BridgeStor Appliance to Bring Deduplication, Compression to Microsoft DPM

BridgeStor has expanded its line of Application Optimized Storage appliances with the introduction of its latest appliance for Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager, which is designed to enable small to medium-size business customers using DPM to shrink their capacity requirements by up to 90 percent-a 10-1 data reduction ratio.

The appliances combine data reduction techniques along with enhanced performance to provide Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager environments with a capacity-efficient storage platform. VS-ADR (Virtual Storage-Advanced Data Reduction) in the BridgeStor AOS DPM appliance is configured and tuned for Microsoft DPM environments.

BridgeStor AOS Appliances for Microsoft Data Protection Manager address SMB and branch office storage needs by coupling inline data deduplication and compression with simplified administration and rapid deployment. A 3.5TB (physical capacity) "starter" system appears to DPM as 35TB of virtual capacity, expandable to 10.5TB of physical storage and 105TB of virtual capacity.

"The release of the AOS Appliances for Microsoft DPM is the next step in fulfilling our charter to bring enterprise-class capacity optimization to the most data-intensive applications in the SMB market," said BridgeStor CEO John Matze. "The applications protected by DPM are all characterized by aggressive capacity expansion, and BridgeStor is bringing budget relief to SMB customers by shrinking their capacity requirements and storage expenditures."

System Center Data Protection Manager, preinstalled and preconfigured in the appliance, provides data protection for Microsoft Windows Server, Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Hyper-V environments as well as corporate desktops and laptops. The company's AOS appliances supply the block-level interface required for DPM Storage Pools while transparently providing inline, hardware accelerated data deduplication and compression to minimize storage pool capacity requirements.

Data sent to DPM by servers, workstations and laptops is compressed and deduplicated both within and across Protection Groups, resulting in a capacity reduction of up to 10 times. VS-ADR technology combines inline, ASIC-assisted block-level data compression and deduplication with "Disk-on-Demand" thin provisioning for optimized and scalable storage. The appliances also employ Disk-on-Demand thin provisioning.

The new appliance for Microsoft DPM is the third in BridgeStor's line of AOS products, following the debut of purpose-built AOS appliances for VMware and Backup Exec 2010 in November. BridgeStor AOS appliances for Microsoft DPM start at a suggested price of $20,000, including the appropriate Windows Server 2008 operating system, and DPM licenses and will be available through select channel partners, a company release stated.