2TB De-Dupe Backup NAS at $899

Highly Reliable Systems, Inc., in Reno NV, is shipping a NAS with an integrated removable drive based on Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008R2 Essentials.

The Workstation Backup Appliance (WBA) has 2TB of deduped internal storage, along with Microsoft software to backup 25 Windows or Mac workstations.

"Microsoft wrote the backup software for the WBA," said Tom Hoops, Chief Technology officer.

"The central console they created for this unit manages all the backups from a single location using a dashboard concept. The appliance runs a Windows Server OS, so it can join existing domains," said Hoops.

Multiple boxes can be ganged to support more than 25 workstations and server backup can be supported with 3rd party software. The appliance stores duplicate files (those that exist on multiple workstations) only once. The company says that this data deduplication ability means that data stored on 25 workstations will fit into much smaller backup space.

The WBA has an optional 2TB removable drive tray that provides the appliance with self-backup capability (or additional storage), as well as a USB key used to boot downed workstations and connect them to the appliance over the network for rapid bare metal restore.

"This is the only Windows Storage Server Essentials box that includes the ability to back itself up, which is critical for a business class NAS," said Hoops.

Darren McBride, the company CEO, says that although IT people often claim they don’t allow users to store data locally, users do it anyway and even if they don’t, the ability to recover workstations quickly when corruption or viruses hit is a big time saver. He explained that a simple piece of service software called the Microsoft connector is installed using the IE browser to each workstation, and once configured backups are queued and processed sequentially so that scheduling is centralized and simplified. Progress can be monitored via a single dashboard and the Microsoft software has the ability to do continuous incremental protection, which means nightly backups occur quickly. Version retention also allows users to go back six months or more to retrieve old versions of files. Add-ins are available from third party developers to extend Windows Storage Server Functionality.

Pricing on the 2TB WBA is $899 MSRP. Additional removable 2TB drives in protected and transportable aluminum trays are available.