Miami, Florida -- The Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program technology provider companies, HP, IBM and Quantum, announced that two recently-released separate studies found that tape had significant TCO benefits over disk, including lower cost per GB, lower operating expenses and lower energy costs.
The two studies, from the Enterprise Strategy Group and The Clipper Group, evaluated the costs of long-term storage for various scenarios that included tape and disk as the primary storage medium. In each case, the studies found that tape had long-term cost advantages when compared to a scenario that relied on a disk-only solution.
"The notion that 'tape is dead' ignores the substantial evidence that favors tape as a lower cost, environmentally friendly removable medium that is well suited for offline data protection as well as high growth compliance, fixed content and archiving applications," said Senior Analyst Mark Peters who conducted the study by ESG.
The TPC sponsored ESG study evaluated a common disk environment with an industry-standard deduplication system versus a tape library with LTO-5, with full nightly backups, over a five-year period. The scenarios included replicated systems and offsite tape vaults. In all circumstances, the TCO for VTL with deduplication ranged from about 2 to 4 times more expensive than the LTO-5 tape library TCO.
A separate study on archiving very large data collections by The Clipper Group also found that tape is much less expensive than disk, using significantly less energy when measured on a per petabyte basis over a 12-year period. In short, the TCO under The Clipper Group scenario found the disk solution for long-term archiving to be more than $67M, approximately 15 times greater than the cost to deploy a tape solution of $4.5M over the 12 year scenario with the cost of energy alone for disk at $4M and only about $18k for tape. In the end, The Clipper Group concluded that the vast majority of archived data should reside on tape.
"Tape continues to play an important role in the protection and preservation of an organization's digital assets," said Rob Clark, Senior Vice President, Disk and Tape Backup Product Group, Quantum. "These studies from leading figures further reinforce to the industry that tape is the optimal low cost storage medium for long term data retention. LTO UItrium generation 5 capacity and performance enable highly efficient archive and data protection solutions, with all the benefits that an open standard brings."
For more information call (800) 557-6540 x111 or click info@cloudcaboodle.com
Office in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California, Arizona, and Colorado. Magic Quadrant. EMC VMX, Data Domain, Cloud Storage, Backup, Archive, HP, Dell, Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, vmWare, Cisco, Virtual Datacenters, Disaster Recovery, EVault, Mozy, NetApp, IBM, Network Storage, Networker, Commvault, NetBackup, Backup Exec 2012, SSD, LTO-6, Tape Library, Exagrid, Quantum, de-dupe, sync to cloud, free, trade in, cheap, storage, CA Arcserve, Windows 8 whitepaper, case study, education, government
Orlando, Florida -- Application delivery networking specialist F5 Networks announced the release of a hardware platforms for F5 ARX file virtualization solutions. With the introduction of the ARX1500 and ARX2500 appliances, the ARX product line expands to provide small to medium-size businesses with data management capabilities. For medium-sized storage environments, the ARX2500 platform includes support for 10 Gigabit Ethernet network infrastructures.
The ARX appliances are designed to help businesses simplify and scale their data management infrastructures by eliminating the static mapping between client and storage resources. With F5's file virtualization capabilities, organizations can access and migrate data between resources as demand dictates, without impacting users or requiring downtime.
With ARX's storage tiering capabilities, organizations can designate high performance storage resources for their most important or most frequently accessed data. In addition, intelligently tiering important versus low-priority data files delivers the ancillary benefit of reducing backup windows considerably. High-priority data can be backed up daily, while secondary and tertiary data can be done less frequently.
"The new ARX platforms address a real need in the storage market," said David Hekimian, CTO at data management and networking specialist Trace3. "Previously, ARX products have been a more obvious fit for large enterprises, given the scale and performance capabilities of the solution. By offering F5's substantial data management and file virtualization capabilities to a wider range of customers at an accessible price point, we expect to see a marked interest among smaller, growing organizations."
