First Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials appliance for North America is shipping, the 2TB Workstation Backup Appliance

WBA Press Release

DeDuping Backup Appliance Under $800

Press Release October 10 2011

Highly Reliable Systems, Reno NV announced that they are shipping the first available appliance in North America based on Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008R2 Essentials (WSSE). Dubbed the Workstation Backup Appliance (WBA), the box has 2TB of deduped internal storage, along with software written by Microsoft to backup 25 workstations.

“Many people don’t realize that Microsoft has backup software other than what is built in to Windows.” said Tom Hoops, Chief Technology officer. “This appliance uses WSSE, available only through hardware OEMs, which is similar to Windows SBS 2008 Essentials. But WSSE can join existing domains and multiple boxes can be ganged to allow mid size organizations to protect all their workstations and provide instant bare metal restore capability.” The appliance stores duplicate files (those that exist on multiple workstations) only once. The company says that this dedupe ability means the data stored on 25 workstations will generally fit onto 2TB. The WBA has an optional 2TB removable drive tray that provides the appliance with self-backup capability, as well as a USB key used to boot downed workstations and connect them to the appliance over the network for rapid restore.

Darren McBride, the company CEO, says that although IT people often claim they don’t allow users to store data locally, users do it anyway and even if they don’t, the ability to recover workstations quickly when corruption or viruses hit is a big time saver. McBride explained that a simple piece of service software called the Microsoft connector is installed using the IE browser to each workstation, and once configured backups are queued and processed sequentially so that scheduling is centralized and simplified. Progress can be monitored via a single dashboard and the Microsoft software has the ability to do continuous incremental protection, which means nightly backups occur quickly. Efficient version retention also allows users to go back 6 months or more to retrieve old versions of files. Add-ins are available from third party developers to extend Windows Storage Server Functionality.

Pricing on the 2TB WBA is $799 MSRP. Additional removable 2TB drives in fully protected and transportable aluminum trays are $170 each. For more information visit www.high-rely.com or call 775-329-5139." [GD:Press Release copied in full]

Highly Reliable Systems - Workstation Backup Appliance (WBA)

"Need a low cost appliance to backup your network workstations? Conventional backup appliances focus on backing up the corporate server, yet according to IDC up to 60% of critical company data is on laptops and desktops. Highly Reliable Systems introduces a Windows based backup appliance with 2TB of storage to provide workstation backup and NAS storage. The Workstation Backup Appliance (WBA) can join your domain and includes Microsoft backup software to protect 25 Windows or Mac workstations. Simply install the Microsoft Connector software on each workstation and use the dashboard via a browser to monitor and manage backup jobs. The WBA includes support for continuous incremental backups, rentention of older file versions, and deduplication of backup files across multiple workstations. There is also a built in removable drive tray to backup the appliance's internal drive.

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You know I don't normally do this kind of press release kind of thing, but the news about the hardware news Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 has been SO quiet (cricket... cricket... kind of quiet) that once I heard about this I wanted to share. Seems like if you have a small business (or really big family) and all you want is a centralized and automated local backup solution, that something like this might just be the ticket.

 

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“Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials” Think “Windows Home Server Meets the Home Office/Small Business”

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