News

UltraBac 8.0 Set to Ship in Mid-January

• By Stuart J. Johnston
• December 15, 2004

Back in this release after a hiatus is UltraCopy, the Bellevue, Wash.-based company’s file copying utility for creating duplicate backups for storage offsite.

The new release of UltraCopy included in UltraBac 8.0 provides new features, including the ability to span media types, a company spokesperson says. An earlier version of the copy utility had been in version 6 but had not been present in version 7.

“In [UltraBac] version 6, UltraCopy could copy any tape, even a Veritas tape, to another tape, but it didn't support media spanning,” the spokesperson says. “For example, if you were copying from a larger capacity tape to a smaller tape it wouldn't know to go to another tape and you would lose data.”

“In Version 8, UltraCopy can only copy UltraBac tapes, but it supports media spanning . . . . [so,] for example, if you had your information stored on disk and wanted to copy to tape, it would automatically copy to however many tapes it would take to store the information,” she adds.

UltraBac 8.0 also adds native 64-bit support for both Intel and AMD processors, enabling seamless backup and recovery in mixed 64-bit or 32-bit processor environments, according to company statements.

In addition, the update provides support for differential image backup – the ability to back up only those files that have changed since the previous full backup. The feature is designed to both speed the backup process as well as shorten the time required to perform a recovery, the company says.

The new version also includes support for media pools and barcodes. Using autoloaders or tape libraries, users can automate backups by creating media pools using bar-coded tapes. UltraBac 8.0 will automatically coordinate all the tapes within a media pool for scheduled backup. It also indexes all the backup files within a pool for quick access when needed.

Also added are a centralized SQL database indexing option as well as direct backup and restore support for both CD and DVD storage devices. The database indexing option lets users perform centralized searches across multiple media types, the company said.

UltraBac 8.0 costs $495 per server and allows users to back up an unlimited number of workstations. The company also offers specific agents for Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server, as well as Oracle, Unix, NetWare, FTP and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.