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Acronis launches Recovery for Microsoft Exchange

Software helps alleviate headache of backing up and recovering emails

October 2nd, 2008, London — Acronis is today launching Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange, a backup and recovery software solution specifically designed to provide fast, cost-effective and flexible options for protecting Microsoft Exchange environments.

Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange extends the company's proven backup and disaster recovery protection to Microsoft Exchange servers. A version of the product is also available for Microsoft Small Business Server.

The solution gives IT managers the ability to keep the lifeblood of any business - email - in working order. Designed to help automate the best possible disaster recovery strategy for the situation, the product can restore individual emails, files, folders and mailboxes or the entire Microsoft Exchange database, dependent on the users’ requirement. Unique to Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange is the ability to run a granular restore from a full database level backup, not just from a brick level backup. Because the creation of a database level backup is much faster than it is to create a brick level backup, Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange offers a fast backup process along with flexible restoration.

"We see an increasing focus on not only recovery of user data but also system level recovery of the server configuration, system state and application," said Laura DuBois, Research Director of Storage Software at IDC. "Acronis enables recovery of both. The Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange product offers not only granular recovery of individual messages but also priority-based recovery of the Exchange service itself. For some environments, near instant recovery of the messaging service is essential to ongoing business operations while recovery of older message data can occur over a rolling window."

The backup strategy assistant available on the product offers step-by-step instructions, helping users to prioritise the tasks for email restoration and ensuring they get the recovery process right, first time.

"When emails go down, it’s an IT manager’s worst nightmare," said Kevin Moreau, general manager Acronis UK and Ireland. "Speed is of the essence, but it’s not the only consideration. Determining and implementing the correct strategy to fix the problem is crucial. Our solution offers IT administrators an easy-to-use service which provides guidance on the best approach to take in order to reduce the headache of disaster recovery. Because it offers simple step-by-step advice, it is perfect for SMBs who may not have experienced database administrators in their team."

Flexibility=Fast Recovery

Appreciating that the recovery procedure for a MS Exchange database will vary depending on what caused the problem, Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange allows IT managers to:

• recover specific email messages or mailboxes using a granular (brick-level) restore
• restore to the point of failure, which means keeping the amount of lost emails and other exchange entries to a minimum
• recover to a specific point in time, to a last known working state
• restorations are faster and the backup files are smaller due to Acronis' ability to back up and restore individual emails, files, folders and mailboxes and not the entire Exchange application. In the event of a hardware failure, customers can use the software in conjunction with Acronis True Image Echo backup software with Universal Restore to do a bare-metal restore to a completely different piece of hardware, or a virtual machine, and have the Exchange Server back in service very quickly

Features include:

• Hot Backup: Backs up while the Microsoft Exchange service is online and serving clients, allowing for 24/7 availability
• The backup strategy assistant: Creates a disaster recovery plan for any environment, delivering step-by-step instructions for recovery. Following the wizard’s instruction, any IT staff can restore a system rapidly, whether they are an experienced database administrator or not
• Acronis Active restore: Provides full Microsoft Exchange Server functionality for users in seconds, while the database is still being restored
• Near continuous data protection (CDP): Continuously backs up transactions to enable the complete restoration of Microsoft Exchange Server databases with minimum data loss
• Automatic dial-tone recovery: Product can restore email service more quickly to users (providing them with a basic "dial tone") and then restore users' previous data as it becomes available.
• Restore email from database-level backup – Users can restore specific emails messages from database level backup
• Centralised management: Provides a single control point for the entire infrastructure, making it easy to manage and track backup and recovery activities
• Intuitive, wizard-driven GUI and command-line interface: Guides users through the scheduling process and reduces the possibility for errors; also offers full command-line interface for scripting
• High performance and speed: Due to the ability to restore data (mailboxes, public folders or individual e-mails) from a database-level backup, rather than time-consuming brick-level backups
• Bare-metal restore: Restore a whole production server (operating system and all databases, configuration files, and data) on an unconfigured system from a bootable CD or by PXE
• Windows 2008 support: Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange is one of the first solutions on the market to support Microsoft Exchange 2007 on a Windows 2008 server

Availability and pricing

Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange is now available from Acronis resellers worldwide. Manufacturer’s suggested end user price starts at £475 per server. Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange Small Business Server lists for £199.

About Acronis

Acronis is a global provider of storage management software that enables corporations and individuals to move, manage and maintain digital assets. Acronis sells innovative solutions for disaster recovery, server consolidation and virtualization migration, which allow users to maintain business continuity and reduce downtime in computing environments. Acronis software products are sold in more than 180 countries and are available in 15 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.co.uk or contact media_eu@acronis.com.