Microsoft has forayed into storage solutions on the back of Data Protection Manager 2007, launched globally in November last year. DPM 2007 delivers continuous data protection through disk and tape media for all Microsoft application and file servers.

DPM 2007 is a member of the Microsoft System Center family of management products and blends Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with traditional tape backup. It protects and recovers SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Windows file services.
Sundar Srinivasan, Principal Product Unit Manager, DPM, Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC), said, “We have partnered with two companies - Bocada and Cristalink - for storage solutions. Bocada provides a single reporting console to track synchronizations, recoveries and capacity use across heterogeneous applications in the enterprise. DPM itself has inbuilt reporting capabilities and custom auditing/reporting platform. We have specifically partnered with Bocada to use this custom reporting platform to build a solution.” Commenting on the partnership with Cristalink, Sundar said that Firestreamer utility from Cristalink will allow DPM to access a wide range of non-tape storage media such as HDD, Blu-ray, DVD exposing these as virtual tape to DPM.
Microsoft is also working closely with other players in storage industry to enable solutions that support DPM 2007. For example, Microsoft has partnered with EMC to leverage the latter’s CLARiiON SAN systems with DPM 2007. Sundar said, “We leverage the capabilities of the SAN to do a data clone. DPM provides abstraction of that, understanding the data source setting policies and leverages the underlying hardware because DPM understands Microsoft data sources the best. Dell has also started shipping its data protection appliance based on DPM 2007.”
DPM 2007 was built by Hyderabad-based MSIDC, Microsoft’s largest development center outside the US.