Double-Take Software unveiled the latest version of its replication and recovery product, Double-Take 5.0. The company said that its latest 5.0 release is the only disaster recovery product to combine continuous data replication and full server protection, a combination that eliminates the need to install and maintain applications, patches and configurations on the standby server for disaster recovery. One of th Double-Take Software unveiled the latest version of its replication and recovery product, Double-Take 5.0.The company said that its latest 5.0 release is the only disaster recovery product to combine continuous data replication and full server protection, a combination that eliminates the need to install and maintain applications, patches and configurations on the standby server for disaster recovery.One of the product’s new features is called “Full Server Failover”. This feature reduces the complexity of setting up a standby system for failover and can be used to streamline protection for any applications running on a Microsoft Windows server without the need for pre-installation or configuration of any application software on the standby server. Added benefits include the ability to protect servers in the LAN or WAN, support for 32- and 64-bit operating systems and more importantly, the fact that it is hardware independent, meaning the standby system doesn’t have to be the same make, model or configuration and can even be a virtual machine. Version 5.0 also includes a feature called the “Enterprise Install Console”, which helps customers deploy and maintain their Double-Take installations by helping to automate Double-Take installs or upgrades throughout the environment.Double-Take version 5.0 added support for advanced scripting which can be executed within a specific user context, enhanced restores to maximize uptime for end-users since there is no need to take applications offline during a restore, and integration with Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for snapshot processes.“Every organization knows they should protect their business-critical systems from unwanted downtime. The challenge to-date has been that implementing protection has come at the cost of needing to configure and maintain their disaster recovery environment. This ‘protection tax’ requires that they keep their disaster recovery servers’ operating systems, applications and configuration in lock-step with their production environment which can be a costly effort,” said Bob Roudebush, director of solutions engineering for Double-Take Software. “With Double-Take 5.0 and features like Full-Server Failover, we’re repealing the ‘protection tax’ for our customers and providing them the ability to protect or migrate entire servers easily all while the production workload remains available. This allows them to devote their time and resources to more worthwhile efforts while still remaining protected in the event of a disaster.” In summary, key new features include: Full-Server protection and failover Automated Microsoft SharePoint Services protection Flexible and easy migration between physical and virtual machines and between dissimilar hardware Enhancements to Microsoft Exchange 2007 Cluster protection Enterprise Install Console for centralized and automated deployment/upgrade of Double-Take Advanced Scripting Enhanced restore capabilities Software Development