Formerly known as EMC Backup Advisor, the newly named EMC Data Protection Advisor provides the ability to collect data from the existing backup platform and software, analyze that data, and then provide reports and/or alerts as to the current status of data backups in the organization. EMC lists multiple backup platforms as supported by the product, including their own Avamar and NetWorker lines, Symantec's NetBackup and Backup Exec, IBM TSM, HP Data Protector, CommVault, and Oracle RMAN, among others. The vendor further states that the forthcoming new release of the software will include updated support for the latest versions of many of those tools; including Data Domain products.

EMC states that Data Protection Advisor collects data from backup components themselves across domains and locations, crunching the data and providing from it specialized alerting of potential backup problems as well as action and status reports that detail the current effectiveness of the backup infrastructure. Among the possible alerts that can be generated from the collected information are such warnings as device failures, backups that are slower than normal, backups that have exceeded operational or SLA windows, or backups that are smaller than normal. Available reports display information such as 3-D daily backup job activity measurements, predicted media usage, expired media, and more.

Data Protection Advisor can be deployed as a central server proxy (the collector can run from Data Protection Advisor itself, or a separate server) that collects data from the target systems; or alternatively (and recommended by the vendor) individual collector agents can be deployed specifically to "systems of interest" for continuous monitoring, i.e., backup servers and storage nodes, clients, file servers, etc. (centralized, proxy-based monitoring happens only as-needed). The vendor notes that mixed central proxy and agent-based deployments are possible, and in fact constitute the norm for most environments.

As part of its data collection regimen, EMC Data Protection Advisor additionally collects configuration information; and in that regard can operate as a configuration change management platform, providing alerts on changes to configs or software versions, including licensing. Current configurations (including backup jobs, system parameters and hardware configurations) can be compared to a "gold standard" or a previous config for troubleshooting efforts.

In addition to the core product features, several optional components are available to supplement Data Protection Advisor's capabilities. The File Server option extends Data Protection Advisor's reach into EMC Celerra and NetApp filers; while the Database option reports such specific information as row counts, slow queries, and more for Oracle, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL DBs. Finally, the new Virtualization option provides a link to VMware Virtual Center's APIs, enabling data to be collected from VMware servers for the tracking of such information as performance, resource consumption, conflicting backup schedules, and host image movement from server to server.

EMC Data Protection Advisor is available now. The new release is expected to be available on December 23, 2008, with pricing starting at $8,700.

Contact EMC for further information.