IBM Upgrades Disaster Recovery for Deduplication Appliances

IBM announced July 29 that it has upgraded the feature capabilities for its midrange and SMB storage packages by adding native replication as a disaster recovery option for its ProtecTIER Deduplication appliances.

Replication of data has been used for years to enable IT systems to protect data in remote locations. In the past, however, the high cost of network bandwidth and of Tier 1-type storage required to keep data readily available usually relegated a high-end feature such as replication to only a few of a company's most critical applications and data.

ProtecTIER is an integrated physical appliance that includes a server, storage and data deduplication software. It is aimed at a general IT system audience, including the midmarket and small-to-medium-size businesses. IBM's idea is to bring replication to a much wider potential market.

Because data is deduplicated early in the process, ProtecTIER sends only a small amount of unique new data across the network, which effectively enables a large amount of data to be transmitted with minimal bandwidth.

Data deduplication is a popular storage tool that eliminates redundant data throughout the network and makes the storage task more efficient, cost-effective and energy-efficient within the network.

IBM unveiled the TS7650 ProtecTIER Deduplication Appliance earlier this year after purchasing Diligent Technologies in 2008 for about $200 million. Big Blue had integrated Diligent's technology into the company's overall storage product line and rebranded it ProtecTIER.

The ProtecTIER Deduplication Appliance is on a similar plane with Sun Microsystems' Amber Road storage appliance. Amber Road has been a huge sales hit for Sun, with more than 100,000 units sold in the first year, Sun has said.

Native replication for ProtecTIER will be available Sept. 4, 2009, and will be an optional, additionally priced feature.  A software upgrade will be available for all existing TS7650G ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway and TS7650 ProtecTIER Deduplication Appliance configurations, IBM said.