Backup and recovery has been around for a long time and is critical for business to secure their data.  What’s disruptive is the cloud.  Legacy solutions often have the wrong “process” for backup and recovery.  It’s a different world now. New use cases and new networks are opening up the doors for new solutions.

FalconStor Software, Inc., the provider of TOTALLY Open(TM) data protection solutions, today announced FalconStor(R) Network Storage Server (NSS) SAN Accelerator for VMware View(TM).  The FalconStor NSS is an SSD-enhanced storage solution that increases the performance of VMware virtual desktop environments.

Hot startups are hitting the scene taking a new angle on storage and networking. I blogged today about Atlantis Computing securing $10m in funding from Cisco and other leading VCs.  Now we have more established players innovating on the cloud.  FalconStor has a new twist on backup and recovery.

All of these new innovations take virtualization and create new ways to solve a growing set of problems created by the disruption of cloud computing.

FalconStor is a company taking a unique approach to storage with a focus on virtualization.  Enterprises are looking for integrated, multi-tier data protection. VMware platform is creating opportunities for big companies and statups. VMware is focused on delivering tremendous efficiencies in the deployment and management of enterprise users’ desktop and laptop computers. Virtual desktop operation and management can be enhanced by storage capabilities to maximize performance, availability and efficiency.

Virtualization is changing the game on the server market. IDC has put out a study that shows that virtual servers have overtaken physical servers.  What IDC is saying is that virtual servers are the new defacto standard.  With all that data companies need data protection that works with cloud and virtualization.  To make matters worse is that data is not just residing on the servers anymore.  Additionally, enterprises are challenged on what data to keep and what data to “throw away”.

Data and more data is changing the landscape in cloud and storage.  What good is data if you can’t get at it and/or recover it when needed.  Industry analysts are saying that FalconStor solution is a best in breed solution.

Here is the news from FalconStor.

FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View performs backup and recovery for the entire virtual desktop environment and for each virtual desktop — and, for the first time, enables integrated self-service file recovery for individual virtual desktop users.

Here is some information from FalconStor on their news supporting VMware.

FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View dramatically enhances the efficiency of virtual desktop management throughout the virtual desktop lifecycle — accelerating virtual desktop booting, login, operation, logoff, patch/update and security management through 10x storage performance improvement.

Virtual desktop deployments also require advanced data protection and storage efficiency features for storing desktop images, user data and settings that need to be backed up and recoverable in the event of a system failure, user error or data center disaster. The FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View employs snapshots, thin clones, replication and file-level protection to enable a three-tier data protection service:

— Entire VMware View environment — comprehensive, enterprise-class continuous data protection that allows IT managers to recover locally or from a DR site in the event of system-wide failure.

— All VMware View user data repositories — complete data protection for user data located within the VMware View environment and redirected folders on a separate NAS appliance.

— Self-service file-level recovery — users can recover their own individual files as needed, saving storage administrators significant time and expense.

“Virtualization in general and virtualization of desktops in particular have amplified I/O unpredictably as read/write I/O storms occur frequently without warning; the only solution to date has been to add more disk drives,” said David Vellante, chief research advocate, Wikibon. The innovation that FalconStor has shown with its flash-on- storage-controller implementation, which is much more efficient for VDI than SSDs. The FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator neatly exploits the VMware I/O separation improvements to offer a solution that combines low-cost SATA with 2 to 3 percent high-performance flash as a cache that can adapt in real-time.

“The rapidly adopted paradigm shift of virtual servers and desktops ushered in by VMware’s innovation has created the need for storage environments with integrated data protection designed for the new virtual data center,” said Jim McNiel, chief strategy officer for FalconStor. “Virtual environments not only demand flexible, scalable virtual storage, but also require backup and DR systems that work with the unique characteristics of virtual machines. We designed the FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View(TM) to deliver the kind of storage environment that virtual desktops require — improving performance and data protection in one elegant solution.”

FalconStor is a great example of an existing player and creating new products for the new cloud market.

As we said at EMCworld 2010 “Storage is Sexy” and with all this investment and M&A activity in storage I expect to see more action on “data” recovery.  The keyword in data recovery is “data”.

Update:  Analysts over at Wikibon.org posted an analysis on FalconStor.