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Paragon Software Wins “Best in Show”

Paragon Software Group was invited to the Orange County SMBTN (SMB Technology Network) meeting in Irvine recently. The group consists of local IT consultants and resellers. The focus of this meeting was to have a shootout between the who’s who of disaster recovery software. The players in this competition were Acronis, Windows 7 imager, StorageCraft, Windows Home Server, Symantec and of course Paragon Software.

The scope of the comparison was all the source machines were to have a basic OS installation (no data). These machines would be backed up and timed. Once imaged the backup archives would be restored to dissimilar hardware.

All of the software preformed backups without errors except for Windows 7 imager. A time comparison was made and gig for gig Paragon’s speed was at 1 GB per minute to USB 2.0 which put it in the middle of the pack.

All the destination machines were booted to their respectable boot media. All were WinPE or Linux based. Paragon was the only software that had the option to boot to flash memory. Paragon was one of the only applications that was able to do this recovery to dissimilar hardware without extra steps. Paragon restored from a Gateway laptop running Vista to a Dell Latitude 6500.

For the next round of restores, the destination machines were switched. Paragon was tasked to restore on the same box where Storage Craft failed. Paragon Drive Backup restored the partition and did the P2P adjust. The restored image started without any issue on the optiplex 270.

SMB Technology Network, thank you for having us at your event and showcase our Drive Backup software. We appreciate getting the “Best in Show” award and look forward to the next meeting.

The SMB Technology Network has its roots in partner groups focused on IT solutions & services for the SMB (Small Medium Business) space. Our focus includes Windows platforms including SBS (Small Business Server). One of the first SBS focused groups in the nation was created in 2002 by Roger Otterson in San Diego, California. Shortly after attending the San Diego meetings in 2005, Jim Locke formed the Los Angeles SMB User Group. Additional groups have formed in, Orange and Ventura County, the Inland Empire, Bakersfield, Fresno and across the country including the Carolina’s. All consolidated as SMBTN. Each group holds monthly meetings to discuss the latest small business trends. In addition, the group has partnered with Microsoft at Connections and TS2 events, further penetrating the SMB space. All groups have decided to merge under one umbrella to best serve the interests of the members. The network is in an exciting position, poised to further expand and generate new opportunities for both our members and partners.

Backup Software Weekend Giveaway.

Backing up your computer is not an option. The thought of losing your precious pictures of friends and family and your entire music collection should keep you up at night. A computer crash from that nasty virus you downloaded by accident from the website you shouldn’t have visited can erase everything you have in seconds.

You should have an external hard drive. If not, go over to our Facebook page and enter to win a free 1TB drive. Even without an external drive you do not have an excuse for not having a reliable backup of your computer.

Free Backup Software Giveaway

With the move to the new blog and a growing community around our products, we want to offer our readers a free copy of Drive Backup Professional. Typically sold for $49.00 we are going to give away this must have backup software. Do you want a copy? Of course you do. Continue reading Backup Software Weekend Giveaway.

Adaptive Restore Week

About two weeks ago I had a computer crash. Not just a bad virus or other corruption but my PC gave me the dreaded blue screen of death and nothing I seemed to do was going to bring my PC back from the dead. I had a recent backup image of my computer. I was using Drive Backup scheduled for an image on a weekly basis but that alone wasn’t going to help since I was going to need a completely new computer to replace the one that was fried. Granted it was time to buy a new computer, the one that died was on it’s last leg and was over 3 years old.

I ordered a new PC online and when it was delivered I wanted all of my old data to be on the new machine. I was sure that our product had functionality to do this but wasn’t exactly sure how it worked or how difficult it would be since I was now using a completely new set of hardware. I asked my favorite Tech Support rep how hard it would be to restore my computer on the new hardware and he just about laughed at me. He explained that with Paragons Adaptive Restore, I could restore my backup image onto ANY computer and it would be just as easy as running a regular restore with one minor adjustment. Adaptive Restore would do the rest automatically. Continue reading Adaptive Restore Week

Backup and Recovery – Tekzilla Recommended PC Approved.

