VMware Backup and Recovery Solution

esXpress is a VMware backup solution which has revolutionized data protection for virtual environments by backing up more VMware data in less time at lower cost, becoming the fastest Multi-VM backup & restore solution on the market. esXpress scales across an enterprise’s entire virtual infrastructure with no additional hardware or software required, and with minimal impact on the VM server, console or network performance.
This unique solution for backing up VMware data, combined with an affordable, scalable per-host pricing plan, has earned esXpress more than 2,000 customers and 200 channel partners. esXpress was also recognized as Best of VM World two years in a row, as a 2008 Gold Award Winner for Data Protection and a 2009 Finalist for Business Continuity and Data Protection.

esXpress VMware backup solution is designed to replace:

Traditional VMware backup solutions that weigh heavily on hosts and VMs
Complex, time-consuming next-generation VM backup solutions that require additional hardware and software that virtualization was supposed to reduce!

esXpress is the #1 VM Backup Solution for VMware featuring:

• Up to 16 concurrent backup streams per ESX host
• The fastest multi-VM backup & restore solution on the market!
• Source-Side global DeDuplication across entire ESX farm
• Multi-user instant file level restore
• Multi-user deployment & configuration console
• Built-in incremental replication
• Date Smart Dynamic Export
• Self-extracting backup archives for software-free self-restores
• Fault-tolerant – VMware DRS/HA aware and VMotion compatibility
• esXpress v4.0 is compatible with VMware ESX  v3.5 and vSphere4

In the world of backup and recovery, it is all about speed. For the most part, all vendors do the same thing: they take information and move it from one location to another, making it available for retrieval at a later date. The interfaces and buttons all look a little different but essentially, all B/R software is the same from that perspective—they move information from one location to another.

In the virtual world, what is important is how quickly a system can move that data from multiple Virtual Machines. These VMs are typically housed on a single physical server - it’s not only how quickly you can backup and recover information, but also how quickly you can do it for multiple VMs at any one time.

With PHD Virtual’s esXpress, its unique architecture gives you the ability to simultaneously backup or recover up to 16 VMs at one time, making it the fastest multi-VM B/R solution on the market.
When all is said and done and a server fails on a Friday afternoon, the last day of the month, no one cares how many VMs need to be recovered to get the server back up and running; what they care about is how quickly it can be done. In this situation, there’s nothing better than esXpress.

Virtual Backup Appliances (VBA)

esXpress uses Virtual Backup Appliances (VBAs) – small virtual machines – that can be deployed in minutes on an ESX server to autonomously conduct hot full or “virtual full” backups of all your Virtual Machines. esXpress VBAs operate outside of the ESX console, leveraging a virtual appliance architecture and our own innovative disk throttling so backups can be run during business hours with no impact on VM performance on the ESX server. And esXpress backs up virtual disks at the block level, delivering incremental backup that can be deduplicated at the source before being sent to one or more local and/or remote storage targets simultaneously. The result? Backups are smaller and faster, storage capacity lasts longer, and your entire infrastructure – VMs, hosts and networks – performs better.

The esXpress Difference

The great promise of virtual infrastructures was to simplify IT by reducing hardware and removing costs. But as virtualization has gone mainstream, traditional backup solutions have failed to keep pace – adding hardware and software that virtualization was supposed to reduce, slowing down hosts and VMs with processor-intensive backup routines, clogging networks with huge backup files, and overwhelming storage devices with backup data.

esXpress shifts the mindset and value proposition of backup solutions for VMware virtual infrastructures by removing the worry, complexity, and cost associated with traditional solutions and giving you back something no other solution can – your time.

Protect Your Virtual Servers WITHOUT Adding Physical Servers – esXpress is a software-based solution that requires no additional hardware.

Restore Anywhere, Anytime – Perform file-level restoration without having to go through time-consuming virtual disk mounting procedures. Or restore an entire disk from a unique executable backup file format even if you don’t have access to the esXpress appliances.

Slow The Growth of Backup Data – esXpress uses “source-based” data deduplication to dramatically reduce the size of backup files, speeding up both backup and restoration processes and extending both storage capacity and network capacity.

Why esXpress?

Because you want to back up more data, in less time, at lower cost!

 

Most backup and restore solutions operate with a “More Data = More Time and More Hardware” equation. Only esXpress reverses this trend, making data protection a “More Data = Less Time and Less Hardware” equation. By conducting backup and restoration of virtual infrastructures in a unique and smarter way, esXpress is able to achieve unprecedented economies of scale, simplicity of management, and cost-effectiveness.

Scalability – With esXpress you can add new VBAs in just moments, run backups without affecting VM resources, reduce backup times and file sizes, speed up restoration, extend the life of storage targets and minimize network impact.

Simplicity – esXpress is a self-contained, autonomous, and inherently fault-tolerant data protection solution that you can simply “set and forget.”

