Announced on 12th Feb at IBM Think 2019 is a new release of both Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus. Both products feature enhancements that show IBM have been listening to their users to help them deliver.
Spectrum Protect Plus v10.1.3
Rapid development of IBM’s new data protection for VMware and Hyper-V continues. As well as VM snapshot backups with instant restore, SPP already allows backup and restore of SQL and Oracle Databases on physical or virtual machines. V10.1.3 adds backup and restore of Exchange (Item level recovery too) as well as MongoDB.
The SPP snapshot repositories could already be replicated to give site-loss protection but v10.1.3 adds High availability for the SPP server that manages backup and recovery. This is a major improvement over the current version and should see the product become more widely accepted as a result.
Optimised Offload for long-retention snapshots and backups
Offload of backups to Spectrum Protect is the method that Spectrum Protect Plus uses to store longer retention copies of data on cheaper and slower storage. The previous version used SP for VE to send a copy to Spectrum Protect but this was essentially a parallel full backup and restore process that only supported vSphere.
Now the offload is to S3 object storage and is block level incremental. This supports both vSphere and Hyper-V environments and can be to Spectrum Protect container storage pools via a new S3 connector or to CLOUD object storage (IBM COS, Amazon S3 etc)
Spectrum Protect v8.1.7
As well as a host of client and agent updates to support new versions of /Windows/Exchange/SQL/Oracle and various security enhancements, the Spectrum Protect server now has enhanced diagnostics and tape drive support. The main new feature that users have been waiting keenly for is:
Retention Sets (codename: OneProtect)
Previously, to retain client backups from the same source for different periods (e.g. Daily -30 days, Monthly – 12 Months, yearly – 7 years), it was necessary to configure extra client/TDP instances and perform extra backups to different Spectrum Protect nodes on extra schedules. The initial configuration of this is time-consuming and the resultant duplication of backup data meant extra storage and capacity license cost and database overhead.
Now with RETENTION SETS the blocks/files from existing daily backups can be marked up in the database for longer retention and your long retention requirements are satisfied from a single ingest. Client and server-side configuration is greatly simplified and massive savings in processing time, network bandwidth, server storage, capacity licence and support effort can be expected. The creation of Retention Sets can be automated, and it will run as a scheduled server process, requiring no tape mounts or duplication of data.
It’s very encouraging to see that IBM are quickly addressing some of the features that users are looking for, and hopefully this is indicative that future releases will ramp up support and make the product suite more appealing for enterprise users. Speak to Silverstring to understand how both new releases can benefit you and to learn about our Alchemis Protect Managed Service.
