Microsoft has set out plans to sell a disc-to-disc
backup application designed to consolidate Windows server backups
and cut the time needed to recover data when a server goes down,
positioning it against industry stalwarts such as Veritas and
EMC.
At the Storage Decisions conference Microsoft said its new Data
Protection Server will be in beta testing with customers in the
first quarter of 2005 and generally available in the second half of
the year.
Microsoft has already signed up more than 20 storage partners,
including EMC, IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard to resell the
application.
"About 70% of backup cost is labour. That's what we're
addressing," said Jeff Price, a senior director at Microsoft. "Data
Protection Server looks the same as any Windows server."
Matt Senken, a storage architect with The Bank of New York, uses
IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager to back up to tape, and he said he
sees merit in using the Microsoft product to back up low-end
servers to disc for faster recovery. But he said that if he were
already using EMC's Legato or Veritas for that function, he
probably wouldn't switch.
Other users gave the product mixed reviews. Some said they would
consider a disc-to-disc back-up product from Microsoft because it
would be easier to integrate with their existing Microsoft server
platforms and would require little or no training to use and
because they want to migrate away from tape-based backups in
general.
Jim Grisham, a chief IT architect at Northrop Grumman, said he
has a strict data recovery time and recovery point objective that
tape cannot meet.
He said he would like a disc-to-disc product that requires as
little training as possible for administrators. "Sometimes if a
product makes their lives easier, it's worth it," Grisham said.
But John Blackman, a systems architect at a West Coast-based
Fortune 500 bank, said proven storage back-up suppliers such as
Network Appliance have far more mature products so something new,
even from Microsoft, could be a hard sell.
Data Protection Server is built on top of Microsoft Windows
Storage Server 2004 and Active Directory service, which
automatically discovers file servers and then places agents on them
that kick off back-ups to disc on preset policies.
Nancy Hurley, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said
Microsoft is late to the table for enterprise class disc-to-disc
back-up, but he said Data Protection Server has value as a
lower-end product for remote workgroups as a way of consolidating
back-ups to a single disc appliance.
"They say they're not competing with Legato or Veritas, but they
are," Hurley said. "They want to make Windows the platform for
storage."
Lucas Mearian writes for Computerworld