Data protection solutions maker FalconStor debuted the latest release of its RecoverTrac disaster recovery software today.  Version 2.5 features a number of significant improvements that adds a lot of value across the board according to the company, from better performance to automated testing.

“At the core of every business lies its most valuable asset, data, which must be protected against human error, equipment failure and natural disasters, while at the same time always being available,” said Darrell Riddle, senior director of product marketing at FalconStor Software. “Every minute companies focus on recovering data and critical IT services is time lost running the business.”

RecoverTrac works faster for one thing. Other than the raw performance boost,  the biggest enhancement to the software is probably the ability to recover multiple machines at the same time. FalconStor says that this can reduce DR to a matter of minutes and, in the words of Darrel Riddle, give “IT administrators something they aren’t getting enough of – sleep.”

On top of that, the solution now packs integration with vSphere 5 and support for clustering – a category of high-availability configurations. FalconStor also extended support to include Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor and hardware templates, facilitating failover and failback between environments running different hardware or software.

Lastly, the newest version of RecoverTrac also comes with ‘non-disruptive’ data recovery testing that lets admins fine-tune recovery processes without taking away from day-to-day business operations.

FalconStor is one of the big players in backup and recovery. A few months ago it received an Information Management award from Network World Asia, which surveyed 100 CIOs in the region. The respondents ranked Falcon’s virtual tape library (CTL) solution the highest, a widely-used product across the US and Europe that is also gaining a lot of traction in emerging markets.