Following Red Hat in giving the software away and charging for support, BakBone Software is giving away a special free-use edition of its NetVault backup software. The free-use edition can handle backup for up to two client servers and up to 500 GB of disk through NetVault's built-in software virtual tape library, which makes standard disk emulate a tape library.

BakBone is offering two support options: annual SMB support for $50/client and $200 for each 500 GB of VTL capacity and business-day support for 8 hours, 5 days a week. Enterprise support with 7/24 response is $600/yr.

This, combined with BakBone's decision this month to allow users to download evaluation versions of NetVault as Symantec has for a long time, should lead to more sampling of NetVault and, as users grow into it, hopefully more sales. NetVault, like SyncSort's Backup Express and HP's Data Protector, has been stuck in the second tier of backup solutions while CommVault's Simpana Backup (formerly Galaxy) has gained mindshare just below the big three of EMC, Symantec, and IBM.

It still will have to compete with Amanda open source backup and recovery software, which will always be dear to the hearts of open source zealots as an open source project itself.