Features - Storage Innovations:

StorageCraft RELEASES ColdSnap

StorageCraft Inc, a leading supplier of innovative and high performance products and services for data storage, data protection, disaster recovery and backup, announced the immediate availability of ColdSnap. ColdSnap takes a cold state snapshot of all windows volumes, including the operating system during the system boot process. ColdSnap makes it possible for a system to be backed up with all the advantages of cold state imaging, including the same consistency and reliability. ColdSnap eliminates the downside of forcing a system to boot into another operating system and does not require taking a system out of production for the period it takes to write the backup or image file.

"Many IT professionals periodically take their systems offline and out of production to perform cold state backups and/or images in addition to performing daily or even hourly hot system backups. ColdSnap greatly improves the process of making cold state backups. With ColdSnap, a cold state backup can be made with almost no impact on system uptime. A system can be 'coldsnapped' and returned to production as quickly as the system can be rebooted, with the resulting snapshot used for backup purposes," said Jamey Kirby, CEO and chief architect at StorageCraft.

ColdSnap offers backup and disaster recovery software and hardware vendors, as well as enterprise consumers who already have an open file technology, the opportunity to enhance their solution by including system wide integrity, consistency and reliability offered only in cold state backup. ColdSnap is easily integrated into backup software using one of three methods of integration. The three methods of integration include drive letter access where the snapshot is mounted as a drive letter, direct volume access where the snapshot volume is accessible as a volume object and API integration which requires very little change for most file level backup and disaster recovery programs.

For solutions providers or enterprise customers without an open file or snapshot technology or those considering upgrading their current solution, ColdSnap can be bundled with StorageCraft's VSnap. Together, ColdSnap and VSnap provide hot and cold snapshot technology yielding the most comprehensive, efficient and flexible solutions for backup and disaster recovery.

Companies that currently use open file technologies such as Microsoft's VolSnap and VSS framework can benefit from ColdSnap. Base images are the most important backup that IT administrators make. By taking a base image with Coldsnap, the IT administrator can be assured that every single file in the base image is in a restorable state.

StorageCraft snapshot technology is installed on well over 300,000 systems around the world providing the highest level of open file protection for both windows servers and desktop operating systems. ColdSnap is offered to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for systems integration and to end-user customers.