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Rob Green · Guest

Columbia Data Products, Inc. (CDP) announces the release of Persistent
Storage Manager (PSM) 2.3 build 2382 snapshot software for Microsoft Windows
2000, XP and 2003. This is a newer and more advanced version than was
licensed in Microsoft Server Appliance Kit for NAS 2.0.

PSM 2.3 features

a.. Proven - Installed on millions of servers worldwide
b.. Transportable snapshots - The ability to take snapshots on one drive,
then remove that drive to another PSM appliance (either directly or via
SAN), and have the snapshots accessible on the new machine without importing
c.. 512 snapshots per volume as opposed to 64 for Shadow Copies and 512
for VSS.
d.. FAT 16/FAT 32 file system support
e.. MMC Plug in - PSM now has a Microsoft Management console plug in to
allow managing of snapshots instead of only using the SA Kit.
f.. Unlimited diff file sizes - Previous versions were limited to 10000
fragments
g.. Windows 2003 VSS Provider - Any backup application that can use VSS
can now access PSM snapshots to do the backup
h.. Shell Extension - Access snapshots locally and remotely via a shell
extension (right click). This is similar to TimeWarp except it works on
Windows 95, 98, 98SE, Me, NT4, W2k, XP, and W2k3.
i.. Performance enhancements
j.. Supports Basic disk, Dynamic disks and Veritas Volume Manager 2.x and
3.x controlled disks
k.. Disaster Recovery component may be included that allows you to create
a backup of your system volume (via network or locally) and restore it from
a boot floppy.
l.. Supports SA Kit 2.x and 3.x

Differentiating features from Shadow Copies

a.. Read/Write snapshots - You can write to snapshots to do "what if" type
analysis
b.. PSM waits for a quiescent period to allow applications a chance to be
in a consistent state as well as making sure the file system is in a
consistent state.
c.. Multi-volume snapshots - You can take snapshots of multiple volumes
that will be at the same time. This becomes increasingly important if data
is spread between multiple volumes such as databases and indexes.
d.. Revert - You can restore an entire volume by only restoring what
actually changed instead of doing a complete copy such as a drag and drop.
e.. Revert without losing snapshots - All snapshots are kept even after a
revert. This means you can do a revert to a prior time and still access the
later snapshots, or revert to a different snapshot. You can move backwards
and forewards through time on your system!
f.. FAT16/FAT 32 support
g.. 512 snapshots per volume as opposed to 64 for Shadow Copies
h.. Naming of snapshots - You can name snapshots 'Hourly' or 'My
snapshots' in addition to just the date/time it was created.
i.. Grouping of snapshots - Like snapshots can be grouped so you can apply
different policies as needed. For example, you could group weekly
snapshots together and keep hourly snapshots separate. Each group has a
number to keep of snapshots, so you can specify to only keep the last 8
snapshots in this group and PSM will then keep a rolling count that doesn't
affect your other groups.
j.. Retention weights - You have the control to specify the importance of
any snapshot. Then when the system needs to remove a snapshot it will remove
the lower priority ones first, not just the oldest snapshot.
k.. Deletion of snapshots - When a snapshot is deleted in PSM, all the
space that is no longer needed is freed from disk and memory. Shadow copies
can only recover space if it is the oldest snapshot. Snapshots that are
deleted that are not the oldest are merely hidden in Shadow copies.
l.. Always keep snapshots - You can mark snapshots not be deleted even if
you are running low on diff space.
m.. Access to snapshots from applications - you can retrieve deleted and
overwritten files from within applications
n.. Backwards compatibility with Windows 2000 and XP

PSM can be downloaded from

ISO image ftp://ftp.cdp.com/outgoing/psm/psm_install_2382.iso

ZIP file ftp://ftp.cdp.com/outgoing/psm/psm_install_2382.zip

If you want to upgrade existing PSM or Active Archives you must first
upgrade to PSM Service pack 2 before running the above installations. You
can get service pack 2 from your vendor (such as Dell or Microsoft).

Contact info

Web http://www.cdp.com/psm

Support support1@cdp.com

Gregg Zambrovitz

gzam@cdp.com

407-869-6700 or 800-613-6288

925 Sunshine Ln.

Suite 1080

Altamonte Springs, FL 32714

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