Unitrends, the industry's fastest-growing multi-environment data protection and disaster recovery company, today introduced Unitrends Release 7.3, an enhanced version of the already robust data protection software powering the company's portfolio of physical and virtual backup and recovery appliances. Release 7.3 combines the advanced functionality of private cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and meta-bare metal recovery for Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers with enhanced performance, application and platform support.

Widely known for providing instant recovery for physical Windows systems, Unitrends now extends this same feature to the private replication target of Unitrends Recovery Series physical appliances. This enables cloud service providers and companies using a private cloud to leverage physical DRaaS capabilities.

The launch of Unitrends Release 7.3 also positions Unitrends as the only data protection provider currently offering meta-bare metal recovery for Cisco UCS servers. This industry-first functionality maximizes protection of Cisco USC servers, networks, storage and configuration data, enabling customers to restore UCS fabrics more rapidly and intelligently.

"Release 7.3 underscores Unitrends' fundamental commitment to helping our customers play IT safe with the next-generation capabilities they need to meet the challenges of an increasingly demanding IT environment," said Subo Guha, vice president of product management and marketing at Unitrends. "With industry-leading solutions consistently delivered at a price point and level of ease that meets our customers' needs, we truly provide the best cost-to-value ratio in the data protection industry."

Additional features of Unitrends Release 7.3 include:

• Simplified deployment of Unitrends Enterprise Backup: Accelerates installations of Unitrends Enterprise Backup, the company's software-only backup and recovery virtual appliance, through better storage integration capabilities.
• Expanded application and platform support: Extends Unitrends' existing compatibility with more than 100 different versions of servers, operating systems, storage platforms, hypervisors and applications with support for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1, Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 and VMware vSphere 5.5.
• VMware vSphere template protection: Enables backup and recovery of VMware vSphere templates, which can be quickly restored as new virtual machines.
• Domain Name Server (DNS) support for Linux and Mac OS X: Provides optional use of a DNS instead of static IP when adding Linux and Mac OS X clients to a system.

Unitrends is committed to continually optimizing its data protection appliances so IT departments can manage ever-increasing storage demands despite limited resources and budget. Unitrends Release 7.3 includes the following performance enhancements that deliver on this mission:

• Faster Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V backups residing on Clustered Shared Volumes: Improves backup performance by up to 200 percent by enabling parallel backups of virtual machines residing on Clustered Shared Volumes in Hyper-V 2012 R2.
• Improved deduplication rates and replication performance for VMware vSphere: Achieves higher retention and up to 50 percent faster replication performance by optimizing deduplication capabilities for VMware vSphere environments with high change rates.
• Faster replication of synthetic backups: Expedites synthetics replication by up to 40 percent by optimizing communication between a replication source and target.
• Improved deduplication signature algorithm: Offers 10 percent faster deduplication and replication rates by making signatures only one part of the deduplication algorithm.
  

For more information on Unitrends Release 7.3, please visit www.unitrends.com.