NetBackup 7.5 First Availability (FA) Program

Dear NetBackup Customer:

I am pleased to inform you that Symantec NetBackup 7.5 will have a First Availability (FA) program.  The FA will be available the week of February 6, 2012.  Just as with NBU 7.1, Symantec is offering the opportunity to obtain and run production-ready general availability (GA) NetBackup 7.5 as soon as it becomes available.  Through the First Availability program, you can take advantage of the latest feature capabilities that have been made available in NetBackup.

What are the key new features NetBackup 7.5?
The marquee features of NetBackup 7.5 include:
• Replication Director
This feature offers a unified, policy-based management of backups, snapshots and replication.
• Deduplication
This release offers improved deduplication integration, scalability, performance, and stability.
• Virtualization
NetBackup for VMware and NetBackup for Hyper-V have both been improved.  If you are still running agents "in the guest", it is time to leverage the benefits in these built-for-virtualization solutions.
• Accelerator
This feature offers intelligent, streamlined backups to disk. It addresses the increase in the amount of data to backup and the need to reduce the backup windows.
• Search
This feature provides an Information Management solution that couples backup, recovery, archive, and discovery.
• Cloud
This release contains a new Cloud-based storage that features Encryption.
• Telemetry
This feature provides data collection and upload capabilities for NetBackup and OpsCenter installations.
• New platform support has been added to provide automated Bare Metal Restore of more platforms and configurations; expand embedded deduplication, and expand support to address market needs for database agents.
o Mac OSX 10.7 Client
o BMR Client and boot server support for the following platforms:
 Red Hat 6
 AIX 7.5
 Solaris 10 ZFS (Sparc/x64)
 Linux native multi-path
• Auto Image Replication for BMR images
• Deduplication for AIX MSDP and Client
• Added support for the following agents
o Enterprise Vault 10
o New - Sybase Agent (Solaris 10 x64)
o New - Informix Agent (Solaris 10 x64)
o SharePoint 2010 SP1
o Exchange 2010 SP2

IS THIS AN ALPHA OR BETA PROGRAM?
No.  First Availability software is production ready GA software that has passed stringent Symantec release and quality criteria.   This is not an Alpha or Beta program and we encourage and fully support FA code in production environments.  The First Availability program provides GA quality software to you as soon as it becomes available.

What is the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FIRST AVAILABILTY AND GENERAL AVAILABILITY?
The First Availability program allows customer access to software at the same time that it is ready to begin the GA hosting process.  The software will be available via FileConnect/DVD Media, this will be the same version you receive through the First Availability program and no further upgrade or action is necessary.

WHEN DOES THE FIRST AVAILABILITY PROGRAM END?
NetBackup FA code is fully supported through support.  Once the GA posting is complete on the Symantec web-site, the software and the e-mail address will be removed from the download site.

What’s Next?
Please wait until registration opens on January 9th, 2012.  I will send you a reminder when registration opens.

If you have any additional questions then please send email to:
NBU-First-Avail@optimacomputer.com.

For those who express an interest in participating, expect to hear from me again once the software is available for download.