Microsoft has unveiled a mid-range storage system that it
said will make it quicker and easier to back-up and recover files
from Windows servers.
The Microsoft Data Protection Server (DPS) was announced in the
run-up to Storage Expo and is due to be released in mid-2005.
About 20 hardware suppliers have said they will support the server,
including CommVault, Computer Associates, Dell, EMC,
Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems and Sun.
Analyst firm Gartner said users are spending more on back-up and
recovery products than on any other part of their storage
infrastructure.
DPS is a low-cost standalone server designed to automate back-up
and recovery. It could help IT managers to cut management costs and
save time in what tends to be a labour-intensive process, Microsoft
said.
The server uses continuous disc-to-disc back-up to manage data from
files stored on Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 or Windows
Storage Server 2003 products. Microsoft also intends to make DPS
compatible with Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server.
DPS works by taking a snapshot of the data on a server and
replicating it on the DPS. Once the data is replicated to DPS, it
creates a series of snapshots that reflect how a server looks at a
certain point in time.
Yuval Neeman, corporate vice-president, storage and platform
solutions group at Microsoft, said DPS would enable companies to
carry out more frequent back-ups more easily.
"Most businesses only do their back-ups once a day, so they must
assume data loss for the 24 hours between back-ups," he said.
"With DPS, businesses can recover from three of the most common
scenarios: a deleted or overwritten file, a server failure or a
downed datacentre."
The DPS only moves the bytes of the file that have changed, rather
than the full file, which means the back-up and recovery should be
faster than tape back-up and recovery.
Neeman said DPS was designed for use alongside tape back-up, which
is better suited to long-term archival and off-site storage.
Gartner vice-president and research director Raymond Paquet said
Microsoft's decision to offer a mainstream storage back-up and
recovery system is good news for users because DPS will be
integrated closely with other Microsoft server products.
DPS will be in competition with other back-up products from
suppliers focused on Windows, such as Veritas' Back-upexec,
Computer Associates' Arc- serve and CommVault's Galaxy.
Paquet said, "Continuous disc-to-disc back-up could shrink data
recovery times to minutes or seconds, thereby improving data
availability. Back-up administrators would no longer have to worry
about scheduling and managing tape resources.
"However, one drawback is that DPS does not address Unix, Linux or
other non-Windows platforms, nor does it yet support tape
natively."
Microsoft's software has elements in common with Network
Appliance's Snapvault - a system that frequently backs up data
stored on a NetApp or other storage platform to a NetApp disc-based
storage appliance.
Unlike Microsoft's software, this caters for heterogeneous storage
environments. A sister product, Snapshot, can store back-ups online
so they can be restored quickly.