HP unveils self-managing back-up for small firms

HP yesterday unveiled a disk-to-disk back-up and recovery system aimed at small and medium sized businesses.

The HP StorageWorks D2D Backup System automates and centralises back-up to provide data protection for up to four servers in a single self-managing device.

Stephen Watson, HP StorageWorks product manager, said that small businesses traditionally connect independent backup devices manually to each separate server.

The new system is designed to connect to the network and back up all relevant data automatically.

Analyst firm IDC said recently that more than 50 per cent of small and medium sized businesses cited improved data availability and recovery as their top storage management challenge.

In addition, data protection and disaster recovery are at the top of the list for planned spending on additional storage capacity over the next 12 months.

The HP unit houses four Sata drives in a Raid 5 configuration and comes with 1TB or 2TB of storage.

It features an iSCSI interface that plugs into a standard Ethernet network and can be configured and run via a web browser interface. There is also an optional HP Data Protector Express Software Kit.

"The HP StorageWorks D2D Backup System virtually eliminates the main causes of failed back ups and slow restores to help protect our customers' most valuable asset: their data," said HP StorageWorks vice president Bob Wilson.