FalconStor is setting out to help cloud companies — and cloud companies in waiting — protect, restore and move around their data faster and more efficiently.
The Mellville, NY-based storage software specialist, today announced the immediate availability of updates to its solutions portfolio, which the company claims can have a dramatic effect on data security and availability for cloud data center operators. Affected products include FalconStor’s Optimized Backup and Deduplication Solution 8.1, Migration, Continuity, Protection & Recovery 7.7, Continuous Data Protector 7.7 and Network Storage Server 7.7.
New this time around is data at rest encryption support for the company’s deduplication component. The security measure enables organizations to deduplicate and encrypt data as it is placed on their virtual tape environment’s hard drives. FalconStor is making the feature available at no additional cost.
The security-enhancing upgrade is tailor-made for high security government clouds, hinted the company. “For organizations with highly sensitive data, especially the federal government, this feature ensures compliance with regulatory and industry security requirements,” said FalconStor CEO Gary Quinn in prepared remarks.
FalconStor’s latest tweaks bring with them a major reduction in data recovery times. According to the company, Migration, Continuity, Protection & Recovery 7.7 can restore data at a rate of 16 TB per hour, or 195 percent faster than previous versions.
Customers can now pack more virtual machines into their snapshot strategies. Under the new software, snapshot groups can accommodate simultaneous snapshots of up to 256 virtual devices.
The FalconStor platform now includes expanded support for Microsoft’s wares, including Windows 2012 R2, Hyper-V 2012 R2 Clusters and SQL Server 2014. Administrators can now select which storage management and protection capabilities are turned on in the stretch cluster configuration, an option that cuts the cost of delivering high-availability (HA) storage services, said the company.
Protection & Recovery 7.7 sports new monitoring and reporting capabilities. Observable metrics include disk usage, snapshots and LUNs, among others. The deduplication console gains Chinese language support.
Quinn said that his company’s software makes it easier for businesses to cloud-enable their existing data. “FalconStor leverages a component of its optimized data services, Intelligent Abstraction, which enables data to move from an existing storage device onto a cloud infrastructure seamlessly and transparently to the customer.”
“We’re focused on expanding our technology capabilities and partners to enable more users to adopt private clouds,” said Quinn.