Both Barrels Communications Ltd

FalconStor Software, Inc. today announced that a large international life insurance company has deployed FalconStor® Virtual Tape Library (VTL) Enterprise Edition to optimize its backup performance across the company’s open systems, IBM System i and IBM System z (mainframe) environments. This heterogeneous enterprise-wide installation demonstrates FalconStor’s leadership in the VTL industry as the only vendor that can address all systems, from open systems in small to medium-size businesses to midrange servers and mainframes in large, distributed enterprises. FalconStor VTL connectivity to IBM System z is enabled by FalconStor’s longstanding collaboration with Bus-Tech, which plays an important role in this customer solution.

The FalconStor VTL solution helped the insurance company bridge the gap between its mainframe and open systems, reducing IT complexity while controlling explosive data growth. The solution alleviated backup window and reliability issues, lowered operation costs and allowed the company to provide superior continuous service to customers for the highest return on investment (ROI).

This customer’s experience further validates the results of a recent ROI customer survey sponsored by FalconStor and conducted by IDC, a leading global market intelligence and advisory firm. According to the survey, all customers who participated enjoyed considerable benefits from FalconStor solutions, including cost reductions, greater system availability and increased staff productivity (see footnote).

Based on IDC’s comprehensive survey metrics, the top three cost reductions that FalconStor solutions provide to end users result from (1) the ability to purchase cost-effective disk arrays from any vendor, (2) lower costs associated with tape and backup drives and (3) reduced new server purchases through decreased storage needs. According to the IDC ROI analysis, FalconStor customers:

• reduced tape drive costs by an average of $162,000 annually
• saved an average of $81,000 annually on storage hardware
• increased staff productivity equal to one full-time employee
• reduced the average number of critical system failures from 17 to 1 annually
• achieved 448 percent ROI with a payback period of 5.5 months

“FalconStor differentiates itself in the VTL market by offering a broader data protection platform including a strategy and product set that expands well beyond only tape emulation,” said Laura DuBois, research director, IDC Storage Software. “This strategy includes deduplication, encryption and mainframe connectivity, giving FalconStor VTL wide-ranging market appeal that provides meaningful ROI in data center environments of all sizes.”

“We built our leadership in the VTL market by creating the most comprehensive, high-performance solution for the broadest base of customers of any vendor in the industry. We help enterprises of all sizes address the single most critical issue in backup: meeting the backup window,” said ReiJane Huai, chairman and CEO of FalconStor Software. “IDC’s ROI study corroborates what we have already experienced firsthand – that our customers are solving significant data protection problems, architecting more efficient IT operations and achieving outstanding ROI with FalconStor solutions.”

The international insurance firm deployed FalconStor VTL throughout its three distributed data centers. In the IBM System z environment, they installed a high-availability (HA) pair of FalconStor VTL gateway appliances with a Sun STK 6140 disk array to ensure high-speed disk-based data protection. The IT team uses the Bus-Tech Mainframe Data Library model 100V, which allows the ESCON channel to connect with the IBM z and to process mainframe tape data to the industry-standard FalconStor VTL platform. The FalconStor VTL secure tape feature exports and encrypts mainframe tapes before shipping offsite for DR and vaulting.

“Bus-Tech’s Mainframe Data Library works with FalconStor VTL to provide our mainframe and distributed systems customers access to the rich feature set and benefits of FalconStor’s industry-leading virtual tape library solution,” said Ralph Armstrong, vice president of product management for Bus-Tech, Inc. “Companies in today’s economic climate are looking at ways to reduce cost. The ability to combine mainframe and distributed systems into a single converged data protection scheme is very attractive to a wide range of data center managers.”

In the IBM System i environment, the insurance company uses a similar HA configuration. The IBM i host can directly connect with the FalconStor VTL system via a Fibre Channel (FC) port. A disk array with high-capacity SATA disks can emulate an IBM 3590 or 3584 tape drive with the magnetic tape data storage media formats that are accepted by the IBM i. To accommodate the large volume of data in the open systems environment, IT deployed two HA pairs of FalconStor VTL while running Veritas NetBackup to protect Oracle, AWD, Microsoft SQL Server and Lotus Notes applications on both UNIX and Microsoft Windows Servers.

The customer experienced significant benefits from implementing the FalconStor VTL solution. FalconStor VTL combines concurrent processing power with high-speed FC disk arrays, which enables high throughput. Backup data streams are no longer limited by the number of tape drives in the tape library and multiple data streams can be processed simultaneously. This has accelerated the batch processing of the backup procedures and improved performance in the mainframe environment by 30 to 40 percent. In the open systems environment, backup time has been reduced by 50 percent. The HA configuration improves backup system reliability two-fold and minimizes failure rates, which in turn saves time and human resources.

