Microsoft is adding new features to its Data Protection Manager offering, including improved snapshot and recovery capabilities and better support for Microsoft applications and platforms.
Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing of System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 at Storage Networking World in Dallas today. Version 2 of DPM has already been tested by thousands of beta users, said Bala Kasiviswanathan, Microsoft’s director of branch and storage solutions.
The new offering also includes application-level de-duplication, or single-instance storage. It offers document-level recovery to the same server, a different server or tape, said Kasiviswanathan.
“This is robust, enterprise-class data protection,” he said.
The near-CDP product also includes better integration with SQL Server, Exchange Server and SharePoint Portal Server, among other applications and platforms.
At SNW, Ted Kummert, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division, said DPM is an example of Microsoft’s Universal Distributed Storage (UDS) strategy aimed at developing robust, cost-effective storage offerings for both block- and file-based storage. Kummert pointed to Hitachi, ProStor and Sanbolic as three companies launching new products based on Microsoft storage platforms (see Storage Vendors Gear Up for SNW).
Kasiviswanathan said Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 has also met with success in products from the likes of HP and Dell. He said iSCSI has had “great pickup from customers,” and added that Microsoft is “very bullish” on iSCSI.
As for the future, Kasiviswanathan said Microsoft’s goals for storage are “to continue to deliver performance and scalability,” to innovate in storage software and make it easier to use, and to “deliver data management beyond protection.”
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