[thinnews] NetX Flexsafe Guards Client-Side Data
- From: "Jim Kenzig http://thethin.net" <jimkenz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thinnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 12:18:37 -0400
A cool new product from Netx Inc. Article is from Eweek linked below.
JK
Flexsafe Guards Client-Side Data
By Henry Baltazar
September 1, 2003
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1234219,00.asp
NetX Inc.'s flexsafe provides plug-and-play client-side backup capabilities
in an easy-to-implement appliance. Given that a large amount of valuable
company data is stored on laptops and desktops (much to IT management's
chagrin), the NetX FlexSafe appliance will be a welcome addition to many
corporations.
The NetX FlexSafe appliance runs Altiris Inc.'s Client Recovery Solution 5.7
backup software on Toshiba America Information Systems Inc.'s Magnia Z310
server hardware platform.
The NetX FlexSafe is priced starting at $3,599, which includes licenses for
10 users. Additional clients cost $59 per node, with volume discounts
available.
During tests, eWEEK Labs was able to easily set up the NetX FlexSafe
appliance. More important, however, the client-side interface was clean and
easy to learn. The interface can be downloaded from the appliance, or IT
managers can use the NetX FlexSafe administration console to push out the
software to client machines.
NetX Inc.'s flexsafe provides plug-and-play client-side backup capabilities
in an easy-to-implement appliance. Given that a large amount of valuable
company data is stored on laptops and desktops (much to IT management's
chagrin), the NetX FlexSafe appliance will be a welcome addition to many
corporations.
The NetX FlexSafe, which shipped in July, is a disk-based backup system. The
initial backup?which copies the registry, operating systems, applications
and data to the NetX FlexSafe appliance?can be tedious (especially at
companies that have a lot of data to back up). After that, however,
incremental snapshots?which send only new files and changed portions of
older files?are quick.
Using the management tools, users can take snapshots on demand. In addition,
IT managers have the ability to schedule automated snapshots to be taken at
specified intervals.
Using the client-side management utility, we could easily see all our past
snapshots in the recovery interface and could quickly grab and restore
directories and files.
One annoying quirk of the interface is that each file or directory must be
restored individually. We would have liked to select multiple objects to
restore before starting a job.
New in this version of Altiris' Client Recovery Solution software is the
ability to store backups to hidden partitions on the local machine. This
will be useful for users who work remotely and can't get a high-speed-access
connection to a NetX FlexSafe appliance. Although a local backup will do
users no good in the event of a hard drive crash, it can be extremely
invaluable in the event that data is corrupted because they can roll back
their machines to a viable state.
The NetX FlexSafe has nowhere near the functionality of Connected Corp.'s
Connected DataProtector 7.0, which is designed to serve hundreds or even
thousands of users, but the NetX FlexSafe makes sense for small workgroups
and remote offices.
The Magnia Z310 system is relatively small and quiet. Wireless networking
(802.11b) support is included, which should make it easy to back up wireless
laptops.
Support for Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Japanese and simplified
Chinese is available, making this appliance attractive to multinational
companies.
The NetX FlexSafe appliance lacks interoperability with Apple Computer Inc.
and Unix clients, which would be a useful addition in future versions.
Senior Analyst Henry Baltazar can be reached at
henry_baltazar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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