Pancetera, the company which provides management and optimization for virtual storage in VMware has released Pancetera Unite version 2.0.2. This version is the follow up of version 1.2.1. which was released in September this year.
The main new features in this release are integration with change block tracking from vSphere and SmartRead 2.0. Besides that an option is now provided to install an IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) client in the Pancetera Unite virtual appliance in order to backup VMware environments.
By integrating with changed block tracking in vSphere only the changed blocks in a virtual machine are captured. By presenting these blocks as a file in the SmartView file system, data movement can be minimized while moving changes of a VM to another storage device. Change Block Tracking can be used to create a daily differential which compliments an occasional base image (commonly made weekly or monthly) of each VM. This allows for reduction of the amount of data needed to copy on an ongoing basis while protecting VMs leveraging existing backup software.
SmartRead 2.0 extends SmartRead technology further by allowing minimization of the read requirements of the new change block tracking functionality. With SmartRead 2.0, only reading changed blocks that are actively in use by the file systems are needed within a guest to synthesize a changed block differential.