Tekzilla the internet based technology show hosted by Veronica Belmont and Patrick Norton have a quick review of Paragon Backup and Recovery in their latest episode. You might remember that they mentioned Paragon Backup in a past episode also. Thanks Veronica and Patrick for including us in your show.

Rick the Recruiter doesn’t know which options to choose when he’s setting up software to back up his hard drive. Should he backup folders, the whole computer, or create a disc image? Are incremental backups, better than overwrites. If his hard drive fails, should he restore from a disc image, or re-install windows then move his files back over? Veronica and Patrick walk you through their choices for backing a computer, Windows or OS X!

Storage Virtualization Helps Alleviate Virtual Server Bottlenecks

Storage virtualization is the new focus for many IT Mangers and CIOs. Paragon Software for the most part has been known for server optimization and disaster recovery in both physical and virtual environments. Our latest technologies have given us an edge in virtualization that none of our competitors have been able to replicate. The unique ability to connect to virtual machines that are dormant allows technicians to access virtual machines in ways never before possible.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Enterprise Storage Forum and got to speak about the virtualization market and what we see happening.

Compounding the mismatch between server virtualization and storage resources is a tough economy that has brought increased pressure to maximize virtual infrastructures by increasing virtual machine density. This increased density puts additional pressure on an already strained storage infrastructure.

“IT managers are being forced to do more with their existing infrastructures with less resources being made available, and this is forcing them to look for new ways to reallocate free space on their storage to save on hardware,” said Koka Sexton, manager of business development at Paragon Software. “IT managers are learning how to analyze their virtual infrastructures more closely and implement projects of migrating data to lower-performing drives to free resources.”

Some of the key factors in choosing a storage system for a virtual environment, according to Sexton, include ensuring that storage customers possess a complete understanding of the virtual platform that they are planning to implement and that they are sure that the system can scale to meet their needs.

“In general, the more VMs you have on a host, the more NICs you’ll want,” said Sexton. “However, the network workload of these VMs is the biggest influence. For example, if VMs have light workloads, you’ll need fewer NICs; if VMs have heavier workloads, you’ll need more NICs. As a rule, you’ll probably experience other resource bottlenecks before the network becomes an issue on virtual hosts.”

There are many aspects to consider when using virtualization one of the primary things to consider is the ability to scale and use a tool that can be virtual environment independent.

What are the major concerns you have about virtualization?

Reviewed by Tekzilla – Backup and Recovery 10

Many thanks to Patrick Norton and Tekzilla for the great review of our Backup and Recovery 10 software. It’s been a great week of exposure for Paragon Software with the MakeUseOf giveaway coming to an end and now a blurb out of one of the most popular television networks for the internet generation. We are very appreciative!

“One of the best backup tools available” If Tekzilla says it then you know its true!

Take complete control of your PC’s safety. Based on solid commercial backup and recovery software from Paragon, the new Backup & Recovery 10.1 Free Edition will give you a rich set of features that you can trust.

Smart people backup; Backup & Recovery is smart backup

Paragon Software Group on Facebook

Disaster Recovery for Servers

Protecting company information is the most important task of an IT Manager. Making sure the servers are up and running is a daily responsibility. In the event of a server crash or other disaster, having a rock solid recovery solution in place is paramount.

Drive Backup 10 Server Backup Solution

View more presentations from Paragon Software Group.

Drive Backup 10 Server is the top-level disaster recovery & system migration solution for both physical & virtual Windows® environments. Combining all of Paragon’s latest patented technologies and expertise, our newest version delivers:

Increased efficiency to assure business continuity
Significant capital cost savings
Enhanced IT productivity

Disk Imaging for Physical and Virtual Machines

Paragon’s Drive Backup 10 Server software leverages disk imaging tools to simplify storage management issues, from consolidation to disaster recovery protection, in both physical and virtual environments.

By Jack Fegreus, openBench Labs

Entrenched at the top of the list of storage challenges is data protection, which includes the perennial problem of data backup. IT groups at large enterprises continue to struggle with meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that continue to tighten both the Recovery Point Objective (RPO)—the maximum amount of data measured in time prior to the disruption that could be lost in the recovery process—and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO)—the maximum period of time that it could take to recover. Meanwhile, IT administrators at SMBs, who often have less storage expertise and tighter budgets than their peers at larger enterprises, struggle with more prosaic issues, such as choosing technologies to simplify backup processing within shrinking backup windows.

