Data Protection "Server" Beta now here

Today MS announced the public beta of their Data Protection Manager ... in a nutshell this software sits on top of a Server2003 box and turns it into a "backup server".  Point the DPM at a server and it will take snapshots of that server on the schedule you choose.  So you could have hourly snapshots of your production servers...and since your backing up to disk and not tape, it's speedy to both backup and retrieve data.  Here's Microsoft's top 10 reasons you'll wan to use DPM:

1. Recover files in minutes instead of hours
2. Eliminate the backup window of your production servers
3. Shrink potential data loss down to one hour
4. Rely on having no more failed recoveries
5. Get easy and instant backup verification
6. Enable users to perform their own recoveries
7. Set up and protect your file servers in minutes
8. Use advanced functionality at low cost
9. Remove tapes from branch offices and centralize backups at the data center
10. Take advantage of rich out-of-the-box reporting and monitoring functionality

The recommended hardware requirements are pretty low (1GHz, 1GB ram) which makes sense as you don't need much CPU to push files around.

I've been eagerly waiting for this and hope it lives up to all the articles I've read on it.  I'm so tired of swaping tapes every day...and sinking big $$ into an autoloader just doesn't sit well knowing the poor reliability of tape backups.  Supposing DPM is the cat's meow, we'd most likely roll our own server and capture all the weekly backups to it then dump the monthly backups to tape which are taken off site...naturally keeping whatever months we can also on the DPM box.

Of course the mantra that was taught to me by Jim Keith, a very wise IT pro, keeps echoing in my head, "Say no to .0"  Although MS has been tweaking on MS backup over the years, this is their first stray into the enterprise backup arena.  Here's hoping DPM is a home run.

Here's a good short informative DPM article NOT written by MS :-)