Quest Software has introduced LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle, bringing the high-performance backup compression and encryption it has offered in the SQL Server market, to the Oracle platform. According to Quest Software, LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle is tailored to the needs of Oracle and cross-platform DBAs, integrating seamlessly into Oracle's Recovery Manager (RMAN) and export backup strategies. Other benefits of LiteSpeed's low-impact compression technology include backup size reduction of up to 90 percent; backup and restore times reduced by up to 50 percent; four levels of encryption; direct integration with Tivoli Storage Manager; and support for Oracle's Media Manager architecture.
LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server has been available for about 9 years and there have requests from customers for a similar solution for Oracle. "It has been an area that we wanted to tackle," Douglas Chrystall, Quest SQL Server CTO, tells 5 Minute Briefing, "but we wanted to make sure that what we would deliver would really suit what was expected in the Oracle market."
Fundamental to the LiteSpeed Engine approach, "is that we don't want to change how you backup and recover your systems," says Chrystall, noting that is "the last thing" an Oracle DBA wants. "What we have done with LiteSpeed is developed it so that it enhances what you currently have in your backup and recovery scenario."
Additionally, LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle also offers encrypted backups. "As we all know, companies spend a lot of time protecting database access with various security controls," Chrystall says. But then a backup gets put onto a file system "and in essence it is just text file and can be read by anyone with very few controls over that," he notes. And, If it is offsite backup, "now you are moving a company's most valuable data and it is getting shipped in plain text basically in a courier box." According to Chrystall, it is "vitally important" for these mission-critical systems with sensitive information on them to be encrypted.
As companies seek to reduce cost wherever they can, an important aspect of the LiteSpeed proposition "is that you get a return on your investment extremely quickly," says Chrystall. "One of our financial customers is estimating that post-deployment of LiteSpeed they are going to save approximately $2.3 million this year and that is just in disk-space savings, that's not faster recovery times, lower management overhead; that's not saving in archived storage-that's just in pure storage area network disk space."
For more about LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle, go to the Quest Software website.