CA ARCserve Backup r16

CA’s ARCserve Backup r16 aims to amalgamate disk, tape and cloud backup into a single product. Dave Mitchell puts it through its paces in the lab to see if it has every data protection angle covered.

Integration with ARCserve D2D

ARCserve D2D can now be accessed remotely from the ARCserve Backup Manager console and have its backups migrated into the central recovery catalogue. Not to be confused with disk-to-disk backup, this is CA's disk imaging software for workstations and servers and provides disaster recovery features including bare metal restore, infinite block-level incrementals at up to fifteen minute intervals and support for cloud storage.

ARCserve

CA's disk imaging software can now be managed remotely from ARCserve Backup Manager console

CA also offers a wider range of licensing models where you can buy components as required, or base your purchases on the number of servers to be protected. Another model gives unlimited use of the complete ARCserve suite and is based on the amount of production data in TB prior to compression and deduplication.

ARCserve Backup r16 offers a superb range of data protection features and the additional support for cloud storage is a timely addition. It scores well over products such as Symantec's Backup Exec as it includes deduplication as standard and not as an optional extra and CA's new licensing schemes make it even more affordable for SMBs and enterprises alike.

Verdict

As long term users of ARCserve, we’ve always found it provides a very good range of data protection tools for the price and is particularly easy to use. This latest version adds essential support for cloud storage, backup features for virtualised environments are good and value is increased considerably by the integral data deduplication.

Requirement

Memory: 1GB

Hard disk: 1.5GB

OS: Base product - Windows 2003 R2 upwards

Dave Mitchell

Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.