To read about our customers deploying FalconStor VTL in mainframe and distributed systems environments, visit the case study library on the FalconStor website.

[ends]

Note: IDC white paper sponsored by FalconStor, Reducing Costs and Creating a More Secure IT Environment with a Holistic Approach to Data Protection: An ROI Analysis of FalconStor Storage Management Solutions, Laura duBois and Eric Hatcher, IDC #219707, August 2009. To download a copy of the IDC ROI analysis of FalconStor storage solutions, please click here.

FalconStor Software, Inc. and Avnet Technology Solutions (Avnet), a value-added IT distributor and an operating group of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), today announced that they have entered into an agreement for the distribution of FalconStor® software products by Avnet UK.

Avnet will be distributing the full range of FalconStor solutions, including FalconStor® Continuous Data Protector (CDP), FalconStor® Network Storage Server® (NSS), FalconStor® Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with deduplication and FalconStor® File-interface Deduplication System (FDS).

The products, which are already being distributed by Avnet in the Benelux, will be taken to market immediately by Avnet in the UK with other European countries following suit as and when appropriate.

“Avnet has a strong reputation in the channel and this is what made it such an attractive partnership for FalconStor,” said Guillaume Imberti, president and general manager of FalconStor´s EMEA operations. “Avnet’s market approach will allow our data protection solutions to find their way to many customers and solution providers striving for better data efficiency and protection. We believe that working with Avnet will strengthen our distribution reach throughout Europe.”

“FalconStor products fit well into our storage portfolio and address our partners’ goals. With the increasing volume of data, there’s more and more demand for storage virtualization and data protection,” said Mark Walker, EMEA director, Storage Product Business Group, Avnet Technology Solutions. “Together with FalconStor, we will jointly recruit resellers and solution providers to meet with the growing demand for FalconStor solutions.”

[ends]

About Avnet Technology Solutions
Avnet Technology Solutions is an operating group of Phoenix-based Avnet, Inc. As a global technology sales and marketing organization, Avnet Technology Solutions has sales divisions focused on specific customer segments and a select line card strategy enabling an exceptional level of attention to the needs of its customers and suppliers. For fiscal year 2008, the group served customers in more than 30 countries and generated US $7 billion in annual revenue.

About Avnet Inc.
Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), a Fortune 500 company, is one of the largest distributors of electronic components, computer products and embedded technology in the world. Avnet accelerates its partners’ success by connecting the world’s leading technology suppliers with a broad base of more than 100,000 customers and providing cost-effective, value-added services and solutions. For the fiscal year ended June 27, 2009, Avnet generated revenue of $16.23 billion.

New solutions for heterogeneous disaster recovery, storage virtualisation management and a deduplication virtual appliance expand FalconStor’s support for VMware vSphere 4

FalconStor today announced comprehensive offerings for supporting, enhancing and extending data protection in VMware vSphere™ 4 environments with new solution introductions and expansions. The initiative encompasses continuous availability, virtual storage management and a breadth of virtual appliance solutions – all three areas critical to maximizing the business value of virtual infrastructure deployments in heterogeneous environments.

At VMworld 2009, FalconStor is introducing new storage management and new disaster recovery (DR) extensions for VMware vCenter™ Server and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager that provide virtual machine storage provisioning as well as automated failback of remote virtual machines to the primary data center. Additionally, FalconStor is demonstrating its new FalconStor® File-interface Deduplication System Virtual Appliance (FDS VA) for easy-to-deploy data deduplication for VMware vSphere 4 environments.

“Managing separate point data protection solutions for a physical data center and for a virtual environment is challenging, complex and can be error prone,” said Dave Russell, Research Vice President, Storage Technologies and Strategies, at Gartner. “Companies should seriously consider storage virtualization and data protection solutions that are tightly integrated and can provide the same level of services for both physical and virtual infrastructures.”

Continuous availability: added features for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
FalconStor solutions provide continuous availability of physical and virtual as well as local and remote resources, giving IT managers comprehensive business continuity and DR coverage. FalconStor’s two new DR extensions for VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager automate failover of physical and virtual hosts to the DR site and provide automated failback support of virtualized servers from the DR site to the primary data center:

• FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) – Extends VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager functionality across the data center by adding support for physical-to-virtual machine failover. This unique implementation dramatically speeds site-level failover and reduces DR costs.
• FalconStor® Failback Manager for VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager – Lets VMware vSphere™ 4 users automate the failback process to the primary data center in a single step once the restoration of data center services are complete. VMware and FalconStor customers can experience a single simplified function, accelerating return to normal operations and minimizing human error.

“With these new solutions for VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager, FalconStor continues its tradition of adding value in the area of data protection, business continuity and disaster recovery,” said Bernie Wu, vice president of business development for FalconStor Software. “The combination of our respective solutions is designed to lower costs and remove the barriers to deploy continuous availability in a VMware vSphere™ 4-enabled data center of any size.”

