StorageCraft Releases Cloud Services, ShadowProtect 5

StorageCraft Technology Corporation launched StorageCraft Cloud Services as well as the latest version of StorageCraft ShadowProtect, its award-winning flagship backup and disaster recovery solution.

StorageCraft, a provider of best-in-class backup, disaster recovery, system migration and data protection solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, gives small and medium-sized businesses the power and capability to effectively plan for and recover from minor and major disruptions in business operations in seconds, rather than hours or days.

In addition to the launch of StorageCraft Cloud Services and ShadowProtect 5, StorageCraft also released StorageCraft ImageManager 6.

“With the launch of StorageCraft Cloud Services, we have extended the backup, file and folder recovery, onsite failover, and virtualization capabilities into the cloud. In addition, ShadowProtect 5 features support for the latest Microsoft Windows operating systems, which enables our channel partners to continue delivering fast, flexible, and reliable disaster recovery to their customers,” said Scott Barnes, chief technical officer for StorageCraft.

This release marks a shift in focus at StorageCraft from single products to a complete end-to-end business continuity solution to help managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs) build their businesses, according to Curt James, VP of Marketing and Business Development at StorageCraft.

“We have two goals: to supply our partners with the tools to quickly execute effective disaster recovery for their customers and to give partners the opportunity to increase their profitability,” said James.

StorageCraft Cloud Services users and resellers pay only for the storage they use, allowing them to assess and modify storage needs across systems and clients for a more cost-effective approach. They may purchase storage on a monthly basis and pay only for the storage used (rounded up to the nearest gigabyte). The product is also available in tiered options, which allows for further customization:

• Cloud Basic: Archives critical business backup images.
• Cloud+: Includes everything in Cloud Basic, plus immediate file and folder recovery.
• Cloud Premium: Includes everything in Cloud+, as well as instant virtualization of data and failover in the cloud.

In addition, users in the United States may opt to have their data mirrored to a second data center for an additional layer of protection.

The newest version of ShadowProtect features StorageCraft ImageReady, a new technology that automatically mounts ShadowProtect backup image files as NTFS shares. Users can then run CHKDSK or custom scripts to validate data and application integrity in their backups. This provides an additional layer of verification of business-critical applications such as Exchange, SharePoint and SQL. StorageCraft is releasing ShadowProtect Server/Small Business Server and ShadowProtect Virtual with OS support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and ShadowProtect Desktop with support for Microsoft Windows 8.

ImageManager 6 features three significant updates to improve the user experience. Users may now:

• Use a hard drive to seed all their existing images within a managed folder to the cloud, while simultaneously replicating new incremental images to the cloud.
• Enable performance throttling for intelligentFTP, ShadowStream, and cloud transports, regulating maximum transfer speeds during peak business hours.
• Free up disk space through consolidation of monthly files into a single rolling file with StorageCraft Rolling Consolidation. ShadowProtect 5 is required to perform this action.