Backup and Recovery
Appliances
Winner: HP StorageWorks D2D
Backup System
HP
www.hp.com
Why it won: HP hits the sweet spot for
disk-based backup for small-to-midsized
businesses with a product that makes
automated backup and recovery easy and
affordable and works with your existing
tape-backup process.
The HP StorageWorks D2D
Backup System takes aim at
two major pain points for smallbusiness
IT: keeping the network
backed up consistently and being
able to recover data quickly.
The product gives SMBs the benefits of
automated disk-to-disk (D2D) backup at a
budget-friendly price of well under $3,000.
The D2D Backup System is simple to set up,
provides an easy-to-use Web-based administration
interface, and performs quickly and
reliably. It’s also compatible with existing
tape-backup tools, such as NTBackup and
Symantec Backup Exec.
Neil Fraser of DataLogistics says a reduction
in backup time and improved backup
consistency are two of the biggest benefits
his company has seen with the Storage-
Works D2D Backup System. “With the D2D
product, our backup times have dropped significantly, and we no longer experience
morning network lag because of the backups
running.” Fraser says the StorageWorks
D2D product also saved money because
DataLogistics could keep its existing tapebackup
system.
Like Fraser, Scott Shaw of Covente
gives the product a thumbs-up for performing
backups reliably with little IT intervention.
“We now have consistent and timely
backups without interfering with our dayto-
day IT operations,” he says. “The virtual
library … allows us to keep a three-week
rotation without ever needing to change
tapes.”
—Anne Grubb
Silver: SonicWALL Continuous
Data Protection Series
SonicWALL
www.sonicwall.com
Bronze: StoreVault S500
NetApp
www.storevault.com
Exchange Server
Monitoring Tools
Winner: Microsoft System Center
Operations Manager 2007
Microsoft
www.microsoft.com
Why it won: Its preemptive, IT service–
based approach to monitoring, plus
management packs that incorporate
Microsoft’s extensive knowledge of
Exchange Server and Windows, make this
product a standout in its class.
If your business depends on
keeping a network of Exchange
servers up and running, you’re
probably already using some type
of Microsoft Exchange Server management
tool. The latest iteration of
Microsoft’s enterprise systems management
product, System Center Operations Manager
2007, is notable for its use of IT service
models, which manage a group of related components (e.g., server, application, Active
Directory) together as one IT service. This
feature, combined with management packs
(for Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange
Server 2003), enable proactive monitoring
and alerting based on Microsoft’s in-depth
knowledge of Exchange.
For companies that use the System Center
product suite, Ops Manager 2007 with the
Exchange management pack is a natural
choice for Exchange monitoring. Todd Slan of
Total Wine & More points to this integration as
a key benefit of using the product. “This was
an outstanding complement to the rest of the
suite,” says Slan. “The ability to proactively
monitor and take necessary action before
user access and performance [are affected]
has been a big win in providing the greatest
level of service and uptime to our end users.”
Slan says that the ability to monitor a
clustered Exchange environment has been
the most useful Ops Manager feature for Total
Wine. “Proactive monitoring of our HT/CAS
[Hub Transport/Client Access] cluster and
CCR [cluster continuous replication] mailbox cluster is key to maintaining the highest level
of availability possible for our end users.”
—Anne Grubb
Silver: PROMODAG Reports for
Microsoft Exchange Server
PROMODAG
www.promodag.com
Bronze: Quest MessageStats and
Spotlight on Exchange
Quest Software
www.quest.com
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