virtualization.info

Yesterday Vizioncore announced the upcoming availability of a new feature for its disaster recovery solution vRanger Pro: FlashRestore.

The technology will allow administrators to boot a virtual machine from its backup image without the need to transfer it back from the backup repository to the production hypervisor.
What actually happens behind the scenes is that vRanger Pro leverages the VMware Storage vMotion technology to relocate the virtual hard drives (VMDK) without downtime.

FlashRestore sounds pretty interesting but there’s a potential problem: the approach may be already patent protected.
In March in fact Veeam announced something that sounds pretty similar as part of their SureBackup strategy: to perform its new Recovery Verification, Backup & Replication 5.0 powers the VMs on directly from their backup archives and puts them into isolated virtual networks where the guest OS and its applications are safely executed.

Veeam, one of most aggressive competitor of Vizioncore, has a number of pending patents to protect Recover Verification, as the official announcement of that time clarifies.

Unfortunately these patents are not yet available online, or at least they are too hard to find, so it’s impossible to figure out how similar the two technologies are. But it’s easy to guess that if there’s even a remote chance of IP infringement, patent litigation is a concrete scenario.

At the moment Vizioncore didn’t provide an eta for FlashRestore release. It certainly won’t be ready in time for VMworld 2010, where the company will only preview the feature.
And if there’s a real dispute with Veeam, its release may take a lot.

Update: And in fact Veeam’s answer arrives pretty soon.
Doug Hazelman, Senior Director of Product Strategy says:

From what we’ve seen in Quest’s news release, their capability sounds similar to the patent-pending technology that Veeam introduced in March and publicly demonstrated in July.

If there proves to be patent violation, we will defend our intellectual property. Likewise, if Quest is found to be engaging in false advertising designed to mislead the market, we will work to set the record straight.

Veeam has been known for our market-leading innovation for the past several years, and we believe the market will understand the situation and judge it on its own merits.

Second update: Quest called virtualization.info to provide its own answer as well. 
Carl Eberling, Vice President and General Manager of Quest Virtualization Management (formerly Vizioncore) says:

Come on.  In the technology world, especially virtualization, multiple companies are working to solve common customer problems. This dynamic competition works great for customers.  We’re not afraid of competition.  Quest is known for our innovation. We’ve been solving the hard problems for years, in physical, virtual, and now cloud environments.   Our FlashRestore technology is patent-pending – a new, unique, and intelligent solution to take backup and recovery to a new level of sophistication in a robust solution aimed at managing and supporting organizations’ virtualized and cloud enabled platforms.  I’m sure there are other, smaller companies out there trying to do the same thing but they’re pretty much niche players.  In any event, we like to let the market decide.  With our incredible intellectual and financial resources, we’re confident we’ll deliver the best solution to the market.  We’re here for the long run for our customers.