SteelEye DataKeeper for Windows Reduces Cost of Data Replication, Offers LAN and WAN Mirroring, Features True Continuous Data Protection, and Extends Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering

SteelEye Technology Inc., a leading provider of disaster recovery and business continuity solutions for multivendor IT infrastructures, today announced SteelEye DataKeeper for Windows, a comprehensive data replication solution for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 that makes real-time data replication cost-effective and accessible to small to medium-sized businesses.

SteelEye DataKeeper for Windows is a WAN-optimized data replication and disaster recovery solution that features real-time CDP (continuous data protection) and extends Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering. It is packaged and architected to fit the needs of small to medium-sized businesses, yet powerful enough to accommodate the business continuity demands of larger enterprise and OEM markets. To date, small to medium-sized businesses have shied away from data replication as they feared the degraded network performance and added expense of additional acceleration technologies required to operate these solutions efficiently.

“DataKeeper marks a significant strategic milestone for SteelEye,” said Garrett Gafke, President and Chief Executive Officer of SteelEye. “Customers at every level, whether a small business, mid-sized company or major enterprise, want the same thing: A simpler and more cost-effective approach to ensuring their data is fully protected all the time. We’re addressing that need head-on with DataKeeper - now customers can benefit from real-time, true CDP without the associated costs and complexity of traditional array- or application-based replication.”

To ensure continuous availability of all the data, applications and servers within a company’s network, SteelEye DataKeeper for Windows provides:

- real-time, block-level data replication to maintain efficient replication regardless of the application associated with the data, and to minimize the burden on system resources;

- synchronous and asynchronous replication to ensure servers are in full-synch at all times, eliminating issues with in-use files, locked files, NTFS permissions and missing files, and affording systems administrators more options in prioritizing data protection and application performance;

- WAN optimization to efficiently maximize existing WAN connections, without costly hardware-based WAN accelerators;

- true CDP to let IT and systems personnel rewind a data set to the exact moment prior to data corruption or loss;

- Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering support to eliminate single points of failure and maintain geographically dispersed clusters and hybrid high-availability/disaster-recovery configurations.

“Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters configured as multi-site clusters provide a great platform for disaster recovery systems,” said Kurt Friedrich, principal product unit manager for Failover Clustering at Microsoft Corp. “SteelEye DataKeeper for Windows provides customers with a cost-effective solution to provide the required data replication function by providing either asynchronous or synchronous data replication to a remote recovery site.”

SteelEye DataKeeper meets the growing demand for new types of data replication solutions. According to a recent IDC report (1), last year the highest annual growth in the data replication market came from host-based methods, which grew more than 25% year-over-year, and network- and appliance-based replication approaches, which grew more than 20% year-over-year.

Additionally, IDC cited two particularly main factors driving this market shift from traditional array-based data replication solutions: the increased interest in affordable replication from small and mid-size businesses and the growing need to replicate data between dissimilar storage systems. DataKeeper is designed specifically to meet the needs of these small to mid-sized business and SteelEye’s entire product suite stands up to the diverse system requirements of a mixed IT infrastructure, one that frequently includes a variety of Windows, Linux and virtual server environments.