VERITAS Software Corporation (Nasdaq: VRTS) today at the VERITAS VISION 2005 conference, redefined the boundaries between data backup, data recovery, and data management with the release of VERITAS NetBackup 6.0. To keep pace with rapid growth in the size of data volumes, NetBackup 6.0 empowers enterprises to take an innovative step forward toward centralized management and recovery of data that has been copied via a broad range of backup and snapshot technologies, including those provided by Network Appliance (see related press releases issued today). As well as managing and recovering data, NetBackup 6.0 also enables the management and recovery of systems across heterogeneous UNIX, Windows and Linux environments. Systems can be recovered to dissimilar hardware, reducing hardware costs and providing administrators with flexibility in their recovery operations.

"Data forms a major part of our core business. Our ability to produce forecasts using this data is critical and data must be available 24/7. We rely on VERITAS NetBackup to back up and recover data for critical applications that are used to deliver up-to-the-minute weather reports to our customers," said Kevin Gungiah, director of systems administration, The Weather Channel. "VERITAS is helping us reach the highest levels of data protection. With the release of version 6.0, we look forward to the new leading-edge disk functionality to compliment our disk-to-disk backup and recovery strategy."

Heterogeneous Heritage

For more than a decade, NetBackup has consistently innovated to enable enterprises to copy their data in an increasingly efficient fashion across the broadest range of source systems to the broadest range of disk and tape storage devices in the industry. For the first time, administrators using NetBackup 6.0 can discover and catalog all of their organization's backup copies of data, whether they were originally created by a NetApp storage system, EMC Symmetrix, Hitachi Lightning, or by UNIX, Linux, Windows VSS, or by VERITAS Storage Foundation, Microsoft Exchange or a host of other systems -- and rapidly recover copies using the most advanced disk-based capabilities available today. Add to this the capability to perform bare metal systems recovery across UNIX, Windows, and Linux servers and to dissimilar hardware, and NetBackup 6.0 helps assure the backup and recovery of data across the same vast array of heterogeneous systems.

"The crown jewel of NetBackup 6.0 is its ability to catalog everything. Think of it as the Yellow Pages for all your important corporate data," said Jeremy Burton, executive vice president of the data management group, VERITAS Software. "NetBackup 6.0 catalogs all information, whether it was copied by VERITAS or another vendor's system, so administrators can rapidly recover it -- from the most efficient place. And we don't stop with data recovery. Administrators can now do bare metal recovery of entire systems from the same interface. NetBackup 6.0 simply redefines recovery."

VERITAS and Network Appliance Engineering Excellence Comes to Fruition

NetBackup 6.0 is the culmination of a two-year development effort with NetApp. NetBackup 6.0 integration with NetApp storage provides cost savings when using NearStore single-instance storage capabilities to eliminate redundant heterogeneous backup data. Customers can now store hundreds of backups online with minimal storage. Integration also enables conversion of backup data to a user viewable format so that any backup image can be mounted and browsed from any client system to dramatically speed data recovery. Users can now recover online data without operator intervention.

NetBackup 6.0 also provides end-to-end centralized policy management of NetApp Snapshot, SnapRestore and SnapVault disk-based backups providing seamless migration of data among primary storage, secondary storage, and tape. With the NetBackup 6.0 application integration and catalog, NetApp primary storage data can be easily, reliably, and rapidly recovered using the NetBackup GUI (graphical user interface).

"For the past two years we've partnered with VERITAS to integrate our products and deliver more value for mutual customers and prospects," said Amit Pandey, vice president and general Manager, NearStore Business Unit at Network Appliance. "IT departments familiar with NetBackup can now introduce NetApp disk-based backup technology into their environment to improve operational efficiency through simplified data management and online data recovery."

Know More, Manage More: Next Generation Management and Reporting

VERITAS NetBackup 6.0 provides backup administrators with a central Web-based management and reporting portal into their IT environments through the NetBackup Operations Manager, an integrated console that centralizes and graphically presents all monitoring, alerting, reporting and troubleshooting functionality. Administrators can gather information in real time regarding success rate of recoveries, what systems are at risk due to failed backups, trends on storage use, and details on specific alerts and errors.

Key features of the NetBackup Operations Manager include:

- Centralized, Web-View of All Backup Operations: The NetBackup Operations Manager offers an infrastructure-wide view of all data protection operations from a single point of administration. In an effort to simplify the daily tasks of managing data across large enterprises, the NetBackup Operations Manager protects and manages data resources through a unified backup interface.

- Real-Time Health Check and Simplified Troubleshooting: As large organizations strive for greater backup efficiencies, the NetBackup Operations Manager provides a real-time view into the health of the entire data protection environment. Administrators can proactively diagnose problems, identify possible issues and take appropriate corrective measures.

Recovery Meets Discovery: Integration with Enterprise Vault

As the trend toward regulation and longer retention periods accelerates and drives data volumes that exist within organizations, businesses will be increasingly forced to look at their backup and archiving strategies through the same lens. Today, different groups in different areas of the IT department define the policies that govern backup and archiving.

A sound archiving strategy improves a sound backup strategy. Moving data out of production systems reduces backup times and improves performance of the production system. The archiving strategy must be orchestrated with the backup strategy. By the same token, a sound archiving strategy can be improved by leveraging industry-leading backup technology. The NetBackup 6.0 Media Manager is now integrated with Enterprise Vault 6.0 (see related press releases issued today) to allow for the seamless migration of data, that must be retained for the long term, to cost-effective removable storage media such as tape.

Rapid Backup and Recovery Service from VERITAS Consulting

VERITAS Consulting offers services to help enterprises rapidly assess their business needs, develop architectures and designs that best meet their unique business needs, and then deploy and verify the solution using proven methodologies. The Rapid Backup and Recovery Service from VERITAS Consulting provides enterprises with proven methodology for reconfiguring their NetBackup environments with little to no downtime as their data center and data protection requirements evolve. VERITAS Consulting has developed a number of proven methodologies, that are custom tailored to each customer's unique environment and based on the advanced features of NetBackup 6.0 to help dramatically reduce the backup window and enable fast recovery of business data. VERITAS Consulting also offers training, migration and ongoing health check services to help adapt solutions as business needs change over time.

Additional Details

For a complete listing of the new features and extensive enhancements available in VERITAS NetBackup 6.0 software, customers can visit:http://www.veritas.com/Products/www?c=product&refId=2

Availability

VERITAS NetBackup Enterprise Server 6.0 software will become available in summer 2005.