These new features complement FalconStor® Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, which integrates FalconStor’s replication capability with Site Recovery Manager. In addition, FalconStor’s replication technology provides replication and bandwidth efficiency over the WAN and supports heterogeneous infrastructures that require replication between multi-vendor SAN/DAS environments. FalconStor and VMware customers now have an alternative replication and DR solution when dealing with a mix of SAN/DAS vendors between primary and DR sites. Customers will find that Falconstor has built a complete set of DR solutions around the VMware platform that fits their budget and protection needs.

Continuous availability: added data protection, performance and efficiency
FalconStor solutions provide VMware customers with complete end-to-end continuous availability and backup protection as a critical component of the virtual data center. FalconStor enables backup optimization by completely eliminating the backup window and offloading backup operations from VMware production environments. In addition, FalconStor’s deduplication technology reduces the backup infrastructure needed to support VMware-enabled backup applications.

Additional FalconStor solutions for continuous availability include:

• Newly introduced FalconStor® File-interface Deduplication System Virtual Appliance (FDS VA) – Optimizes VMware backup infrastructure by eliminating redundancies in VMDK files and significantly reducing the storage capacity required to support VMware backup applications. This storage capacity optimization solution allows for longer retention time of backup online while reducing infrastructure costs thus improving the recoverability of VMware environments.
• FalconStor® HyperTrac™ VMware Edition – Provides impact-free backup of VMware environments through its tight integration with VMware Consolidated Backup and the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection. It removes any performance impact on production environments by offloading the backup process of VMware virtual disk files (VMDKs) to a standby environment allowing virtual machine backup to proceed unimpeded and to scale to the largest VMware environments.

New FalconStor virtual storage management integration with VMware vCenter Server
FalconStor® Storage Manager for VMware vCenter™ Server extends FalconStor’s advanced storage management capabilities into VMware vCenter Server as a plug-in tool. Users can now create virtual machines with data stores allocated from storage managed by FalconStor software within the VMware vCenter management client. The FalconStor Storage Manager also enables users’ easy access to key features such as virtual machine replication, thin provisioning and storage migration. VMware and FalconStor customers can now leverage FalconStor’s multi-vendor storage virtualization management tools within VMware vCenter Server to further reduce storage management costs. FalconStor NSS provides primary storage virtualization well-suited for VMware vSphere™ 4 and is VMware Ready Certified. FalconStor NSS offers built-in snapshot data protection and mirroring and integrates with popular applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Oracle Database running in virtual machines.

New FalconStor FDS VA creates breadth of virtual appliance solutions
FalconStor virtual appliances now support VMDirectPath I/O from VMware to provide high-performance storage access that increases the throughput of FalconStor NSS VA running on the VMware platform by tenfold. With the introduction of the FalconStor® FDS VA, FalconStor now offers its entire storage solution portfolio as a virtual appliance that runs on VMware ESX and VMware ESXi, including FalconStor® Virtual Tape Library (VTL), FalconStor® Continuous Data Protector (CDP) and FalconStor NSS. This extensive solution coverage brings a high level of storage virtualization and data protection services to VMware vSphere 4 customers.

FalconStor FDS VA includes a NAS interface allowing native backup tools provided by Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Oracle Database to send disk-based backup files to FalconStor FDS VA for efficient deduplication. Unlike other deduplication technology, no modifications to VMware virtual machine guest operating systems or applications are required. FalconStor’s deduplication virtual appliance hosted on VMware vSphere™ 4 participates in FalconStor’s global deduplication technology, allowing remote and branch offices to offer thin replication to a centrally based FalconStor FDS repository saving valuable WAN resources.

FalconStor and VMware
As a VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program member, FalconStor has developed unique technologies to create value for VMware environments. Customers who are evaluating storage solutions for VMware environments should take into consideration such features as storage replication with built-in WAN acceleration, agnostic storage virtualization and next-generation backup/recovery for customers that use VMware vSphere™ 4.

Additionally, FalconStor integrates its solutions with the VMware vStorage capabilities and interfaces provided by the VMware platform to ensure a better end-user experience. FalconStor is an active innovator and contributor to the VMware partner ecosystem, with products available from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace, products that integrate with VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager, VMware vCenter Server, and Storage Virtualization Device and Storage Array certifications.

Disk-based storage innovator and data protection leader team to deliver new Nexsan dedupe SG family to help customers eliminate eData redundancy and realise significant storage and energy savings

Nexsan Technologies and FalconStor today announced a strategic venture to deliver a joint solution, which has resulted in the delivery of an integrated deduplication product family for high-performance, power-efficient data storage. Based on Nexsan’s power-efficient storage systems and the FalconStor® File-interface Deduplication System (FDS) software, the new, Nexsan DeDupe SG (“Speed with Green”) product family will be delivered by Nexsan through its worldwide network of channel partners.

