Public Relations

Asgent　Announces the Release of ShadowProtect, a System Backup Solution for Continuous Computing Environments

- Asgent collaborates with StorageCraft for product localization and sales -

December 3, 2007
Asgent,Inc.

Asgent, Inc. (President & CEO: Takahiro Sugimoto, located in Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo), a pioneer in security solutions, today announces the signing of a distribution agreement, including cooperation for Japanese product localization, with StorageCraft Technology Corporation (USA: President / Chief Executive Officer: Jeff Shreeve, below “StorageCraft”) to sell the system backup software “ShadowProtect Ver. 3.1”.

■ Background

The importance of system backups is increasing as a result of significant changes in the environment surrounding organizations, such as the provisioning of business continuity measures and regulatory compliance. Just as IT systems play a pivotal role within business today, so the ability to back up constantly expanding systems quickly and reliably, while being able to restore them to operational status just as quickly in the case of a disaster is a very important issue. It is for these reasons that image backup solutions, which enable shortened system recovery times by taking whole backups of the entire system including files, applications and the OS, and then restoring them in the same way in the case a server fails, are gaining attention and market share in the US.

It is particularly difficult to restore Windows operating systems with traditional file backup solutions used with UNIX/LINUX due to registry information stored within the Windows OS. The result if that restoring Windows systems requires a lot of time and work to reinstall the OS and applications, apply patches to each etc.

The image backup engine contained in ShadowProtect Ver. 3.1 transfers and saves disk data in the original bit-string format rather than as individual files, so it is possible to recover a system quickly and reliably merely by restoring the disk to it’s original state. Using the same method, it is also possible to restore a system to different hardware models.

StorageCraft’s proprietary snapshot technology is highly regarded in overseas markets, and has been OEM licensed to many leading product vendors such as virtualization software vendor VMware. ShadowProtect Ver. 3.1 utilizes this snapshot technology in the image backup engine, enabling “hot” image backups to be taken while the system is running, and making it possible to backup systems where the server cannot be shut down, without interfering with normal operations.

In addition, full support for the standard drivers included in Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003 gives a high level of compatibility when restoring systems to different hardware.

Also, backup files from the target machine can be restored with one click onto a VMware virtual machine, because VMware Workstation 6 provides native support for the ShadowProtect Ver. 3.1 backup file format. Naturally, the virtual machine itself can also be backed up and restored.

ShadowProtect Ver. 3.1 is an image backup solution that meets the demanding needs for reliability, compatibility and speed required for business use (refer to Table 1).

There are three versions of ShadowProtect: the Server Edition, Desktop Edition and IT Edition. The Server and Desktop Edition both support “hot” and “cold” image backups, while the IT Edition can be used to create “cold” image backups without the need to install any software on the client machine. Also, the IT Edition license is not based on the number of nodes to be backed up and can be used for commercial services, so it is ideal for SIer engineers who need to create system backups before and after performing work at the customer site (refer to Table 2).

■ About ShadowProtect

Developer： StorageCraft Technology Corporation.

Start of Sales： December 3^rd, 2007

Sales Target: 300 Million Yen

[Features]

• Total backup and recovery of OS, application, data and configuration

• Ultrafast backup and recovery

• Continuous backup of servers without the need for machine shutdowns^※1

• Hardware independent restore of backup images to different systems

• VMware (virtual machine) support

• Ability to directly access backup image files
  Ex： Mount a system backup image as “read/write” and run an antivirus program directly on the files within the image file, etc.

• Support for differential and incremental backups^※1

• Full support for VSS^※2 server applications

• Schedule automatic full and incremental backups^※1

• Remote management functionality

• Support for Blu-ray devices

• Enterprise-level reliability and compatibility

^※1 Server Edition、Desktop Edition only

^※2 VSS：Volume Shadow Copy Service

Table 1 Speed, Compatibility, Reliability

	ShadowProtect
High Speed	1.5〜4 times faster than competing products※
Compatibility (Recovery)	100% support for standard drivers (Vista, XP, 2003)
Compatibility (VMware)	100% support
Reliability	Volume Snapshot Manager driver licensed as OEM to multiple product vendors

^※ Tested by Asgent

Table 2 Edition Comparison

		Desktop Edition	Server Edition	IT Edition
Backup method		Cold/Hot	Cold/Hot	Cold
Incremental backup		○	○	×
Differential backup		○	○	×
Recovery from remote environment		○	○	×
Scheduling function		○	○	×
VSS support		○	○	×
License unit		Node	Node	Technician (unlimited nodes)
License expiration period		None	None	1 year
O S	Windows 2000 Professional	○	×	○
	Windows XP	○	×	○
	Windows Vista	○	×	○
	Windows 2000 Server	×	○	○
	Windows Server 2003	×	○	○
CPU		Pentium 133MHｚor above
Memory		128MB	128MB	512MB
HDD		12MB	10MB	10MB
Price		￥21,600	￥253,000	￥788,000