In addition to providing storage tiering capabilities, ARX devices enable IT administrators to automate labor-intensive processes for common data management tasks, including scaling storage infrastructures or performing data migrations. IT teams can also implement a policy-based approach to data management, meaning that standard tasks can be configured, automated and tailored in accordance with individual organizations' storage needs.
"In today's rapidly digitizing economy, small and mid-sized enterprises are dealing with exploding amounts of digital content and a growing range of data management challenges," said Richard Villars, vice president of storage and IT executive strategies at IT analytics firm IDC. "Solutions like F5's new ARX products take advantage of advanced file virtualization to help IT teams boost the performance and reduce the administrative burden of their file-based storage assets."
For more information call (800) 557-6540 x111 or click info@cloudcaboodle.com
Office in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California, Arizona, and Colorado. Magic Quadrant. EMC VMX, Data Domain, Cloud Storage, Backup, Archive, HP, Dell, Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, vmWare, Cisco, Virtual Datacenters, Disaster Recovery, EVault, Mozy, NetApp, IBM, Network Storage, Networker, Commvault, NetBackup, Backup Exec 2012, SSD, LTO-6, Tape Library, Exagrid, Quantum, de-dupe, sync to cloud, free, trade in, cheap, storage, CA Arcserve, Windows 8 whitepaper, case study, education, government
Orlando Florida -- After about a minute, they were moved down to Tier 2 as expected. The second tiering test involved what F5 called a “placement” policy. Here, files are placed on the designated tier as they are created, instead of being moved there after a period of time. Using a common example, I created a policy that automatically placed all MP3 files on Tier 2. Next, I created an MP3 file on my desktop and copied it to the CIFS share, watching it get placed on Tier 2. Files in both tests were always visible in the CIFS share, regardless of whether they were physically located on Tier 1 or Tier 2.
In the final test, I created a capacity-balancing policy to balance utilization across several file systems. Here, I created several 500GB physical systems across both a NetApp and EMC device. Then, I created a new ARX volume comprising these file systems and presented it on the network as CIFS share. As expected, checking the properties of the CIFS share on my PC showed the aggregate storage capacity of the physical file systems. The next step was to create the capacity-balancing policy to balance new file creation. Then, I created several files, watching as the ARX automatically placed one file in each of the physical file systems. F5 says that this is a growing use case for its customers, as applications become more and more data-intensive. Some applications require very large file systems beyond what is capable from a single device. This capacity-balancing capability allows you to construct a very large virtual file system comprising capacity from multiple physical file systems or storage devices behind it.
While my testing didn’t simulate disaster recovery in the test environment, F5 did point out a couple of interesting items regarding data protection. The first was with backup. F5 says that the storage tiering and capacity-balancing policies can actually help their customers reduce the amount of time required to perform a full backup of their data. For example, a “last modified” tiering policy essentially separates changing and unchanging data among different physical file systems. You could back up these different physical file systems at different intervals—changing data on a weekly basis and unchanging data less often. And if you have multiple physical file systems (such as in the capacity-balancing test), you can back up each of the physical file systems in much less time than it would take for the virtual file system.
The second item was what F5 calls “virtual snapshots.” Many enterprise IT organizations have come to depend on the snapshot capabilities of their NAS systems for disk-based backup and recovery. But what happens when you virtualize those NAS systems? F5 took me through the ARX virtual snapshot capability, which essentially does the same thing for snapshots that the namespace does for file systems. To test the virtual snapshots, we added to the setup left over from the capacity-balancing test with a third file system from a Windows file server. We then created a snapshot rule on the ARX for the virtual volume. The snapshot rule is what tells the underlying storage devices—in this case the NetApp, EMC and Windows devices—to take physical snapshots of these file systems at a specific schedule. After the first snapshot was performed, we went to the snapshot directory and verified that we could see all of our files in the same directory, despite the fact that they are on different physical file systems and, hence, different physical snapshot images on three devices.