The cost of traditional storage solutions makes it difficult for organizations to efficiently backup and store their rapidly growing business and application data. Compounding this challenge are tight budgets which drive an increased demand for solutions that will improve operating efficiencies while meeting performance requirements. Nexsan and FalconStor have responded to this growing need with a reliable, disk-based storage product line which offers high-performance data deduplication that has been optimized for high density, power and cost efficiency.

“Nexsan and FalconStor have made a significant leap forward in the area of operating efficiency with the new Nexsan DeDupe SG,” said Lauren Whitehouse, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “The new self-optimizing capability of this product is very unique and will help companies realize benefits in both power and data efficiency while automating critical storage management processes.”

Storage deduplication systems are primarily used as backup targets, operating only during the backup window. Even though the typical backup window is less than eight hours a day, all other deduplication systems spin drives and burn energy for the remaining 16 hours, even while not in use. With Nexsan DeDupe SG, customers not only get higher capacity and better performance during their backups, they also save energy and reduce costs every hour that the system is not in use.

Nexsan DeDupe SG leverages the green efficiencies inherent to its industry-leading technology components: data reduction through high-speed deduplication, footprint reduction by utilizing space-efficient storage arrays, and substantial energy savings through AutoMAID technology. Nexsan DeDupe SG is the only high-performance, data deduplication solution with AutoMAID technology delivering “Speed with Green” to improve operational efficiency.

“The Nexsan DeDupe SG solution solves two very pressing customer needs — reducing capacity costs and improving operating efficiency,” said Michael McGuire, chief commercial officer for Nexsan. “With over 20 years of combined experience, FalconStor and Nexsan together continue their traditions of innovation by redefining deduplication and power efficiency and providing our global network of channel partners with a differentiated offering in one of the fastest growing market segments.”

FalconStor FDS, the deduplication engine for the Nexsan DeDupe SG family, is a block-level deduplication software solution that presents a network share interface as a backup repository, offering customers an easy-to-use, space-saving option for writing data efficiently and cost-effectively to disk. Nexsan DeDupe SG maximizes interoperability with all data sources, including disk-to-disk backup and archiving applications. It also can be deployed in any physical or virtual infrastructure environment, offering file-level access to a central block-level deduplication repository. Nexsan DeDupe SG uses policy-based concurrent and post-process deduplication methods for maximum flexibility. The product supports all major backup software, directly accepts Oracle RMAN, Microsoft SQL and other database dumps, and provides integrated data replication and deduplication.

“The Nexsan DeDupe SG system family offers the only solution that delivers both high-performance data deduplication and automated energy savings,” said Wendy Petty, vice president of North American Sales for FalconStor Software. “This FalconStor/Nexsan joint solution is focused on small-to-mid-sized enterprises but is attractive for all storage users. We are excited to offer this solution through Nexsan’s global channel network, leveraging their industry-leading closed channel lead registration model.”

“We see this joint solution as a win-win situation for the channel,” said Greg Knieriemen, vice president of Chi Corporation, a solutions provider specializing in data storage, backup and disaster recovery. “The combination of high-performance deduplication with the dramatic reduction of energy consumption makes this solution a ‘must have’ in nearly every IT environment concerned about reducing storage costs, power costs and the physical footprint for storage.”

Pricing and availability
The Nexsan DeDupe SG family is offered in six configurations and available immediately through Nexsan’s worldwide channel partner network starting at $49,000 U.S. To learn more about channel partner opportunities, visit Nexsan’s partner information site at http://www.nexsan.com/reseller_signup.php.

About Nexsan Technologies
Nexsan Corporation is a leading provider of energy-efficient, long-term storage systems. Nexsan delivers secure storage appliances and modular, capacity-optimized disk-storage systems for a broad range of applications including fixed-content storage and archiving, email, medical imaging, compliance and litigation support, disk-based backup, digital video security, and rich media. Nexsan’s solutions are the choice of small and medium-sized companies as well as large global enterprises and major governmental agencies around the world who are seeking cost-correct, high-density storage solutions. Founded in 1999 and based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Nexsan sells its products exclusively through a select global network of VARs, OEMs and system integrators. For more information about Nexsan’s products, please see the company’s website at www.nexsan.com.

FalconStor and STORDIS GmbH, a European distributor for high performance computing, today announced a partnership to create an InfiniBand-based storage appliance for the high performance computing market. The appliance, running FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS), will be demonstrated for the first time today, at STORDIS and FalconStor’s shared booth (#705) at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), Europe’s leading conference and exhibition for high performance computing, networking and storage.

The new appliance is based on high quality InfiniBand Director switches, which enable high performance applications to run on distributed server, storage and network resources. Multiple Director switches can be interconnected to form very large, high-performance clusters and grids that can grow into the thousands of nodes with ‘pay as you grow’ scalability and bandwidth.

