Choice expands in the data backup market

he crowded data backup market is gaining new entrants that are focused on making data easier to access even when parts of the network are down.

Start-ups Ark Research and Network Disk, as well as established file server vendor Network Appliance, are readying appliances and software that largely offload from servers the task of writing data to local and remote disks.

"The data mirroring market represents a $2 billion to $3 billion-per-year business in the mainframe data center," says Michael Peterson, president of Strategic Research in Santa Barbara, Calif. "The parallel is to take this well-established, very successful data center model and move it out to the distributed networks. The market for remote mirroring in 1999 is roughly $4 billion," he says.

Ark, founded by James Bergsten in July 1996, is about to release a data mirroring device based on an off-the-shelf Pentium II machine. Intel or 3Com Fast Ethernet network adapters connect the Ark/2000 appliance to the file server, while a SCSI connector ties the appliance to external disk subsystems. Data is forwarded from the file server to the appliance, where it is cached before being written to local or remote disk subsystems.

Ark/2000s, named for Noah's ark because of the way the animals were boarded two by two, can be paired to support cross-mirroring between servers. They can be linked via a LAN or WAN.

The appliances can link just about any server using any network operating system to any storage device. For instance, via the firm's rudimentary embedded file system, Sun servers can attach to Windows NT RAID arrays, and HP-UX servers can attach to Compaq StorageWorks RAID arrays. Also, multiple servers running different operating systems can be connected to a single Ark/2000 to allow local or remote disk sharing.

"Ark is packaging a plug-and-play solution that works with legacy products," Strategic Research's Peterson says: "You don't have to do a forklift upgrade to install it."

The product initially will work with only SCSI devices but will support Fibre Channel arbitrated loop devices in June. The offering will be available this month through resellers and distributors for $30,000 per two-node system, including the network appliance, network adapters and software.

Network Disk, a self-funded start-up in Framingham, Mass., takes a similar approach to local and remote data mirroring with its self-named product but focuses only on Windows NT networks and storage systems.

Network Disk sells software that runs on an off-the-shelf Intel processor-based PC and sits between the server and external storage. The box running Network Disk's software can then mirror data from a server to local or remote disk arrays.

In addition, Network Disk adds "snapshot" copy capability, in which an image of the disk is taken at many points in time and copied to a local or remote disk. Network Disk will support Fibre Channel arbitrated loop and switched networks by year-end.

Ilya Gertner, Network Disk's founder, is on the prowl for beta customers. Pricing for the Network Disk software starts at less than $4,000 per machine.

Separately, Network Appliance last week announced enhancements to its NetApps file server operating system to provide mirroring and improved snapshot backup capabilities.

The SnapRestore feature lets a company undo any changes made by Network Appliance's snapshot technology and revert to any previous image. This technology is useful for recovering from database corruption. System administrators can roll back the database to a previous image and play change logs forward until database integrity is restored.

Network Appliance's new SnapMirror technology also allows replication of one or more volumes of data between servers for backup purposes.

SnapRestore costs $2,000 to $9,000, while SnapMirror costs $10,000 to $50,000 per server.

Ark: (408) 260-5900; Network Disk: (508) 872-4586; Network Appliance: (408) 367-3000