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I have been given the opportunity to blog about a new product from Unitrends.  The new product is called VM Backup Essentials, or vBE for short.  Certain bloggers were provided a blogger release which I am going to post below.  I will add my comments under each section as I downloaded the product into my lab to install and test out the features of this product.

vBE (short for VM Backup Essentials), converges enterprise-grade backup software, ransomware
detection, and cloud continuity into a powerful, easy-to-use, all-in-one platform priced 30% less than
comparable products. An “All-in-One Solution” vBE provides a disruptive approach to backup – with complete vertical integration (including the cloud), fast time to value and an all-in-one solution provided by a single vendor with industry-leading customer service. vBE includes all the software and features you would find in an enterprise-level data protection and recovery solution.
vBE includes operating system, security, backup software, WAN acceleration, replication, cloud integration, and archiving.

With an easy to use interface lost file recovery is one of the most common tasks performed by IT on an
emergency basis and can chew up many hours of your time. vBE ensures easy file recovery. It takes less than five minutes to recover a lost file with vBE, from login to full restoration. The UI is easy and intuitive enough that any member of IT can recover a lost file without having to consult a manual or receive special training.
Easily set all aspects of protection using an advanced, intelligent feature called SLA policy automation.
vBE’s SLA Policy automation intelligently sets your backup schedule based on your RTO and RPO goals.
Built-in one-glance, one-click dashboards and reports keep you fully up-to-date on the health and status
of your backup and continuity strategy.

The UI is fairly easy to navigate.  I was able to easily add my lab vCenter instance so I could select any of the VMs for backup.  I chose to backup one of my Windows VMs once so I could test file recovery as mentioned in the section above.  After the backup was complete, I deleted the downloaded files in my Downloads folder.  I selected the server from the Recover tab and clicked the Recover Files option.  This will mount the backup for use in the File Level Recovery tab.  This will mount them as a CIFS share that you can visit to download the files back to the server they were deleted from.  You can also use iSCSI to mount the backup into the server if preferred for file level recovery.  It would be nice to choose the files in the mounted job and tell it to restore back to the same server so you can do it from one interface

vBE comes with Deep Cloud Integration. The cloud is an ideal way to ensure geographic resilience,
especially those without a secondary location that need to protect copies of their data. vBE easily
manages protection for your VMware workloads in hyperscale clouds such as Google or AWS. However anyone that has worked with hyperscale clouds knows it can be complex and very expensive. vBE has its own purpose-built continuity cloud designed for long-term retention and DRaaS, as well as great integration with AWS and Google. Offloading cloud backup and recovery to experts gives you 100% confidence you will recovery when you need to and let’s you focus on those tasks only you can do – work with your business partners to improve company performance.

As I have no cloud options to test, all I can verify are the options in the UI.  Under the Configure tab, you can add Cloud based storage as a target for backup and recovery.  Currently the options ads Google Cloud Storage, Amazon (S3) and Rackspace Cloud Files.

Licensing to rival all other vendors!
vBE is licensed for $105 per socket and covers VMware virtual machines only. Base prices include one
year of 24x7x365 support with an annual renewal available.
Support terms of 3 or 5 years can be chosen at the time of initial purchase or support plan renewal.

My only comment on this claim is that this pricing is much cheaper than what I have seen out there for comparable products.  I do not use these products on a daily basis anymore but I remember the pricing from one vendor I used to use was in the $700 to $1,000 price range per socket.  If the performance of this Unitrends product matches up to the other backup vendors then this pricing will be a game changer, in my opinion.

Points of note:

• Total Protection – No limits on the number of virtual machines that can be protected on a host
• No License Tiering – No tiering of licenses based on the number of cores in the CPU socket.
• Only License what you need! – Only occupied sockets require a license, but ALL occupied
  sockets of the host must be licensed to protect its virtual machines.
• Infinite retention! – Retention is directly proportional to the amount of storage that can be
  provided by the customer for backup. The license has no limits on retention.
• Replication to the Cloud – Site-to-site replication is not supported at this time. vBE does support
  replication to the cloud – both hyperscale clouds such as AWS, Google and Rackspace as well as
  clouds purpose-built for DRaaS services.
• Advanced Ransomware Protection – New ransomware variants are emerging every day and
  your ransomware protection needs to evolve to keep up.30-Day FREE TRIAL!