To help IT deal with data protection issues at all types of sites, Paragon Software Group’s Drive Backup 10 Server creates exact image copies of live disk drives on physical and virtual systems running a Windows-based OS. With a technology foundation featuring synthetic backups, along with full support for both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, Drive Backup 10 extends standard data protection constructs with wizards that employ the same menus for backup and system migration processes to support physical-to-virtual (P2V) consolidation.

What’s more, IT can use the Paragon Script Language (PSL) to customize the synthetic and differential backup wizards in Drive Backup 10 Server. Using PSL, IT administrators can create scripts to automate end-to-end data protection processes, which can implement Paragon Hot Backup and Microsoft VSS snapshot technologies to maintain transactional integrity. In particular, the Paragon synthetic backup scheme by default supports differential backup, which on multiple VM backup jobs can reduce storage capacity requirements on the order of 30-to-1 without the extra processing incurred with inline data deduplication. As a result, administrators can leverage PSL to invoke fast differential backups to support near-CDP levels of replication for VMs, and then match that aggressive RPO with an equally aggressive RTO using synthetic backup images that can be restored in minutes. Continue reading Disk Imaging for Physical and Virtual Machines

White Paper: Maximize Data Protection for Physical and Virtual Systems

For IT organizations of all sizes, storage continues to be the primary resource driving operating costs. Entrenched at the top of the list of storage problems is data protection, which includes the perennial problem of data backup. IT groups at large enterprises continue to struggle with meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that continue to tighten both the Recovery Point Objective (RPO)—the maximum amount of data measured in time prior to the disruption that could be lost in the recovery process—and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO)—the maximum period of time that it could take to recover. Meanwhile, IT administrators at small to medium sized business (SMBs), who often have less storage expertise and tighter budgets, struggle with more prosaic issues, such as choosing technologies to simplify backup processing in shrinking backup windows.

To help IT at all types of sites deal with data protection issues, Paragon Drive Backup 10 Server creates an exact image copy of a live disk drive on physical and virtual servers and workstations running a Windows-based operating system. Using multiple snapshot technologies, Drive Backup 10 Server is able to maintain transactional integrity of the file system structures on the disk, including all Windows OS files, configuration files, and databases.

More importantly, IT does not have to purchase extra-cost options to leverage Drive Backup 10 Server in a virtual environment, such as VMware® vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V™. Running Drive Backup Server, an IT administrator can go beyond simply restoring a backup image as a virtual machine application or as a collection of Windows OS files. By applying Paragon’s 3rd generation of Adaptive Restore technology, an IT administrator is able to insert new drivers into an image and create a bootable volume for an entirely different physical or virtual environment.

Of particular importance for IT at SMB sites, Paragon Drive Backup 10 Server is very easy to deploy and use. In addition, the optional Paragon Remote Management (PRM) application provides a single management point for launching and running scripts developed with Paragon Drive Backup on systems across in a distributed enterprise environment. As a result, PRM is especially useful when running multiple VMs in a virtual environment, as IT administrators can rapidly backup and restore systems in minutes to garner an immediate return on investment.

More importantly, as CIOs focus on the virtualization of systems and storage as the magic philter to extract higher resource utilization and lower management costs, IT administrators are now working with limited numbers of abstract device pools rather than multiple instances of proprietary devices. VMware® vSphere™ 4 typifies such an environment with multiple heterogeneous servers running ESX® or ESXi™ hosting multiple virtual machines (VMs) running a variety of server and desktop operating systems. In the process of simplification, however, multiple levels of logical abstraction and resource redirection can also obscure and complicate important IT operations.

Among the hardest hit IT operations are those associated with file-level data protection. That has the potential to turn IT’s magic philter for gaining operating efficiency into a poison pill for compliance with regulatory mandates to secure and maintain critical business data. Fortunately, a key characteristic of a virtual environment is the encapsulation of VM logical disk volume as a single physical disk files. This representation makes image-level backups faster than traditional file-level backups and enhances restoration as virtual disks can be restored as either a whole image or individual files. That’s why, many general purpose backup packages integrate with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) to provide imaging-based backup.

