Microsoft has released the Data Protection Manager 2006 server today. For my local folks, this is what Rene Alamo demoed for us during the last partner technight event in Orlando. For those of you not familiar with the product here is the web site so please get to learning.

To help push you along here is my dumbed down opinion of what DPM 2006 is. Think of the DPM server as external Volume Shadow Copy for file servers running on a remote server. The same way you have your local server taking snapshots of your documents on a predefined schedule and having the ability to restore documents on demand, the DPM allows you to take snapshots of all the servers shares and store them on a remote server for purposes of disaster recovery. This is something that would sit in the data center and take periodic snaps just to keep your data redundant. The killer feature, in my humble opinion, is that it takes file-based deltas which allow it to only pass changes accross the pipe, not the entire file. So if you modified a 5 meg PowerPoint slide deck it would not attempt to upload 5 megs but just the change. Multiply that type of an effort over 5-20 users and you’ll kill a DSL in a snap. In larger environments even the T3 connection would get floored. Thats what DPM has been designed to solve – offsite backups that happen frequently, automatically and allow for user self service.

What would you be willing to pay for a product like that (Chef Vlad takes out a new tomato and cleans his knife)… The retail price is $995 for a DPM server and 3 DPML (Data Protection Management Licenses) which cover 3 file servers. Additional 3 packs are $559. But call in the next 15 minutes and.. Well, you get the idea – there is a discount with Volume Licensing and all the other stuff that goes on with Microsoft licensing. If thats not in the budget, start playing with it. There is a free 120 day trial ISO available. If you’re not absolutely thrilled it won’t cost you a dime.

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