Vizioncore this week upgraded its backup and recovery tool for virtual environments, vRanger Pro, to version 4 and gave it data protection functions as well. The product has been renamed vRanger Pro 4.0 DDP for data protection platform.

The move reflects Vizioncore's sense that more mission-critical applications are now running in virtual machines and extra measures are needed to protect data.

Version 4.0 includes a customizable graphical management console. At the console, an administrator can schedule and perform an incremental backup, a differential backup where only changes in the data get saved, or a full backup, to be performed on a regular schedule. The backups are done while virtual machines are running, CEO Chris Akerberg said in the May 21 upgrade announcement.

Version 4.0 will get added features in three phases over the next 12 months. Only VMware environments are mentioned in the announcement, but Vizioncore is committed to supporting Microsoft's Hyper-V as well down the road. The initial upgrade of vRanger Pro, now available, has more built-in intelligence and scalability, along with the following features, in addition to full, incremental, and differential backups:

• Instant File Level Restore, or the ability to create a previous existing condition of a file.

• Backup and restore to and from SFTP and CIFS repositories.

• Direct-to-target backups.

• Reduced backup window by using all available ESX hosts to perform simultaneous backups.

• Access to PowerShell, Microsoft's scripting language.

• Resource Manager to control throughput.

• Integration with VMware's vCenter and vMotion, and support for VMware's latest management environment, vSphere 4.

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