Affordability – An economical, per-host pricing model scales even in the face of growing data and server requirements and ensures you are not penalized when you need to upgrade host hardware.

The Virtual Backup Appliance (VBA) Architecture

Traditionally, backup solutions for virtual infrastructures have proven to be resource inefficient, management intensive and cost prohibitive. From the ground up, esXpress was designed and developed to back up virtual infrastructures in a simpler, smarter, more efficient and scalable manner.

More Scalability – esXpress uses proprietary “VBAs” – small virtual machines that run on each ESX host – to back up all the virtual machines on that host sequentially. Multiple VBAs running on each host will back up multiple virtual disks, simultaneously.

Less Impact – esXpress VBAs operate as guests on the ESX server, starting up when needed and then shutting down. As a software-based solution, esXpress intelligently uses the virtual infrastructure to back itself up, without any additional hardware, and integrates seamlessly into your existing storage systems.

The Backup Process

Block-Level Backup – esXpress uses a revolutionary “block-level” rather than file-level process to back up data for each virtual machine, backing up only the individual blocks inside each virtual disk (.vmdk file) that have changed since the previous backup, creating a “virtual full” backup every time.

Resource Throttling – Innovative throttling capability protects the host’s resources from over-consumption during the backup, reducing contention and enabling you to back up even during your system’s peak operating hours.

Storage Platform Independent – esXpress operates with multiple storage platforms and targets simultaneously, including local storage, iSCSI, Fiber Channel, CIFS, NFS, SSH and FTP. This enables you to scale a vendor/platform-agnostic backup solution quickly and efficiently regardless of what storage you have in place or where it’s located.

Fault Tolerant Data Protection – esXpress is the only truly fault-tolerant virtual backup solution on the market today providing critical protection for your virtual backups regardless of whether hosts or storage targets happen to fail. If an ESX server fails, because esXpress operates independently of hosts, VBAs on other hosts in the cluster automatically identify and back up new VMs once they are VMotioned to the new host. If a backup target fails, esXpress automatically rolls to the assigned failover backup target.

Data De-Duplication

esXpress performs “source-based” deduplication of backup data to dramatically reduce the size of backup files and the time required to generate and transport them to the target storage device. It also vastly improves restoration timeframes by enabling point-and-click restoration of individual files or a complete virtual disk with no fragmentation.

DeDupe Appliance – To enable data deduplication, esXpress deploys a DeDupe Appliance that uses a hash-mark indexing system for each block-level backup to eliminate duplicate blocks across VMs before they are transported to the backup target.

Reduce Storage Requirements by 25:1 – Unlike other deduplication methods, esXpress deduplication takes place across all VMs over their entire lifetimes – not just at single backup times! This further reduces backup file sizes and can reduce storage requirements across a virtual infrastructure by an average rate of 25:1.

VMware Replication

esXpress provides built-in replication capabilities to enable several different types of replication based on your disaster recovery or business continuity requirements.

Simple Replication – Simple replication “pulls” a complete copy of the backup file for a VM and performs an automatic restore of that virtual disk file onto a VM at a DR site, ensuring an exact mirror of your VM at the DR site with very little impact on the network.

Advanced Replication – With the addition of an esXpress DeDupe Appliance, incremental “block-level” updates can be made to VMs at a remote DR facility in real time, ensuring an up-to-date mirror with even less impact on the network since only changed data is sent to the DR site.

VMware Restoration

esXpress makes restoration of a complete virtual disk – or a single file – simple, fast and easy.

Complete Disk Restoration – esXpress utilizes a unique executable backup file format which allows you to restore any backed up virtual disk to any destination whether or not your users have access to the esXpress application or an up-to-date license. When restoring multiple VMs to a single VMFS, esXpress leverages its block-level restoration process to restore all VMs to their exact state, automatically pre-allocating disks, without fragmenting the restored files on the host disk. This speeds up recovery times and improves post-restoration performance.

File-Level Restoration – esXpress can also provide file-level access inside the backup data to enable the restoration of any file back to any VM from any point in time with a simple click via the esXpress DeDupe Appliance console. This lets you perform file-level restoration without having to go through time-consuming virtual disk mounting procedures. Supports Windows FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, Simple Dynamic Volumes, Linux EXT2, EXT3, JFS and XFS filesystems.

Management and Security

Management
The esXpress Management Appliance centralizes control of all hosts and deployed VBAs, and enables simple setup, configuration, and backup, allowing you to proactively manage the backup process within your virtual infrastructure. With version 4.0, the esXpress Management Appliance web interface also allows you to restore your VMs using the Restore Now feature.

Security
Backing up your virtual data is important, but so is securing it. esXpress uses the most powerful commercially available encryption to secure your backup data and provide a critical building block for compliance initiatives.