Conclusions
While the F5 ARX series proves to be a significant investment, the truth is that an ARX device reinvents the organization's relationship with storage. In other words, the new storage paradigm offered by ARX reduces management overhead, increases flexibility and brings ease to building storage pools that can be dynamically reshaped, instantly, to meet the elastic needs of any organization. What’s more, ARX leverages existing storage solutions, which may preempt the need to buy more storage. Another notable fact about ARX is that it does not “get in the way” of performance. The device's ability to handle all the processing at line speed means that network performance is not affected.
For more information call (800) 557-6540 x111 or click info@cloudcaboodle.com
Office in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California, Arizona, and Colorado. Magic Quadrant. EMC VMX, Data Domain, Cloud Storage, Backup, Archive, HP, Dell, Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, vmWare, Cisco, Virtual Datacenters, Disaster Recovery, EVault, Mozy, NetApp, IBM, Network Storage, Networker, Commvault, NetBackup, Backup Exec 2012, SSD, LTO-6, Tape Library, Exagrid, Quantum, de-dupe, sync to cloud, free, trade in, cheap, storage, CA Arcserve, Windows 8 whitepaper, case study, education, government
Managing enterprise disk storage is difficult. F5 is reducing this burden with the ARX Series, a family of appliances that abstract physical file storage from logical user access using virtualization.
F5 Networks ARX Platform Removes Chaos From Enterprise Storage
Many IT professionals are wondering if the exponential growth of disk storage and the associated management chores will ever slow down. Regrettably, for those charged with the day-to-day administration of enterprise storage, the answer is likely no.
Several factors are forcing the growth of storage pools, ranging from basic drivers, such as robust applications, to more complex factors, such as "big data" analytics, compliance requirements and disaster recovery. Simply put, storage is growing with no end in sight, and management is becoming more complex and time-consuming. That all adds up to higher costs, reduced efficiencies and longer backup windows.
F5 Networks thinks it has an answer to that dilemma (and several others) in the form of its appliance-based ARX storage virtualization platform, which focuses on abstracting physical file storage from its native, closed, management tools and virtualizing it into a centrally managed, easy-to-control layer. With an entry price of around $30,000, ARX combines several capabilities that make it a welcome addition to any large enterprise network that is struggling with storage issues.
While the process of creating a namespace sounds complicated, the GUI makes it straightforward and provides ample help. It only took me a few minutes to set up a virtual volume, and share it so that it was available to users. That is the magic provided by the ARX’s wizard-based setups. Of course, a lot goes on behind the scenes to make virtual volumes work properly, but the ARX appliance handles all of that heavy lifting. IT managers just need to provide the appropriate information to make everything work. Volume creation is probably one area where the most care should be taken. However, if you do make any mistakes, it is comforting to know that the ARX does not change anything on the physical storage device, allowing you recreate virtual volumes, virtual file systems and most anything else with ease.
At this point, it’s probably worth a note on how one would actually deploy the ARX appliance. For this test, I created a namespace from scratch in a test environment. It was easy enough; however, most people already have a storage environment with existing users, file data, file shares and storage devices. They will be happy to know that the ARX provides an option that minimizes deployment headaches, which F5 refers to as a “namespace takeover.” Here, the ARX appliance actually takes over all of the identifying details of the storage environment it’s virtualizing, from storage device IP addresses and fully qualified domain names (FQDN) to the individual share names. The ARX can provide a virtual IP address for each device it takes over to make the environment after virtualization appear identical to the one before.
Naturally, ARX does a lot more than just provision virtual storage for use by end users. The ARX platform also provides additional capabilities, ranging from simplified storage migration to intelligent storage tiering to extensive management tools and policy controls. According to F5, this is where the real value of the solution lies. I had the chance to play around with some of the policies. Although I was obviously in a small test environment, even this limited experience was intriguing.
Similar to name-spaces, creating a policy on the ARX is a relatively straightforward affair using a wizard-based setup. The ARX applies policies at the volume level to control the movement of files between the various physical file systems within each volume. I’ll talk about how this plays out in each of the ARX’s primary use cases below.
The first use case that F5 talks about is data migration—essentially, the movement of files from one physical file system to another. I performed a simple test that simulated a migration between two storage devices. I started with an ARX volume presented over the network as a CIFS share and comprised of a single physical file system on a Windows file server. After creating some files in the CIFS share, I verified that they were in actuality created on the Windows server. I then used the ARX’s GUI to provision a second physical file system into the volume, this time from a NetApp device. In the policy wizard, I selected the Windows device as the source and the NetApp device as the destination, initiated the migration and watched as the files simply appeared on the NetApp device. During the entire process, the files were visible to the user in the CIFS share, regardless of whether they were physically located on the Windows or NetApp device.
See Part 2
For more information call (800) 557-6540 x111 or click info@cloudcaboodle.com
Office in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California, Arizona, and Colorado. Magic Quadrant. EMC VMX, Data Domain, Cloud Storage, Backup, Archive, HP, Dell, Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, vmWare, Cisco, Virtual Datacenters, Disaster Recovery, EVault, Mozy, NetApp, IBM, Network Storage, Networker, Commvault, NetBackup, Backup Exec 2012, SSD, LTO-6, Tape Library, Exagrid, Quantum, de-dupe, sync to cloud, free, trade in, cheap, storage, CA Arcserve, Windows 8 whitepaper, case study, education, government
Orlando, FL -- With StrongBox Crossroads has built a NAS head for tape libraries that combines disk access speed with tape's low-cost and longevity, and can cut file storage costs by 90 per cent.
That's Crossroads' boast, although the NAS head is our term, and Rob Sims, Crossroads' president and CEO clarified it by saying: "It's a NAS head on top of LTFS storage."
The arrival of LTFS (Linear Tape File System) [1], which adds a self-describing file system interface to tape and software which talks LTFS can present an LTO-5 tape through a file/folder structure with a drag-and-drop method for adding or retrieving files from it. Crossroads has built StrongBox to take advantage of the LTFS tape interface.
StrongBox and LTFS
Crossroads Strongbox 3U enclosure
The background to this, in Crossroads' view, is that tape is the lowest-cost long-term storage medium for data but is complex to use, with its lack of a file/folder access structure and offline nature of cartridges in a tape library, amongst other things. Disk on the other hand is great for being online but expensive when bulk data has to be stored. Enter LTFS and the situation changes.
Crossroads has reacted to this by building a combined disk and tape archive facility, actually a dedicated filer appliance with archive software and an LTFS method of talking to an attached tape library. Supported libraries include HP's MSL2024, MSL2048, and ESLG3 libraries, and IBM's TS3100, TS3200, and TS3500 products. The set of supported libraries is being expanded and we're told that StrongBox should work with most LTO-5 supporting libraries.
StrongBox hardware is a 1U or 3U rack enclosure running on a Xeon sever and supporting 5.5TB (T1 small box) or 14TB (T3 big box) of disk storage, meaning 200 million or 5 billion files respectively. It talks NFS or CIFS to app-running servers. The little box connects to its tape library by dual 6Gbit's SAS ports while the big box offers 4-port 6Gbits SAS or 8Gbit/s FC to the back-end tape library.
File I/O
The software makes StrongBox provide a caching facility. The first part of a file can be stored on disk with the latter part on a tape cartridge. When a user requests the file it can be transmitted from disk initially, while the tape cartridge is fetched, mounted on a drive in the library, and the file located. Then the rest of the file can be streamed from the tape through StrongBox to the user, making it appear as if the file was online all the time. Files are read in from tape at full tape speed and sent out to the requesting user at the speed of the link.
When a file is written to StrongBox it is written to disk, into an ingest buffer sized at 1TB by default. A copy is written to tape, with perhaps a second copy for surety, according to settable policies, which can also specify replication to a remote StrongBox. When the file has been written to tape the disk copy's size will be reduced to the amount needed for read caching. This is set at 512KB by default. Files are aged out of the disk cache, as it fills up, on a least-recently-used basis.
LTFS-format tapes can be ingested into StrongBox and made available on a network share. Any LTFS-format tape exported by StrongBox should be readable by any receiving LTFS-capable library. This represents a way of transporting very large volumes of data, volumes that would be too slow and/or costly to send across a network.
Data security and StrongBox implementation
The StrongBox software generates and verifies a hash code for every file so that users can rely on file content integrity. There is also ongoing monitoring of the storage drives and media, with files on at-risk media rewritten to known good media automatically.
David Reine, a senior contributing analyst at The Clipper Group says of StrongBox: "[It] presents a paradigm shift in the use of tape that is cost effective and energy-efficient, lowering the TCO of the storage infrastructure for the enterprise. It separates tape from its legacy relationship with backup applications. By using LTO-5 and LTFS, StrongBox has the capacity, scalability and flexibility required for use as an active archive."
Crossroads says no agents, backup software or application modifications are required when you install StrongBox, and organisations gain a persistent view for all files on tapes stored in the library. Customers can use an existing tape library and dedicate it or a partition in it to StrongBox.
Crossroads channel partners are also extending their ability to offer all-in-one bundles of StrongBox plus a tape library. Sims said: "CIBER, for example, is a value added reseller that works with Crossroads. We also have strategic partners that will provide the complete package. Those are not yet announced."
Capgemini has deployed StrongBox in its Netherlands data centre to archive data for one of the largest Dutch department stores. An existing optical storage-based archiving system was replaced by StrongBox, which also expanded Capgemini’s managed data vaulting services and SAP archives. Capgemini is also developing a new StrongBox-based archival service.
Frank Huiskes, Capgemini's global chief technology officer of infrastructure transformation services (and a man with-a-very-long-title) , said StrongBox: "clearly provided the most compelling pricing per gigabyte, while also offering a new set of ‘always online’ capabilities that have the potential to greatly expand our archiving services."
Sims says StrongBox is: "priced by Terabyte: StrongBox T1 is approximately $21,000 and StrongBox T3 approximately $31,000, and [it] can scale."
You can stick StrongBox in front of an existing LTO-5-supporting library and get LTFS advantages that way, bringing a caching, disk-based filer front end to it. Or you could install a new StrongBOx/tape library combination to replace ageing optical archiving and provide online access to tape-based archiving that should be cheaper, substantially cheaper, than retaining the data on disk. The Capgemini example clearly speaks to possibilities for cloud service providers.
In this era of ever-proliferating unstructured data growth, giving tape libraries a NAS head transplant, and so cutting demands for increasing disk array capacity, could be a really smart move.
For more information call (800) 557-6540 x111 or click info@cloudcaboodle.com
Office in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California, Arizona, and Colorado. Magic Quadrant. EMC VMX, Data Domain, Cloud Storage, Backup, Archive, HP, Dell, Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, vmWare, Cisco, Virtual Datacenters, Disaster Recovery, EVault, Mozy, NetApp, IBM, Network Storage, Networker, Commvault, NetBackup, Backup Exec 2012, SSD, LTO-6, Tape Library, Exagrid, Quantum, de-dupe, sync to cloud, free, trade in, cheap, storage, CA Arcserve, Windows 8 whitepaper, case study, education, government
SAN JOSE, CA, Dec 12, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Quantum Corp. QTM -6.67% , a proven global expert in data protection and big data management, today announced that the company's vmPRO 4000 integrated solution for protecting data on virtual servers was named "Storage Virtualization Product of the Year" at the 2011 Storage, Virtualization and Cloud Computing (SVC) Awards. The award recognizes Quantum's commitment to building on its data protection expertise by combining innovative technologies and adding unique value to meet customers' evolving storage needs.
Quantum's vmPRO(TM) family of products, which includes the vmPRO 4000, provides an innovative way to protect virtual machines (VMs) simply and cost effectively within an organization's larger backup, disaster recovery (DR), and retention process. vmPRO technology operates as a virtual appliance integrated into VMware vCenter for streamlined management. Its progressive optimization reduces the amount of data to be protected by up to 75 percent and pre-conditions data to make deduplication more effective for faster backups and greater utilization of storage, server, and network resources. It also stores the virtual machines in their native format for fast recovery of whole VMs and individual files and supports third-party backup applications.
For more information call us at: 877-904-4347
"We are grateful to our customers, partners and peers within the storage industry for recognizing the innovation and value of the vmPRO family in this year's SVC Awards," said Gabriel Chaher, vice president, EMEA/APAC Marketing, Quantum. "We believe that it validates the technical and business benefits IT departments can expect from our unique combination of VM protection and industry-leading deduplication."
"These awards recognize the users, manufacturers and suppliers of storage, virtualization and cloud solutions in the European market and are voted on by the readers of our wide range of print and online publications," commented Bill Dunlop, CEO of award organizers Angel Business Communications. "The selections are made by IT professionals with a practical understanding of the challenges facing them. Quantum was the clear winner in its category: Storage Virtualization Product of the Year."
For more information call (800) 557-6540 x111 or click info@cloudcaboodle.com
Office in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California, Arizona, and Colorado. Magic Quadrant. EMC VMX, Data Domain, Cloud Storage, Backup, Archive, HP, Dell, Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, vmWare, Cisco, Virtual Datacenters, Disaster Recovery, EVault, Mozy, NetApp, IBM, Network Storage, Networker, Commvault, NetBackup, Backup Exec 2012, SSD, LTO-6, Tape Library, Exagrid, Quantum, de-dupe, sync to cloud, free, trade in, cheap, storage, CA Arcserve, Windows 8 whitepaper, case study, education, government
Quantum is a veteran of the storage community. With a long pedigree in tape automation, it has added a large disk-based portfolio to accommodate changing times.
"That makes Quantum the only company to bring disk, tape, and replication together for a complete, cost-effective solution across distributed sites," said Jeff Rector, Quantum's Marketing Director.
Disk-Based Deduplication and Backup
Quantum disk-based backup appliances are known as the DXi-Series. Each has built-in data deduplication to reduce disk requirements by 90 percent or more. The DXi-Series works with all major backup applications. This includes support for Symantec's OpenStorage (OST) API. They can be used for remote offices and/or large data centers. In addition to deduplication, they can deal with virtual tape, disaster recovery and replication.
The series consists of the DXi4000, DXi6700 and DXi8500. All Quantum appliances use a variable-length, block-based deduplication technology. Each one comes with all necessary licenses in the base price, including deduplication, replication, direct tape creation, OST, VTL, NAS and DXi Accent for what is known as hybrid mode deduplication.
"With the hybrid deduplication enabled by DXi Accent software, customers can distribute deduplication operations to media servers, reducing local area network or wide area network traffic for backup, disaster recovery and direct tape creation," said Rector.
The DXi4000 is the low end of the Quantum line and is intended for SMBs and remote/branch offices. The DXi4601 scales from 4 TB up to 12 TB of usable capacity. The DXi8500 is the high-end product that anchors enterprise-wide backup, DR and data protection. It comes with 40TB to 320TB usable capacity.
In the midrange sits the DXi6700, with 8 TB to 80 TB of usable capacity. It includes two models--the DXi6701 and DXi6702. DXi6701/02 appliances provide multi-protocol interfaces and deliver 5.8 TB/hour (1610 MB/sec) backup performance in target mode, using a VTL or OST interface, or 5.0 TB/hour (1389 MB/sec) in NAS environments.
"Leveraging Quantum's DXi 2.0 inline data flow, a DXi6700 runs at more than twice the speed of the leading competitive offering," said Rector.
The DXi6701 comes with 1GbE connectivity, while the DXi6702 comes with 10GbE. Both models scale easily from 8 TB to 80 TB. The price of the DXi6701 is $58,000.
Virtual Machine Backup
Quantum's vmPRO 4000 appliances and vmPRO software are designed to protect data on virtual servers. They accelerate virtual machine (VM) performance by filtering out unassigned, expired and inactive data to reduce overhead on servers, networks and storage.
There are two vmPRO 4000 appliance models. The vmPRO4510 has 2TB usable capacity and the vmPRO4601 has up to 12TB. Both support vSphere 5, the most recent version of VMware's offering. Pricing for the vmPRO 4601 starts at $24,250.
vmPRO software, on the other hand, works with DXi appliances and existing backup applications to integrate VM backup and recovery. This technology came to Quantum via the acquisition of Pancetera Software. The vmPRO software utilities present a file system view of VM files, automatically create native-format VM copies on secondary disk, reduce VM backup data by up to 75 percent and raise deduplication rates.
"All vmPRO utilities operate inside the virtual environment, eliminating the need for external servers, and they support third-party backup applications," said Rector.
Tape Libraries
While Quantum has a few products in the above categories, its richest product set remains in the tape library space. Its Scalar series of tape libraries deliver backup and archiving to midsize businesses, workgroups and large data centers.
"Tape will continue to have a role in long-term data protection and archiving," said Rector. "It is the most cost-effective means to maintain large amounts of data for long periods.
Making sense of the various Scalar products is simple. The higher numbers deal with larger environments. The Scalar i40/i80 is for SMB, Scalar i500 is for midrange, and the Scalar i6000 is for enterprise users.
Scalar i6000 libraries are designed for the archive and long-term data retention. They include features such as iLayer software, bulk load capabilities and Extended Data Life Management (EDLM). EDLM provides IT storage administrators with a mechanism to check the health of their data on tape over a long retention period. It is particularly useful for data that is no longer accessed. Since this data can sit untouched for years, storage administrators don't know if their data in long-term storage can be restored. EDLM ensures that the data can be restored or retrieved when needed.
The i6000 stores up to 16PB of data, with a starting price of $63.4K with no added features or drives.
StorNext
StorNext data management software lets users process, store and access digital assets from a shared storage pool that can extend across storage tiers. The StorNext family of appliances can deliver high-performance file sharing and archiving via metadata controllers, expansion appliances and disk, and archive enabled libraries.
The StorNext M330 metadata controller appliance serves as the "traffic cop" for managing data in a StorNext environment. This component includes StorNext File System SAN clients. The StorNext G300 is a gateway appliance that scales out StorNext environments across a LAN. The StorNext QS1200 is high speed, smaller capacity primary disk for StorNext environments. It supports up to 115TB. The StorNext QM1200 provides high-speed metadata disk for StorNext environments and supports up to 28.8TB. The StorNext QD6000 is a scalable, high-density disk for StorNext environments with room for up to 1PB. The StorNext Archive Enabled Library is an archiving appliance for StorNext environments that automates data integrity verification of tapes and data migration within a tape library.
"The StorNext M330 metadata controller appliance is ideal for rich media environments needing fast, sustained and reliable shared access to very large files across multiple platforms," said Rector. "It creates shared data pools, eliminating the need for multiple copies, reducing storage space, simplifying workflows and enabling faster project completion."
Pricing for the StorNext M330 begins at $75,000, which includes factory-installed and licensed software, two metadata controllers (one for failover) and a dedicated metadata array for optimal operation. Also included are 10 StorNext File System SAN clients that can be used on any operating system, two StorNext File System SAN clients for the metadata controllers, and the High Availability License Option, enabling automatic metadata controller failover. Additional StorNext File System SAN clients can be obtained separately, as can all the supported optional StorNext features, including Storage Manager's tiering and archiving features. The StorNext M330 is compatible with products from most disk and tape vendors.
For more information call (800) 557-6540 x111 or click info@cloudcaboodle.com
Office in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California, Arizona, and Colorado. Magic Quadrant. EMC VMX, Data Domain, Cloud Storage, Backup, Archive, HP, Dell, Azure, Amazon, Rackspace, vmWare, Cisco, Virtual Datacenters, Disaster Recovery, EVault, Mozy, NetApp, IBM, Network Storage, Networker, Commvault, NetBackup, Backup Exec 2012, SSD, LTO-6, Tape Library, Exagrid, Quantum, de-dupe, sync to cloud, free, trade in, cheap, storage, CA Arcserve, Windows 8 whitepaper, case study, education, government