News

posted on 13 May 2008 08:29

Hifn plug-in Windows server compression cards can effectively double the capacity of your disk backup system

Microsoft's Data Protection Manager (DPM) automatically and semi-continuously backs up Windows serverrs to disk. Hifn is selling plug-in cards that compress the DPM data stream by up to half, effectively doubling the disk backup system's storage capacity.

There are two cards: the Express DR655 is half-height with throughput of up to 600MB/sec; the Express DR1055 is a faster full-height card with up to 1GB/sec throughput. Both compress DPM 2007 using LZS and eLZS compression algorithm acceleration.

These are compression offload cards with a drop-in Windows driver. The target markets are server and storage OEMs and system integrators. Hifn says end users should see 2x - 3x savings in storage, power and related management costs compared to the drive array space needed to hold uncompressed data.

Russ Dietz, a Hifn VP and its CTO, said: “The combination of the Express DR cards for DPM 2007 with the DPM server provide IT administrators with a significant increase in disk capacity, a much needed requirement for continuous data protection, as well as the fastest, most reliable data reduction solution available.”

The DR655 costs $2,395 and the DR1055 $3,395.

Not bad; you spend $2,395 or $3,395 with the result being the same as if you had doubled the size of your disk backup drive array.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}