A 30-day free trial is available from https://www.unitrends.com/products/vm-backup-essentials
Simply download, deploy, and quickly start backing up all VMware workloads as it includes everything
required for data and application protection and advanced features.

As my lab is small I am not able to fully test every feature of this product but my overall impression is very positive. Being able to test it out for 30 days for free is a great way to see if it will work for protecting your VMs.

WhereScape has released a product to help companies migrate existing data warehouses, vaults and marts to Snowflake.  The name of the product is WhereScape® Migration Express™ for Snowflake.  Their goal is to make this migration fast and easy for organizations.  For more information, check out the press release below.

WhereScape Announces WhereScape® Migration Express™ for Snowflake

 New automation offering helps Snowflake customers fast-track data infrastructure migration projects with fewer resources and faster time to value

PORTLAND, OREGON – June 7, 2018 – WhereScape, the leading provider of data infrastructure automation software, today announced the availability of WhereScape® Migration Express™ for Snowflake. This new offering enables organizations to simply, rapidly and efficiently migrate existing data warehouses, data vaults and data marts from legacy data platforms to Snowflake – the data warehouse built for the cloud.While traditional approaches to data infrastructure migration demand months of effort by development teams,

WhereScape Migration Express for Snowflake puts the delivery of successful migration projects within the reach of individual developers in weeks or even days. By automating the repetitive, time-intensive tasks associated with migration, organizations can increase developer productivity, standardize efforts with best practices, compress timelines, limit project risk and lower overall cost.

“WhereScape’s automation capabilities combined with Snowflake’s built-for-the-cloud architecture enable any organization that wants to be data-driven,” Snowflake’s Chief Technical Evangelist, Kent Graziano said. “By automating the migration of data and data models, WhereScape reduces the complexity, effort and cost for organizations with legacy data and data infrastructure to consider when moving to Snowflake. WhereScape Migration Express for Snowflake makes it possible for these organizations to reap the benefits of Snowflake sooner.”

With metadata and development and data mapping wizards, WhereScape Migration Express for Snowflake automates the migration of existing data and data infrastructure from other data platforms such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata and others. These automation capabilities reduce project complexity and the database knowledge needed by developers. WhereScape Migration Express for Snowflake also includes many advanced capabilities to manage and optimize data transfers, and the ability to easily refresh data intermittently throughout the migration period.

WhereScape Migration Express for Snowflake is part of the WhereScape® automation for Snowflake offering, a collection of automation solutions to help Snowflake customers fast-track the design, development, deployment and operation of Snowflake projects.

“While IT executives recognize the advantages of moving data infrastructure to the cloud, and moving to Snowflake specifically, the migration of existing data and data infrastructure can seem like a herculean task to consider,” WhereScape CEO, Mark Budzinski said. “WhereScape Migration Express for Snowflake provides IT leaders with an executable roadmap that doesn’t demand extensive staffing or contracting and greatly reduces the risk involved in choosing to evolve.”

As part of the Snowflake Data for Breakfast tour, WhereScape co-hosted an event in Minneapolis, MN, and shared the results organizations are achieving through automation. The tour brings IT leaders together with cloud thought leaders, experienced analytics practitioners and innovative technologists for insights on today’s cloud architecture and technology.

You can learn more about WhereScape Migration Express for Snowflake and the entire WhereScape automation for Snowflake offering here.

About WhereScape

WhereScape helps IT organizations of all sizes leverage automation to design, develop, deploy, and operate data infrastructure faster. More than 700 customers worldwide rely on WhereScape automation to eliminate hand-coding and other repetitive, time-intensive aspects of data infrastructure projects to deliver data warehouses, vaults, lakes and marts in days or weeks rather than in months or years. WhereScape has offices in Portland, Oregon; Reading, UK; Auckland, New Zealand; and Singapore. For more information, please visit www.wherescape.com.

All products or company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.