HP Adds Archiving, Data Protection

The ProLiant Data Protection Server is essentially a bundle of Microsoft&s Windows Data Protection Manager (DPM) software with a ProLiant server, said Duncan Campbell, vice president of marketing for HP StorageWorks.

Windows DPM performs data snapshots as often as once per hour to provide an almost up-to-date copy of data should some of the information be lost or corrupted.

Rich Baldwin, president and CEO of Nth Generation Computing, a San Diego-based HP solution provider, said while other products offer more features than Windows DPM, the combination with the ProLiant server will be aggressively priced.

Also new from HP, Palo Alto, Calif., is model 6480 of its Virtual Tape Library System, which has capacity of up to 10 Tbytes and a throughput of up to 575 MBps.

Customers have been waiting for the 6840, as the previous model&s capacity was too small, Baldwin said. “This is very good competition to Quantum&s DX100 and Overland Storage&s REO,” he said.

HP also introduced a new managed archiving offering called Electronic Vaulting Services for handling secure, scalable, automated remote backup of data in encrypted format to one of 70 HP Recovery Centers around the world.

In addition, HP unveiled its StorageWorks File Migration agent, which uses policies for migrating inactive data to lower-cost storage devices.

Finally, HP debuted its StorageWorks Reference Information Manager for Database Archiving, based on archiving software from OuterBay, Cupertino, Calif., Campbell said. Like the file migration offering, the product identifies inactive information in a company&s databases and relocates it to less-expensive storage.

Archiving databases is a hard problem to solve, said Baldwin, who is glad to see HP partner with OuterBay. “[Reference Information Manager] seems to be one of the better-known archiving products out there,” he said.

Campbell said the Reference Information Manager software will initially be available for Oracle and SAP databases and will be available for Microsoft and PeopleSoft applications in the future.

The ProLiant bundle and the 6840 Virtual Tape Library System are slated to be available Sept. 26. Prices have yet to be determined. The Electronic Vaulting Services, StorageWorks File Migration agent and StorageWorks Reference Information Manager for Database Archiving all are slated to be available next quarter.