| D2d & VTL news |
Disk Backup Remains #1
Storage Search
Editor:-
May 6, 2008 -
STORAGEsearch.com today updated its monthly list of the top subjects
viewed by storage searchers in April.
The top 5 subjects were:-
(1)
-
Disk to disk backup - no
change
(2) -
Solid state disks - no
change
(3) -
2.5 inch SSDs - up 2
places
(4) - Hard
drives - no change
(5) -
NAS - down 2 places
Overall
pageviews grew 20% compared to the year ago period.
BakBone Certified with Data Domain
Reading, UK - April 23, 2008 -
BakBone Software is now certified with Data Domain.
Working
together, they now offer the ability to use Data Domain systems as
NAS or as a
VTL
within a NetVault
environment, D2D2T (Disk to
Disk to Tape backup)
and reduced backup windows. ...BakBone profile,
...Data Domain profile
Nirvanix Rains on Amazon's S3
SAN DIEGO - April 22, 2008 - Nirvanix
today announced a 30-day free trial promotion for users who want to test its
online storage service.
Nirvanix also announced the
availability of its 'Amazon
S3 Migration Tool' which enables the easy migration of files from an
Amazon Simple
Storage Service account while preserving folder structures.
"For
a company with just 50 terabytes of archived data, for instance, this fee
holiday can mean a setup savings of well over $9,000 to move to the world's
fastest, most reliable cloud storage platform in the world" said Jonathan
Buckley, Chief Marketing Officer with Nirvanix. ...Nirvanix profile,
online backup and storage
Seagate Delivers First Terabyte SAS HDD
ORLANDO,
Fla - April 7, 2008 - Seagate today announced it has begun worldwide
shipment of its first terabyte SAS hard drive.
The Barracuda
ES.2 drives spin at 7,200 RPM, have an unrecoverable error rate that is 10x
better than desktop class drives and a 1.2 million hour MTBF at full 24 x 7 data
availability. ...Seagate
profile, Serial
Attached SCSI
AmeriVault is 10 Years Old
Waltham MA - April 1,
2008 - Today, AmeriVault is celebrating its 10th year in remote
online data backup, offsite storage, and recovery services.
In
1998, AmeriVault pioneered disk-based online backup, founded on the idea that
backup needs to be
automatically secured offsite with the highest reliability. Today AmeriVault
also offers
advanced
recovery services for clients that cannot withstand extended outages in the
event of a disaster, virus, or crash. Traditionally, the recovery process
following a disaster or outage can take several days and requires substantial
investment in labor. AmeriVault's services can help clients resume operations
faster than most other remote recovery strategies.
...AmeriVault
profile
Editor's comments:- that says something about the age
of the whole online backup
and storage market too. We created a directory for this topic in
March 2000. It
looked a bit
like
this - and was quaintly labeled "Edrives" but the term never
caught on.
Fujifilm Launches Wireless Backup Tape Tracker
VALHALLA,
N.Y. - March 26, 2008 - Fujifilm today announced the immediate
availability of the Fujifilm Tape Tracker, a wireless tool to help data
managers increase security of data by tracking in real-time the location and
status of sensitive removable media cartridges while in transit.
The Fujifilm Tape Tracker (patents pending) is designed within a 0.5" tape
cartridge format, enabling it to fit snugly and discreetly inside nearly any
tape media case.
...Fujifilm profile,
Tape Libraries
CAS Pioneers Reunited at Caringo
AUSTIN, Texas
- March 18, 2008 - Caringo Inc. today announced the hiring of Jan
Van Riel as its VP of Advanced Technology, reuniting him with fellow
co-founder of Content Addressable Storage, Paul Carpentier, Caringo's
CTO.
Van Riel and Carpentier together invented the technology
that created the CAS industry while they were partners at
FilePool,
a company they sold to EMC
(in April 2001).