Customers can leverage FalconStor NSS with these clusters and grids to implement an ultra-high performance storage network with storage virtualization, provisioning and management across multiple disk arrays, operating at speeds far in excess of anything achievable with Fibre Channel, and at significantly lower costs.

“FalconStor solutions in conjunction with InfiniBand-based switching can reduce the overall complexities and costs associated with a dynamic storage environment, providing customers with new levels of performance at a price point they might have believed it impossible to make,” said Guillaume Imberti, FalconStor president and general manager EMEA Operations.

“We expect this innovative combination to be very attractive to our mutual customers, many of whom demand the fastest possible performance from their storage environments in order to give themselves the greatest possible competitive advantage in their own business sector,” said Alexander Jeffries, managing director of STORDIS.

See the appliance at booth #705, International Supercomputing Conference, Hamburg, Germany, June 23rd-26th 2009.

[ends]

About FalconStor NSS
FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS) delivers TOTALLY Open™ SAN storage virtualization, provisioning, and heterogeneous storage management that works across disk vendor and storage protocol boundaries to optimize storage utilization, reduce costs, and increase IT productivity in enterprise organizations.

About STORDIS GmbH
STORDIS, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, is the European Distributor for High Performance Computing (HPC) with focus on High Performance Networking and Storage solutions. Our HPC and Storage portfolio includes InfiniBand, 10Gbit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, HPC storage, general purpose storage and storage virtualization products. Additional to our product portfolio, we are providing a wide range of high quality pre- and post-sales services and support options.

FalconStor Software today announced that it delivers the fastest backup and deduplication time in the industry, through the FalconStor® Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with deduplication solution. Its latest performance exceeds all current published metrics from competing vendors.

In addition to reducing backup, deduplication and restore time through optimization, the FalconStor VTL solution’s ability to use Fibre Channel for replicating deduplicated data further reduces the total time to DR. A critical metric for assessing enterprise readiness for full recovery from data center failure, total time to DR is measured by the time required to back up a given amount of data, write it to tape, deduplicate it, replicate it to a remote DR site, and restore the data to full availability.

FalconStor staged a test of its latest version of FalconStor VTL with deduplication in order to validate the performance of FalconStor VTL in a real data center configuration and to demonstrate a best-practice scenario. Measured were key performance criteria, including ingest rate, tape production, deduplication throughput, replication and recovery time.

“Total time to DR is critical to the resilience of any business that relies on 24-hour access to important applications,” said Lauren Whitehouse, analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. “A high-performance backup infrastructure is critical to reducing a business’s exposure to downtime by ensuring data recovery and full return to operability in a timely manner. FalconStor has clearly taken the entire process from backup to recovery into consideration to achieve optimal efficiency in terms of both time and cost.”

“Other data protection vendors with deduplication focus on reduction ratios and backup speeds but fail to take into consideration all the processes needed to complete the DR-readiness cycle, including replication off site and restoration of data into an application-ready state at the DR facility,” said Wayne Lam, FalconStor co-founder and vice president. “FalconStor considered the whole picture in designing FalconStor VTL to integrate with any backup system and to enable and optimize the entire sequence of events within a data protection system. In addition, the FalconStor VTL system can scale without disruption or complexity as the business grows.”

In the test bed of 100 terabytes of production data, the performance measured was achieved with a single cluster of two FalconStor VTL nodes supported by four deduplication nodes. Running the backup and deduplication processes concurrently, the total time to backup and deduplicate the 100 terabytes of data was under 14 hours, yielding an average of 2.0 gigabytes per second. In the case where minimizing the total backup time is the major goal, the two-node VTL cluster delivered 2.8 gigabytes per second of backup speed, requiring a backup window of under 10 hours for the 100 terabytes. Physical tape production can be achieved directly through 4 gigabit Fibre Channel links by exporting tapes from FalconStor VTL to the physical tape library without using a separate media server. All hardware components used for the performance test are commonly available standard parts, including standard Linux-based servers and low-cost SATA-based storage subsystems with 4 gigabit Fibre Channel ports.

FalconStor VTL can scale up to an eight-node cluster with an additional eight-node deduplication cluster managing a global, shared data repository that can hold more than two petabytes of physical capacity or 40 petabytes of logical (deduplicated) capacity. This massive scalability allows for consolidated management of a large enterprise’s data and data protection processes, reducing complexity, time, cost and risk related to managing a collection of discrete repositories, as required by other deduplication solutions. The solution’s clustered architecture ensures maximum availability and reduced downtime and its associated cost.

