A few days after reporting its first profitable quarter in four years, FalconStor has announced three major product updates that bring the software-defined data center yet another small step closer to reality. Most notable is the latest version of the company’s aptly-named Optimized Backup and Deduplication Solution, which wraps a common interface around its ultra-fast Virtual Tape Library (VTL) and the LAN-based FDS compression tool.

The new release allows users to manage both block and file backup and dedupe on a single node, reducing hardware requirements by half while simplifying administration. The addition of cascading replication further improves disaster tolerance while significantly lowering WAN overhead, FalconStor said, enabling sustained throughput of 11.2TB per hour per node and providing three time faster backup. The feature is complemented by new NAS and VTL interfaces that the firm touts as 300 and 35 percent speedier than previous versions, respectively.

“Having a unified, platform-based approach to data management not only simplifies day-to-day management, but it allows customers to do more with less – less complexity, less money, and less technology required – all while improving backup performance and availability,” noted FalconStor CEO Gary Quinn. The executive joined the company in April 2012 as vice president of North American sales operations, and took over the reins a mere eight months later.

Optimized Backup and Deduplication Solution 8.0 is joined by Continuous Data Protector (CDP) 7.6, which has been enhanced to backup and recover files more efficiently and provides automated recovery for Windows, Linux, VMware and Hyper-V environments. FalconStor also announced the general availability of Network Storage Server (NSS) 7.6, which in turn doubles the supported distance of stretched clusters to 100 kilometers and adds mirror protection for increased resilience.

photo credit: Martin Gommel via photopin cc