News
Unitrends Releases Free Backup Product for VMware, Hyper-V
It can back up as much as 1TB of data.
Users of the free version of ESXi, VMware's hypervisor meant for smaller installations, now have a similarly free way to back up and recover their virtual machines (VMs). Unitrends announced at VMworld today that it has released Unitrends Free, which protects environments that contain up to 1TB of data.
"As of today, Unitrends Free now enables customers to install into and protect virtual machines (VMs) running on VMware's free vSphere hypervisor and protect physical Windows systems via guest operating system agents," the company said in a press release.
Although it's free, the key is that it's also only for VMware's free version of ESXi (it also protects Hyper-V environments, but Hyper-V has always been free). That means it's not for larger enterprises. Unitrends suggests that its best uses are for things like home labs and early stage projects. It could also be useful for developers that create and destroy environments on a continual basis. It won't have the robustness or many of the features of the full version, but as long as its limitations are kept in mind, it can have a valuable place in a network.
Unitrends Free is available now, and VMworld attendees can get a live demo at the company's booth on the show floor.
Unitrends pointed out in its press release that it has backup and recovery for the paid versions of ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as a free version for Google Cloud Platform.
About the Author
Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.