Beyond backup data processing, FalconStor VTL features high-performance IP and Fibre Channel replication designed to minimize the replication window and thus reduce the risk of associated data loss. In addition to replicating backup data, FalconStor VTL includes a backup media server catalogue replication feature that guarantees continuous consistency of the backup media catalogue at the primary and the DR site to accelerate restoration of data to full operation. Once data is replicated to the DR site, FalconStor VTL enables high-speed restore of deduplicated data at a sustained rate that exceeds 1.2 gigabytes per second per node, demonstrating the fastest restore performance in the industry from a deduplicated repository; at this speed a 100 TB data set can be restored in less than 12 hours.

[ends]

About FalconStor Software, Inc.
FalconStor Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: FALC) is the market leader in disk-based data protection. FalconStor delivers proven, comprehensive data protection solutions that facilitate the continuous availability of business-critical data with speed, integrity, and simplicity. The Company’s TOTALLY Open™ technology solutions, built upon the award-winning IPStor® platform, include the industry leading Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with deduplication, Continuous Data Protector (CDP), File-interface Deduplication System (FDS), and Network Storage Server (NSS), each enabled with WAN-optimized replication for disaster recovery and remote office protection. FalconStor products are available from major OEMs and solution providers including 3Com, Acer, COPAN Systems, Data Direct Networks, Dynamic Solutions International, EMC, IBM, Pillar Data Systems, Spectra Logic and Sun and are deployed by thousands of customers worldwide, from small businesses to Fortune 1000 enterprises.
FalconStor is headquartered in Melville, N.Y., with offices throughout Europe and the Asia Pacific region. FalconStor is an active member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). For more information, visit www.falconstor.com.

FalconStor, FalconStor Software and IPStor are registered trademarks and TOTALLY Open is a trademark of FalconStor Software, Inc., in the US and other countries. All other company and product names contained herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.

FalconStor today announced a new file-interface data deduplication system along with enhancements and support for high-performance connectivity to its widely deployed Virtual Tape Library (VTL) software.

With the addition of a file interface to FalconStor’s deduplication product line, customers can choose either a file interface or a VTL interface or both, depending on data center requirements. FalconStor’s new file-interface deduplication system is a block-level deduplication solution that presents a network share interface as a backup repository, offering customers another space-saving option for writing data efficiently and cost-effectively to disk. In addition, small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) receive simple, efficient disk-to-disk backup and replication capabilities that reduce cost and improve the bottom line.

“FalconStor’s introduction of a file-interface deduplication system is important both for FalconStor and for its customers,” said Eric Burgener, senior analyst at The Taneja Group. “It brings FalconStor’s industry-leading D2D backup technology, more widely deployed than any other through their various OEM and indirect channels, to an entirely new space: NAS-based D2D backup. This promises to shake things up for existing NAS D2D vendors and extends the benefits of FalconStor’s highly scalable deduplication technology to a new customer base that values many of the same features that made FalconStor the industry leader in the VTL arena.”

The industry’s number-one selling VTL solution, FalconStor® VTL software now offers high-performance 10-Gigabit iSCSI and Qualified 8-Gigabit Fibre Channel connectivity to backup applications for faster, more cost-efficient backups that meet the requirements of an ever shrinking backup window. In addition, FalconStor VTL now offers customers a host of enhancements, including greater integration with Veritas NetBackup OpenStorage from Symantec on various operating systems, real-time performance statistics, tape caching with deduplication, enhanced repository management and replication, and additional library and tape-drive emulation.

With its qualification for high-performance 8-Gigabit Fibre Channel connectivity, FalconStor VTL 5.1 systems can now scale in performance up to 1.5 gigabytes/sec per node – with up to 8 nodes per each single logical deployment of VTL. This extends FalconStor VTL’s backup capability up to 43 terabytes per hour for each VTL deployment, speeding up backup to accommodate shrinking backup windows and reducing expenses by consolidating backup operations and reducing the physical system footprint in the data center.

Both the file-interface and VTL-interface deduplication solutions are based on FalconStor software’s open architecture, which gives end users highly optimized, integrated and available data protection within their current infrastructure. FalconStor’s solutions fit easily into and enhance backup environments without disruption, enabling customers to reduce disk storage, accelerate backup processes and shorten recovery times. In addition, FalconStor’s file-interface deduplication system can be deployed in any physical or virtual infrastructure environment offering file-level access to a central block-level single-instance repository. With built-in many-to-one replication capability, the file-interface system provides global deduplication by replicating from remote sites to a central data repository across the wide-area network.

FalconStor’s file-interface deduplication system accepts data from standard network backup solutions and database backup utilities; key capabilities include:

• CIFS and NFS file interface for block-level deduplication
• Immediate file-level access to deduplication repository
• Application-aware: optimized for third-party backup software
• Many-to-one replication capability included for global deduplication
• Available as Virtual Appliance on leading server virtualization platforms

“Like our popular VTL with deduplication software, the file-interface deduplication system is designed to ease into any backup environment without disruption and to dramatically reduce storage consumption,” said Alex Jiang, vice president of worldwide marketing for FalconStor. “It is yet another solution from FalconStor that helps IT managers at small companies and large enterprises alike do more with less during a time when organizations are evaluating technologies that can help cut IT expenses.”

