Quest data protection management adds cloud portal

Quest Software, independent again after its spinoff from Dell EMC nearly a year ago, is building out its data protection portfolio with a new cloud-based management console.

The Quest Data Protection Portal is an extension of Rapid Recovery 5.4, the latest version of Quest’s snapshot-based application and data recovery software. The Quest Data Protection Portal runs on the Microsoft Azure public cloud.

“We are planning to add other technologies into the cloud-based management tool,” said Adrian Moir, Quest’s lead technology evangelist. “We are not restricting the technology just to Rapid Recovery. Here we have a cloud platform so that managed service providers can manage multiple customers from multiple locations.”

The Quest Data Protection Portal monitors all Rapid Recovery core servers that may be in disparate locations while checking the status of backups, replications and virtual standbys for disaster recovery. The portal also allows IT administrators to perform backups, replications and recoveries from anywhere.

Quest is working on re-establishing itself as an independent company after Dell EMC sold off  its software group to Francisco Partners and Elliott Management in November 2016. Dell Software acquired Quest in 2012 for $2.36 billion, well before its $60-billion-plus merger with EMC.

Quest Data Protection Portal

This past summer, Quest added Vroom, a tool for virtual infrastructure monitoring and recovery management. Quest Vroom protects VMware and Hyper-V while providing disaster recovery-as-a-service in Microsoft Azure. Vroom uses Rapid Recovery and it can monitor a virtual machine (VM) as it is running and show what could happen to it in case of an outage.

Jason Buffington, a principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said the Quest Data Protection Portal is part of the vendor’s “broader system strategy.”

“The IT operations do patching services and monitoring services, and are the first to be called when things go down,” he said. “This makes them highly motivated to be part of the protection and recovery process. This is a good way to reconsider Quest because they are unique in their ability to integrate system management and data protection within a single pane of glass.”