California-based software services provider Symantec Corp.Wednesday revealed plans to advance its existing partnership with PC maker Dell Inc. by delivering Dell's PowerVault DL2000 powered by Symantec's Backup Exec, a new factory-integrated solution that delivers fast and efficient disk-based backup and recovery. The company intends to commence shipping the appliance later in October.

Under the partnership, the companies would deliver Dell PowerVault DL2000 backup-to-disk appliance, a hardware and software data protection solution, with pre-installed Symantec Backup Exec 12.5. The appliance will also include disk management features, designed to facilitate easier management of backup to disk environments from a single console.

The Backup Exec enabled PowerVault DL2000 completes backup jobs 50% faster and restores data 83% faster than magnetic tape. The appliance is integrated with the Granular Recovery Technology of Symantec and allows users to perform a single-pass, application or system-level backup of Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX environments, without interrupting recovery of any individual objects.

Backup Exec 12.5, pre-installed on PowerVault DL2000, allows users to reduce complexity by enabling back up of an unlimited number of guest machines within a Hyper-V or VMware ESX host environment from a single agent. The appliance also eliminates the need for manual installation and configuration and completes set-up and initial deployment in lesser time.

The integrated appliance can also be used for setting backup policies and conduct system monitoring and maintenance from a central location. In addition, users of the PowerVault DL2000 can also configure Backup Exec to continuously protect Microsoft Windows Servers, Exchange, SQL, and desktop and laptop systems by backing up changes to disk in real time.

Shares of SYMC are currently trading at $15.23, up $0.23 or 1.53%, on a volume of about 15.37 million.