FalconStor virtualizes CDP

Company unveils VMware ESX version of its continuous data protection technology to stave off fallout of crashed guests and systems

More than just a means for reducing costs in the datacenter, virtualization is fast proving a force in redirecting the course of software delivery. Today FalconStor lent further credence to the growing industry mandate to support VMware by announcing a virtualized iteration of its IPStor product, thereby cutting down the cost and complexity of CDP (continuous data protection) in hybrid environments considerably.

Pre-built and pre-configured, FalconStor CDP Virtual Appliance for VMware installs as a virtual instance on an ESX Server in less than 10 minutes, according to the company. Supporting as many as 16 connections per virtual node, the solution brings the cost of deploying CDP below $10,000, company officials said.

Moreover, by virtualizing IPStor and mirroring both physical and virtual data sources, FalconStor believes its solution provides a means for eliminating mandatory restores, enabling backup devices to act temporarily as primary sources in the event of server or guest failure, and doing so without a hit to performance or loss of data.

The solution employs DiskSafe, an agent-based technology for backing up Windows environments, to automatically allocate resources on the Virtual Appliance equivalent in size to the primary source. DiskSafe then takes point-in-time snapshots as scheduled by the administrator and mirrors incremental block-level changes in real time to the Virtual Appliance. In the event of failure, the DiskSafe mirror can be assigned to a new virtual machine to restore services instantly, thereby providing continuous data availability, according to the company.

“Because we’re doing this at the block level, we give you not only the data but the system data. So you can have a failure on a server — physical or virtual — and actually restore that entire server from the product, including all system-state information,” said Diamond Lauffin, technology evangelist at FalconStor. “And because we monitor transactions down to the I/O level, you can snap back to a point-in-time snapshot and then roll forward up to an actual transaction, which could be down to a nanosecond.”

By providing continuous data availability in a virtualized environment, the solution eases P2V (physical-to-virtual) conversions and eliminates the need to perform mandatory restores, according to the company.

“You can now use what would be considered your backup or CDP device as a primary device temporarily while you are repairing either a physical failure of a primary or a corrupted position on a primary device,” Lauffin said.

Public demonstrations of FalconStor CDP Virtual Appliance for VMware will be performed at VMworld 2007, which will be held from Sept. 11-13 in San Francisco.

The release, which comes on the heels of VMware’s recent IPO, may suggest that customers are pushing software vendors to support the VMware platform as their own virtualization initiatives take hold.

According to a report filed today on Newsday.com, company CEO and Chairman ReiJane Huai sold 12.5 percent of his FalconStor shares last Thursday, garnering $3.27 million. The report also notes that FalconStor Vice President Wayne Lam took home $1.45 million selling shares and exercising options last month, and that Bernard Wu, vice president of business development, netted $301,000 by selling 28,000 shares.