMNetBac is a quick recovery tool to minimize the risk of losing network configurations when intrusive or mass-upgrade type tasks are performed.
  • Virtual SAN 1.0.0 – This Virtual SAN appliance for VMware ESX 3 Server provides the benefits of shared VMFS storage without the cost of a SAN. It utilizes, otherwise unused, local storage in the ESX server to facilitate enterprise-level features such as vMotion, DRS and HA.
  • SnapHunter 0.5.3 – SnapHunter is an ESX 3 Service Console utility which reports back on the Snapshot status of virtual machines from multiple ESX Servers.
  • KS QuickConfig 1.3.0 – KS QuickConfig is a Windows GUI utility that reduces the time needed to deploy and configure VMware ESX 3 servers, and to eliminate inconsistencies that can arise with manual operations.

The new PHD Virtual site also provides a full-featured trial download of the company’s award winning, scalable esXpress data protection solution for virtual IT. esXpress enables companies to perform autonomous, fault-tolerant backup and restoration of an entire virtual environment in less time at lower cost with a virtual backup appliance (VBA). These small virtual machines can be deployed in minutes on an ESX server to autonomously conduct hot full or “virtual full” backups of virtual machines. esXpress can be deployed with minimal impact on virtual server, console or network performance and requires no additional hardware or software investment.

PHD Technologies / esXpress Doing Fine, Thank You For Asking

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PHD Technologies, provider of the esXpress VBA data protection solution for virtualized infrastructures, today reported stellar results for 2008 .

In 2008 PHD achieved 200% revenue growth, strong profitability, and was recognized with SearchServerVirtualization.com’s 2008 Products of the Year Gold Award in Data Protection and Best of VMWorld Gold Award in Data Protection. Currently more than 1,400 customers use esXpress. Customer growth has been accelerated by PHD’s expansion of its network of worldwide distribution partners, including the recent global reseller additions in Asia-Pacific, Datastor and ECS Technologies.

esXpress is a horizontally scalable solution with customers that span multiple verticals and company sizes. The award-winning product is used by Fortune 500 companies such as ADP, Dell, Hess, IBM, Intel and Lockheed Martin; Mid-size companies such as Budd Van Lines and Panera Bread; Higher education institutions such as Indiana University, Oxford University and Yale University, as well as Service companies such as Ernst Young and Hewitt Associates.

esXpress’ growth demonstrates the success of the product’s differentiated VBA technology and flexible per host pricing model. This pricing model provides a significant cost advantage to customers because it requires no additional hardware or software.