FalconStor’s file-interface deduplication system is currently in beta testing with general availability scheduled in the first quarter of 2009. As a traditional software package ready for installation on any hardware appliance with replication included, U.S. list price starts at $13,000. As a virtual appliance without replication, U.S. list starts at $5,000, plus $2,000 for the replication option.

[ends]

FalconStor, FalconStor Software, and IPStor are registered trademarks, and TOTALLY Open is a trademark of FalconStor Software, Inc. in the US and other countries. All other company and product names contained herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.

FalconStor today announced its collaboration with China-based H3C Technologies and Starline Computer GmbH for European distribution of a high-performance line of storage appliances based on H3C hardware and FalconStor software.

H3C specializes in the provision of IP-based products and solutions for networking, security, storage and video surveillance. Through its partnership with H3C, which already sells FalconStor-based storage appliances in Asia, and a new distribution agreement with Starline, FalconStor initially will introduce the NSS HC6XX line of multiprotocol storage systems into Europe.

“By leveraging our partnership with both H3C and Starline, we can bring to the European market a promising new line of storage solutions for the SMB as well as the enterprise market,” said Guillaume Imberti, vice president and general manager of EMEA operations for FalconStor Software.

“We are pleased to expand the distribution of our FalconStor-based storage appliances into Europe,” said Arthur Lee, president of storage product line at H3C. “Building on an already successful relationship with FalconStor, we have the opportunity to develop a complete family of storage virtualization and data protection appliances for international markets.”

The NSS HC6XX family offers four models, including two entry-level iSCSI-based storage arrays, an advanced multiprotocol system offering both iSCSI and Fibre Channel, and a high-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet storage array.

The NSS HC6XX family of storage arrays features FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) intelligence and advanced features, including storage virtualization, thin provisioning, synchronous data mirroring, optimized replication, application-aware snapshots, and other enterprise-class capabilities. The new H3C/FalconStor storage systems will be distributed by Starline Computer and sold by FalconStor’s network of channel partners throughout Europe.

In addition to FalconStor NSS and the new H3C appliances, Starline will distribute FalconStor’s complete line of data protection software, including FalconStor Continuous Data Protector™ (CDP) and FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with Deduplication. In the future, the H3C/FalconStor-based appliances will be available as CDP, VTL, and Data Deduplication systems.

“With the addition of FalconStor’s enterprise-class data protection solutions and the new H3C-based storage appliances to our portfolio, we can target the growing market for high-performance and high-availability storage solutions,” said Bernd Widmaier, sales director of Kirchheim/Teck-based Starline Computer.

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About Starline
Starline Computer GmbH has 25 years of professional experience in the storage area, in which it is increasingly specializing. Initially one of the first providers in the area of RAID systems, Starline is now a leader in this field. Starline offers total solutions such as storage area networks (SAN), RAID sub-systems and controllers, network-attached storage (NAS), IP storage, tape libraries and autoloaders, storage switches, backup software, HBAs and others.

About H3C
Part of 3Com Corporation, H3C is a leading global supplier of IP-based products and solutions. H3C provides a full portfolio of end-to-end networking solutions including switches, routers, network security systems, IP storage, IP surveillance, and voice-and-video-over-IP products. As an innovative IP-based network architecture solutions provider, H3C aims to create maximum value for its global customers and partners by providing excellent service and quality products with a high performance-to-cost ratio.

Based in China, with research and development centers in Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen, the company employs 4,800 people with more than half engaged in R&D.

FalconStor NSS enables automated, application-consistent failover in geographically dispersed clusters of both physical and Hyper-V virtual servers for better DR over the WAN

FalconStor today announced that, as part of its ongoing support of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtualization technology, FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) software works seamlessly with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering to provide instantaneous disaster recovery (DR) over the wide-area network (WAN) in both physical server and Hyper-V virtual server environments.

Integrating both logical and virtual worlds, the combination of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering and Hyper-V virtual servers enables automatic failover of business-critical applications running on geographically dispersed physical and virtual servers. The solution provides companies with integrated data protection, less expensive DR and immediate recovery from server failure.

FalconStor’s open software-based SAN replication and cluster protection software, FalconStor NSS, is tightly integrated with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering, enabling not only protection of the host server but also of individual Hyper-V virtual machines configured as clustered servers. FalconStor is the first data protection vendor to deliver replication and automated failover processes in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 environments at the block level, which eliminates any performance impact on the host.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V in multi-site cluster deployments enables IT organizations to cost-effectively adopt virtualization, improve utilization, optimize infrastructure and rapidly provision new servers using systems management tools for both physical and virtualized environments. FalconStor NSS software provides a real-time software-based replication and multi-site failover solution with application integrity optimized for Microsoft virtual server environments.

