Following on the heels of its FilesX acquisition, IBM is rolling out software that gives customers continuous data protection for applications, databases and file servers.

IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software features the ability to provide nearly instantaneous recovery of applications such as Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle and DB2. The software complements IBM’s Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files, which backs up only file-based data and not transactional data.

The software continually captures changes at the block-level. It has policies an IT administrator can set that lets them control the Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives on a per application basis.

The software is available in four versions:
1. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Microsoft Exchange allows the restoration of individual e-mail messages, attachments, calendars and tasks.
2. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recovery lets users restore entire systems to a server or virtual machine.
3. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack Center combines FastBack, FastBack for Microsoft Exchange and FastBack Bare Machine Recovery.
4. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack, which lets you recover any Windows server data.

All versions of FastBack are presently Windows-only products in contrast to one of its competitors, Symantec’s Backup Exec. FastBack also competes with Microsoft’s System Center Data Protection Manager. As you would expect from IBM, the company is looking at supporting AIX, Linux and Solaris over time.

IBM acquired FilesX three months ago in April for $90 million. FilesX’s Xpress Restore is the basis for IBM FastBack.

The software is priced at $800 to $3,000 per server.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW.