Storage giant EMC unveiled the latest version of its AutoSwap data recovery and protection software at the SHARE mainframe user event in Orlando today.  The updated offering now comes with several major improvements, starting with extended support for the z/VM mainframe OS. The company also added what it calls EMC GDDR, or Geographically Dispersed Disaster Restart, that essentially transfers workloads and data from one Symmetrix VMAX storage system to another in case of an error.

The software also integrated with EMC’s failover solution. From the EMC:

“In the event of a planned or unplanned disruption, EMC GDDR AutoSwap for z/VM works with EMC SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility) software to simplify and automate failover of the entire mainframe workloads to a remote site for the highest levels of data and application availability and unmatched disaster recovery capabilities.”

This week EMC also launched the  DLm6000 Disk Library for Mainframe. The disk-based backup offering designed for IBM z/OS mainframe environments provides 2GB per second throughput, about twice as fast as its closest competitor, and features that were not available in this field before such as deduplication, replication and rapid recovery.  This all makes the DLm6000 a viable replacement for tape backup, at least for some customers.

And earlier, VMware, EMC’s virtualization subsidiary, raised the limit on  vRam per vSphere license from 30 percent to 100 percent. The reason is that it’s likely to compensate customers for the intitial price raise that came with the launch of vSphere 5, which drove many of them away in favor of other platforms such as Microsoft’s Hyper-V. Another VMware update is the announcement of new data loss prevention features added to vShield, which follows an equally significant RSA software update last week at the Balck Hat convention.