Nonetheless, VCB assumes a shared-disk storage infrastructure via a Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN. For SMB sites functioning well with direct attached storage (DAS) and simple file sharing via networked attached storage (NAS) or FTP storage servers, the need to introduce a SAN in order to protect data in a virtual operating environment presents a prodigious stumbling block.

Paragon Backup 10 Server, however, provides IT with dedicated image-level data protection for VMs running a Windows OS on either a VMware hypervisor without VCB integration or a Microsoft Hyper-V environment. SMB sites can use Paragon Drive Backup 10 Server to provide VMs with full data protection without a major storage infrastructure change from DAS to SAN. What’s more, Paragon enhances the value of Drive Backup 10 and PRM for SMB sites with support for the ESXi hypervisor under the free public license as well as with a full paid license. With more servers featuring ESXi firmware bundles, the ability to work with Windows-based VMs hosted on this hypervisor with the public license is particularly important for IT at SMB sites.

Download the free White Paper.

Paragon Software Enables Migration of Windows Systems to a Virtual Environment

In keeping with its commitment to enabling seamless transitions between operating systems, Paragon Software Group (PSG), : the technology leader in innovative data security and data management solutions, today announced the debut of its Virtualization Manager 2009 Corporate Edition.

“Virtualization Manager 2009 Corporate is truly state of the art technology that saves our customers time and money while providing complete flexibility to migrate within both virtual and physical system environments.”

As IT executives look to conserve budget resources, server virtualization is proving to be an attractive option, offering benefits including, optimum resource utilization, reduction in hardware expenses, lower energy consumption, and the ability to reallocate IT personnel. Fewer servers also require less maintenance, thus, further reducing IT infrastructure costs.

Paragon’s new Virtulization Manager 2009 Corporate Edition was developed to help ease the migration process and enable businesses to maximize their current IT investments. A powerful tool that easily migrates a Windows-based system to a virtual environment, Paragon’s Virtualization Manager : 2009 Corporate Edition helps businesses maximize the utility of servers increasing their efficiencies while decreasing energy costs by up to 80 percent.

Virtualization Manager also easily migrates a Windows-based system to a different environment, whether it be a physical to physical (P2P) or physical to virtual (P2V) migration. Additional Virtualization Manager : functionalities include: recovering an OS after an unsuccessful system virtualization by a third-party tool; creating a virtual clone of the physical system and saving it on a network for backup purposes; providing a failsafe that ensures business continuity; and enabling the installation of several different operating systems on one computer.

“Paragon Software is committed to offering the most powerful and easy to use system migration and data conversion tools on the market,” noted Tom Fedro, president of Paragon Software Group. “Virtualization Manager 2009 Corporate is truly state of the art technology that saves our customers time and money while providing complete flexibility to migrate within both virtual and physical system environments.”

Key features and benefits include:

— Full Windows OS Support – Guaranteed support for any Windows OS post-Win2K

— P2V Copy – Migrate a physical system to a virtual disk

— P2V Restore – Migrate a physical system backed up with Paragon software to a virtual disk

— P2V Adjust – Recover OS startup ability after unsuccessful virtualization by a 3rd party tool

— P2P Adjust – Recover OS startup ability after system migration to a different hardware platform

— Hot Copy Technology – Online processing of locked hard disks for easy

— Smart Driver Injector – Makes adding new drivers smooth and simple

— Virtual Disk Map – Preview changes before applied

— Flexible Destination Choices – Choose any destination to place virtual disks

— Partition Auto-Resize – Easily set desired partition size when creating virtual disks

— 2 Types of VMWare Disks – Create either IDE or SCSI disks for VMWare

— Disk File Split for VMWare – Automatically cut virtual images to files of 2 GBs each for improved data management

Virtualization Manager is now available from Paragon Software; please visit www.paragon-software.com/business/vm/ to learn more.

Review by: VMblog.com