(The Hosting News) – HOUSTON —R1Soft, developer of Linux Hot Copy (HCP), a free command line utility that takes instant point-in-time snapshots of online Linux file systems, today announced the availability of HCP Beta Version 3.3.1. This latest release furthers Hot Copy’s maturity with updates and performance improvements.

For Windows Server administrators the ability to perform online disk snapshots is easy and has been included by default since Windows Server 2003, called Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service. R1Soft Hot Copy adds volume shadow copy to Linux servers.

“In an interview with IDG in 2008 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed Linux runs on 60 percent of the servers. It has always been amazing to me that the operating system running on 60 percent of the World’s servers had no universal volume snapshot tool. Volume snapshots are a very important tool for server administration, yet for Linux administrators taking an online disk snapshot has historically been a complicated challenge. With R1Soft Hot Copy Linux, volume snapshots are easy and available to all Linux servers,” said David Wartell, vice president of R1Soft, a division of BBS Technologies, Inc.

The latest release of Hot Copy Beta adds the ability to take multiple point-in-time snapshots of online disk volumes. These readable and writable snapshots are useful for everything from backups, upgrades, testing system changes, and security audits. Hot Copy can even be used to detect corrupt file systems while the server is online, something that typically requires server down time and maintenance.

“Sure there has always historically been Linux Volume Manager Snapshots (LVM), however LVM does not directly support many of the popular storage configurations like basic partitions, virtual disks for Xen, and replicated block devices. Further, Linux LVM Snapshots require an administrator to create dedicated snapshot storage ahead of time, typically when the server is first installed, and this is often forgotten until someone needs a volume snapshot. All these challenges are a thing of the past for Linux now that Hot Copy is available” said Wartell.

Today’s release also integrates the free Linux utility with R1Soft’s newest version of its Continuous Data Protection ® (CDP) software, CDP 3 Standard Edition, allowing Hot Copies to be created while CDP 3 is performing replicas of the same device.

To download Linux Hot Copy for free and to learn more about how it works, please visit http://www.r1soft.com/tools/linux-hot-copy/

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