Microsoft's Recovery Plan

CHICAGO Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) will target disk-based backup and recovery as its next major journey into storage, although the road to product release remains a long one.

At the Storage Decisions conference here today, Microsoft announced a disk backup /recovery application called Data Protection Server (DPS) aimed at improving and simplifying the backup and especially restoration of data (see Microsoft Intros DPS).

We won't know for a while how well it works. Microsoft says the product won't be generally available until the second half of 2005, and that probably means early 2006, considering Microsoft's track record for hitting deadlines.

Why announce it so early? The Redmond goliath obviously wants everybody to know it'll be addressing this growing market (see New Enterprise Backup: Proceed With Caution). It's already rolled off a long list of partners, including OEM deals with Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL), Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), Iomega Corp. (NYSE: IOM), NEC Corp. (Nasdaq: NIPNY), Quantum Corp. (NYSE: DSS) and Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) (NYSE: STK).

Software vendors CommVault Systems Inc., Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) (NYSE: CA), Dantz Development Corp., EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC),LiveVault Corp., NSI Software Inc., and Yosemite Technologies Inc., as well as hardware vendors Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: HILL), Engenio Information Technologies Inc., Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), LeftHand Networks Inc., QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC), Seagate Technology Inc. (NYSE: STX), and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) also say their products will work with DSP."They're just showing their face in this area," says analyst Arun Taneja of Taneja Group. "This [disk backup] will be hottest thing in the industry over the next few years, until all the major players get in."

Although Microsoft execs say DPS will be targeted at enterprise customers as well as little guys, it appears to have more appeal for SMBs with small IT staffs. Microsoft's goal is to make it easier to use and less expensive than standalone disk-based products and virtual tape libraries (VTLs).

"Our goal is to democratize this [disk backup] experience," says Jeff Price, senior director of Microsoft's Windows server division. Translation: DSP will allow end users to restore files backed up on Windows servers without an admin's intervention. That, and its continuous backup for superior data protection, are DPS's main selling points.

But the product is a far cry from a total backup solution. The first release will back up and restore files only. Plans are for future releases to support programs such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Sharepoint. Microsoft has no plans to support any OS except Windows with DSP.

"We want to make sure storage works better with Windows," says Rakesh Narasimhan, Microsoft's general manager for DPS.DPS agents will monitor the file servers and replicate byte-level changes rather than file-level changes. That will substantially cut down on restore times, Price says. DPS will support tape backup, though. Price says he expects many customers to continue to use tape for archiving and off-site vaulting. DPS will work with tape libraries through a backup interface on Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS), an API built into Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft's main competition will be Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) Backup Exec for Windows, which backs up to disk now through an add-on module (see Microsoft Uses Veritas) and doesn't do continuous backup. Veritas might catch up by the time Windows ships DPS, though.

Will users wait for Microsoft's product? Don't count on it, if something better comes along first. An executive at one of Microsoft's announced partners said today, "When we told one of our customers about this, he said, 'Too little, too late.' "

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch