Hifn Delivers De-Dupe for Windows Servers

Hifn announced the BitWackr 250 and 255, advanced data reduction solutions that enable server OEMs, Microsoft Partners and white-box server builders to add hardware-assisted data deduplication and compression with thin provisioning to Windows Servers. BitWackr powered servers seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Windows applications that most benefit from deduplication and data reduction, such as NAS, SharePoint and Data Protection Manager.

Hifn’s patent-pending BitWackr technology delivers real-time, in-line deduplication and compression, reducing the amount of data written to disk. The first capacity optimization solution that reduces data at the point of creation, the BitWackr 250 and 255 can significantly reduce the cost of corporate storage. In an era of IT budgeting when ‘flat is the new up’ the BitWackr-enabled servers extend IT budgets by slashing both CAPEX and OPEX expenses reducing disk capacity requirements and purchases and extending the useful life and ROI of existing storage, limiting the number of RAID units that have to be managed, lowering heat dissipation and cooling expenses, and reducing power consumption, the second biggest cost item in the data center.

“The benefits of reducing data are tangible and all the more relevant in this economic climate,” said Benjamin S. Woo, Vice President, Enterprise Storage Systems at IDC.  “Deduplication is a very attractive technology for this reason and Hifn has taken a new approach to it, which will enable a broader set of customers to reap the benefits of capacity optimization.”

This exciting capability is available to OEMs, Microsoft Partners and ‘white box’ system builders, enabling them to create higher-value products to sell into the exploding market for storage solutions featuring advanced data reduction. Channel partners also have the opportunity to sell BitWackr-enabled products throughout an organization as the technology scales from entry-level users to SME and enterprise workgroups.

“In 2008 data deduplication was the most promising technology to address the exploding data growth problem businesses are faced with day-to-day, and in 2009 Hifn is extending that technology to the Windows server community with the goal of bringing deduplication and advanced data reduction ‘to the rest of us’,” said John Matze, Vice President, Storage System Products at Exar. “Hifn’s BitWackr is data deduplication done right, with the ability to solve the emerging challenges of SMB and SME storage, and enabling deduplication benefits, beyond backup applications, to start at the point of data creation.”

Hifn’s BitWackr 250/255 combines the company’s BitWackr advanced block-based data deduplication software with a Hifn Express DR 250 PCI-x or 255 PCIe card that employs specialized hardware to perform data compression and deduplication hashing operations. The server platform-independent solution operates in a standard Windows environment and can be installed on any system running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Storage Server 2003 with support for both 32- and 64-bit versions.

Hifn’s BitWackr deduplication software is a simple set-it-and-forget-it solution that operates transparently within a Windows server environment. BitWackr-optimized storage is presented to Windows as just another disk that may be assigned a drive letter and made available to all Windows applications. The BitWackr-produced drive letter is the application interface to the capacity optimization services. Reading from and writing to the BitWackr drive letter transparently provides compression and deduplication services to applications.  

Pricing and Availability
The Hifn BitWackr 250 and 255 products are priced at $995 MSRP.  Beta versions of the Hifn BitWackr products will be available this quarter with general availability scheduled for Q3.