Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Zmanda-Open Source Data Protection

April 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Zmanda-Open Source Data Protection

TAGS: Applications

There is a huge market for storage products, backup and recovery, data protection and such. In the open source space, only Zmanda seems to be making any progress with the open source approach to this problem. I spoke with Ken Sims and CEO Chander Kant about their new offerings.

Zmanda network launched yesterday and is offering certified versions of Amanda, and support and services similar to the RedHat network model. The pricing will be much lower and easier to understand than traditional storage software. Roughly ~$50-250 per server or workstation. Linux is the primary platform for the solution, but they will be adding more operating systems to the mix over the next year or so.

Amanda has been out since 1991 so its battle tested already and the company has been pleasantly surprised by the number of people using it. "We think our market is the MySQL market. We're adding enhancements to make it better for customers-and adding value to the MySQL stack" Sims said.

The open source mindset is moving deeper into product and business model development. "If you build your business on open source you should use an open source product for data production as well. We believe we have a great offering and a great alternative to expensive proprietary vendors."

Kant says the best test of backup software is when things go wrong. "Backup is like insurance, you may not want to use it, but you are glad you have it."

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on April 26, 2006 11:45 AM

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