At the Storage Networking World conference in Phoenix Wednesday, Microsoft announced the availability of a public beta release of its Data Protection Manager (DPM) software. DPM provides a near continuous disk-based backup and offers rapid recovery in the event of a failure – without relying on tape.

Microsoft has been beta testing DPM among its partners since last September, and boasts a resounding positive response for the product.

“Our whole goal with DPM is to shrink the operational costs associated with IT professionals having to manually recover lost data and manage cumbersome backup and recovery processes,” says Ben Matheson, group product manager for DPM at Microsoft.

“From what our early-adopter customers are telling us, DPM is doing that very effectively.”

General availability of Microsoft DPM is slated for the end of this year, but the public beta is available now for download. Future releases of DPM are expected to support the entire Windows Server System, including Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server and more.

:item2: DPM Public Beta