Microsoft set to renew IT storage push

As Microsoft readies the launch of a second version of its Data Protection Manager storage technology, users disagree on whether it will boost the vendor's position among corporate storage administrators.

Microsoft is set to announce the general availability of DPM 2007 during its TechEd IT Forum next week in Barcelona, Spain.

DPM 2007, a component of Microsoft's System Center family of management products, provides disk-to-disk-to-tape backup and recovery in Microsoft environments. The new version has been in a beta-test phase since mid-2006.

Frank Mulligan, a systems engineer at Raymond James Financial, said the updated DPM software still isn't the best fit even for his business, which leans heavily on Microsoft's infrastructure software. "I don't think it's quite there yet as a fit in our environment," Mulligan remarked. "It didn't seem to be [strong enough to] qualify as a final solution."

The company's IT environment is "well over 95%" Windows-based, with 1,050 Windows-based servers, 50 to 60 Unix- and Sun Solaris-based servers, and a massive Microsoft SQL Server database, Mulligan said.

Microsoft recently demonstrated DPM 2007 to IT officials at the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based financial services firm, looking to convince them that it could replace the backup technology from CommVault that Raymond James has used for the past five years, he said.

However, the demonstration only served to convince Mulligan that the new version of the backup software is still not mature enough for large companies.

For example, he said that upgrades to tape backup features still fail to meet the requirements of a large company. "Where it seemed to fall short is if you're not backing up to disk. The recovery didn't look robust," said Mulligan.

In addition, he said, "the interface wasn't quite there and seemed not to be centrally managed."

The storage systems now in use at Raymond James include a Symmetrix DMX-3000 array, a Clariion CX700 array for network storage and a Clariion disk library, all from EMC, along with the CommVault software.

Mulligan said the company stores 600TB of data in multiple databases and backs up 80TB to 90TB of data per week to a virtual tape library and tape.

Ironically, he said that the CommVault software's ability early on to offer backup agents for SQL Server and Exchange helped it take root at the Raymond James.

Comm­Vault's software enabled the company's IT department to complete backups 25% faster and perform data recoveries 75% faster than the software it replaced, according to Raymond James officials. It also allowed the company's branch offices to back up information centrally, eliminating the need for remote tape drive backups, Mulligan said.

Because of the dominance of Microsoft software at Raymond James, IT officials will continue to monitor the progress of the DPM offering, he noted.

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Market challenges

Lauren Whitehouse, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), noted that even if the DPM software does meet the needs of large companies, Microsoft will have a difficult time persuading IT managers to use it.

"[Businesses have] too much invested, and they don't want the disruption that a new [backup] solution would bring," she said. "Microsoft is not the first name one thinks of when it comes to backup."

About 35% of 398 IT professionals recently surveyed by ESG said they have employed the same backup software for more than four years, and another 12% said they have used their backup product for more than eight years, Whitehouse said.

The latest version of Microsoft's backup software could find success in the fledgling virtual server business because of its support for Microsoft Virtual Server, she said. Still, she noted, the software is likely to remain mostly a niche product until it offers support for non-Microsoft platforms and applications.

At the Storage Networking World conference last month in Dallas, Microsoft officials said that the new version adds support for Microsoft's Exchange messaging software, SQL Server database software and the SharePoint Portal Server collaboration technology.

Rosy Predictions

In an interview at the conference, Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of Microsoft's data and storage platform division, said DPM 2007 is also able to perform continuous data-protection snapshots of Microsoft applications and file servers, which are integrated with tape and disk media.

Kummert said that future versions of DPM will interact with the software vendor's cache of data life-cycle management applications.

He cited two factors in his contention that Microsoft's nascent storage business has a bright future: the company's monstrous installed base, and the close working relationship among its development teams, which ensures that the products are tightly integrated.

Many corporations are already storing data "in our platform on various levels," he noted. "Yes, we do have some new products, but we feel like we've actually been in this game for a while."

David Lethe, president of diagnostic software vendor SANtools, said he was not impressed with the storage strategy Kummert described at the conference.

"[It was the] wrong audience -- we can smell BS," said Lethe. "He didn't tell us anything. [DPM] is unified if it's a pure Microsoft environment."

Sara Windsor, senior network engineer for the Tracy, Calif., Unified School District, said her employer's plan to migrate to Exchange 2007 last year led to a decision to install a beta version of DPM 2007 last year, since there is native integration between the two products.

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She said that both products are now in production and are working well. "I've had to do a number of mailbox recoveries, and it's worked like a champ -- some of the easiest recoveries I've ever done," Windsor said.

In fact, she said support for Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration server in DPM 2007 is accelerating the school district's schedule for implementing SharePoint 2007. The district expects that implementation to be completed in two to four months, Windsor said.

"One of the factors driving us to SharePoint 2007 is the fact that DPM is designed to specifically work with [the application] and restore individual site collections," she explained.

The school district provides IT resources to 23 separate facilities, Windsor said. It runs mostly Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based software, including Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server technology.

Windsor said that prior to installing DPM, the school district ran CommVault's Qinetix software and Symantec's Veritas Backup Exec, each of which was managed by a different administrator.

The district turned to DPM to cut costs, help consolidate backup products and simplify disaster recovery, she said. The CommVault product was quite expensive and "never worked gracefully" with SharePoint, Windsor said. "It was something that required a lot of care and feeding." She also noted that Symantec's Backup Exec lacked the compression capabilities the district needed.

Since DPM was installed, the district has decreased the amount of file backup traffic across its WAN and shrunk backup times from 24 hours to just over three hours.

"We happen to be a Microsoft environment, so in my case, DPM works extremely well," said Windsor. "If I had an Oracle server or something, I have no idea how that would work."