News

NSI Offers Lower Cost Disaster Recovery for Windows

• By Scott Bekker
• July 23, 2003

The new product, called Double-Take for Windows Workgroup NAS Edition, supports single-processor NAS appliances built with the Windows Server Appliance Kit, which is a componentized version of Windows 2000 Advanced Server that OEMs can use to build devices. Available this week, the new version of Double-Take starts at about $2,500 for each NAS server the NSI software is loaded on.

Double-Take provides real-time, continuous backup and automatic failover capabilities for software-based disaster recovery. Previously in its Double-Take for Windows line, NSI offered editions for Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server and Datacenter Server.

NSI positions the new edition as appropriate for file serving, file sharing between offices and consolidation of home directories for centralized backup. Bob Guilbert, NSI vice president of marketing and business development, says NSI expects to find a market for the NAS edition with small to medium-sized businesses and distributed enterprises such as banks supporting branches and retail companies supporting stores.

"With the Windows-powered NAS environment, there does seem to be some price sensitivity there. From a unit perspective, many people are buying devices in the $2,000-$5,000 range," Guilbert said. That level of spending on the base NAS appliance is appropriate for buying the NSI software to guarantee high availability for those machines that need it, Guilbert said.