FalconStor NSS software automatically protects both Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V clusters through WAN optimization and automated multi-site cluster failover integration. With FalconStor NSS software, customers can unify their multi-vendor SAN environments and replicate to a remote site using nearly any vendor’s storage equipment at either location.

“In the past, integrating high availability and disaster recovery capabilities together into a ‘geo clustering’ solution has been an expensive proposition that required significant administration sophistication and expertise,” said Eric Burgener, senior analyst at The Taneja Group. “FalconStor now has added capabilities to its core NSS software offering that makes creating these configurations for Windows Server 2008 environments simpler and more cost-effective, giving customers a much more approachable, integrated HA/DR solution. With evolving business and regulatory mandates turning DR into a must-have capability, this development will be welcomed by mid-market and enterprise customers alike.”

“Our storage virtualization and data protection software provides a TOTALLY Open, enterprise-proven solution for businesses seeking to improve their recovery-time and recovery-point objectives in a cost-effective manner,” said Bernie Wu, FalconStor vice president of business development. “The integration work we’ve done with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Failover Clustering takes this one step further by providing overall multi-site application availability and consistency.”

FalconStor NSS software provides a disaster recovery suite for Windows Server 2008 that seamlessly supports Microsoft’s multi-site failover clustering feature for physical servers or Hyper-V virtual servers while ensuring application integrity during failover. Transactional applications –such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Exchange and others– present a huge data-integrity challenge when they are configured within multi-site clusters where DR is required. Because of the latency and distance that the WAN introduces, there is no guarantee that every block of data will arrive at the secondary site in the event of a failure. FalconStor NSS software enhances data protection for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering in multi-site environments by ensuring at the sub-block level that each application has a clean, consistent restart point just before service was interrupted.

FalconStor and Microsoft have a strong history of working together to provide scalable business solutions for the mid-tier and enterprise markets. FalconStor is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a managed ISV partner and has earned Microsoft’s Advanced Infrastructure Storage Solution Specialization Competency.

Enabling customers to transform their existing direct-attached storage into an iSCSI virtual SAN appliance for VMware environments, FalconStor Software today announced FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) Virtual Appliance for VMware ESX.

FalconStor NSS is an enterprise-class software storage solution that offers storage virtualization, provisioning, management and data protection. The FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance is built for VMware ESX and enables the creation of iSCSI SANs based on the server’s internal storage resources. This makes it an ideal solution for SMB as well as remote branch offices of large enterprises that are consolidating servers and storage with virtual machines and virtual SAN appliances.

Using application-aware snapshot and replication technology, FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance protects a broad range of critical business applications running on VMware virtual machines, including: Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange Server and SharePoint Server; Oracle Database; Lotus Notes; Sybase Database Management; IBM DB2; and more.
The FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance has been validated by the VMware Ready Virtual Appliance program, assuring customers of its full compatibility with VMware.

By offering trial downloads and a free limited version of FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance, FalconStor is helping to accelerate adoption of virtualization throughout the small-to-medium sized business (SMB) and remote-office markets.

“FalconStor is delivering on its continued commitment to providing a complete line of virtual storage and data protection solutions for VMware environments in all segments of the market,” said Bernie Wu, FalconStor vice president of business development. “FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance extends our enterprise-class storage offering to the remote office and SMB markets, and the free version evangelizes the benefits of virtualization to a much broader audience.”

“FalconStor is providing customers with an easy, affordable virtualization path to secure their applications,” said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances, for VMware. “VMware is making huge strides in lowering the cost of managing valuable IT resources for enterprise IT infrastructures. With the FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance, SMB customers can easily deploy cost-effective iSCSI virtual SAN appliances, enabling them to enjoy the advantages of virtual storage and VMware flexibility and resiliency.”

FalconStor’s entire virtual appliance suite is available on the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace, the industry’s largest online directory of virtual appliances with more than 900 available for download. Virtual appliance versions of FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS), FalconStor Continuous Data Protector™ (CDP), and FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with de-duplication are available for download on the Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

A trial version of FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance can be downloaded from the FalconStor website and from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace as of September 16th 2008. This full-featured version includes patented FalconStor® MicroScan™ replication technology with built-in WAN acceleration and high-availability storage. FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance has gained VMware Ready validation, assuring customers that it is fully compatibility with VMware Infrastructure.

In addition, a free, limited version of FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance can be downloaded from September 16th 2008. The FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance free edition is a pre-built, pre-configured, and ready-to-run virtual SAN appliance for VMware ESX and VMware ESXi.