On April 7 from 3:05 to 3:50 p.m. at SNW, Bill Smoldt, STORServer’s vice president of research and development, is presenting on how to leverage VCB and TSM with an Agent or Appliance approach. He’ll include examples of customer successes with this approach to backup.

To address the challenges of protecting VMware environments, the Agent improves the usability of Consolidated Backup by providing centralized management, reporting and scheduling of virtual machine backups and eliminates cumbersome pre- and post-processing integration scripts.

Since its introduction into the market, the STORServer Agent has helped numerous organizations protect their vulnerable VMware environments. For example, UGL Unicco, a premier provider of outsourced facilities services and a subsidiary of United Group Limited (ASX: UGL), implemented the Agent after virtualizing its IT infrastructure. Without the STORServer Agent, UGL Unicco was not going to attempt to use VCB because of the extensive scripting and maintenance it would require to operate on its own.

“One of the features of the Agent I like most is its ability to perform multiple concurrent snapshots to more than one mount point,” said Darrell Stymiest, Director of IT Operations for UGL Unicco. “The VMware virtual machine snapshot technology eliminates virtual server downtime during backup. Our virtual machines continue to operate without interruption while the backups take place, which is a huge time saver. STORServer has taken something complex and made it easy.”

Another customer, Snohomish County PUD #1, the second largest publicly owned utility provider in the Pacific Northwest, is another organization reaping the benefits of the STORServer Agent. After virtualizing 25 percent of its server environment, Snohomish County PUD #1 turned to the Agent to reduce the amount of administration, maintenance and hand holding required by the VMware Consolidated Backup centralized backup facility.

“STORServer currently controls 28 virtual machines for us on a daily basis. The time spent on troubleshooting has been cut down by 75 percent, which is a tremendous benefit to our organization,” said Melinda Cooper, senior infrastructure and systems analyst for Snohomish County PUD #1.

Version three, the latest release of the STORServer Agent for VMware Consolidated Backup, is available now. The Agent is included in the STORServer Appliance for VMware Consolidated backup or can be purchased separately for existing TSM installations. For more information on STORServer or to locate a reseller in your area, visit www.storserver.com.