EMC went on to incorporate the CAS concept into its multimillion-dollar Centera
and Van Riel served 8 years as EMC's Director of Technology.
"With
EMC scaling down the Centera unit and the future of Centera unclear, the chance
to join Caringo, which understands the potential of CAS, and partner once again
with Paul Carpentier was too good of an opportunity to pass up," said Van
Riel. "The need for CAS solutions is ever increasing and I am excited to
participate in the next chapter of the technology at Caringo." ..Caringo profile,
Storage People
PivotStor Launches Email Appliances
SAN DIEGO -
March 11, 2008 - PivotStor today introduced its new EP-Series email
management appliance.
At a starting price of less than $1,300 the EP-Series of
disk based
NAS appliances enables
companies to grow and fully protect and manage their email while ensuring
compliance with a full range of regulations. Configurations range from 50 to
2,500 mailboxes (and upto 3 billion email messages a year). Form factors
include:- desktop, 1U and 2U rackmount.
"Email archiving is no
longer important to only large companies. Smaller firms face the same pressures
of regulatory compliance and e-discovery," said Arun Taneja, founding
analyst at the Taneja
Group. "Companies recognise that email is where content resides;
vendors who can deliver an email archiving product to mid-tier companies that's
easy to use with integrated anti-spam, encryption and anti-virus functionalities
are in position to seize a leadership position."
...PivotStor profile
Iomega Says No to EMC Buyout Offer
SAN DIEGO -
March 10, 2008 - Iomega Corp announced today the receipt of an
unsolicited non-binding indication of interest from EMC Corp, in which
EMC indicated that it is prepared to offer to acquire the outstanding common
stock of Iomega.
Iomega's board of directors met on March 9, 2008,
and unanimously determined that the proposal from EMC would not reasonably
constitute a superior proposal.
...Iomega profile,
...EMC profile
Editor's
comments:- a few years ago I predicted that the
long term threat
to EMC, NetApp etc comes from
NAS becoming a
predominantly consumer / SMB market. Acquiring Iomega would have been a cheap
way for EMC to dip its toes into unfamiliar water - where budgets and vendor
ties are more shallow.
The best hope for the biggest storage box
vendors like EMC, IBM etc is to stay in the controlled climate of the
datacenter - and siphon off some of the torrents of cash that will be spent on
solid state disk
accelerators.
Study Enumerates Key Factors in Hard Disk Array Failures
Editor:-
March 6, 2008 - a recently published paper called - Are Disks the Dominant
Contributor for Storage Failures? - reports on a 3 year study of nearly 2
million operating disks.
Among the many findings:- the
annualized failure rate in near-line systems which mostly use
SATA disks is
approximately twice as high as in systems which mostly use
fibre-channel disks.
But other factors such as datapath resilience, presence or absence of
RAID and
reliability of the
rack system components are just as significant contributors to storage
reliability as the hard
disks themselves.
...read
the article
ExaGrid Publishes Disk Backup Report
Westborough,
Mass. - March 5, 2008 - ExaGrid Systems, Inc. today published the
results of a lab review of its products by Enterprise Strategy Group.
Using real-world data and a real-world backup application, ESG Lab
has confirmed that ExaGrid can backup data at a rate of 4TB/hr for a fully
configured grid. ESG Lab testing and feedback from ExaGrid customers indicates
that de-duplication can be used to reduce disk capacity by a factor of 20 to
1.
"It's easy for vendors to make big claims about their
products; it's another thing entirely to go into the lab with an outside party
like ESG and have your claims tested and fully validated," said Marc
Crespi, VP of product management for ExaGrid Systems, Inc. "We are proud
that ESG witnessed first-hand the leading backup and restore performance, linear
scalability, effective data de-duplication and tremendous ease of use that our
customers have long enjoyed with the ExaGrid Disk-based backup System."
...read
the report (pdf), ...ExaGrid
profile, ...Enterprise
Strategy Group profile
PowerFile's Archive Facilitator Picks
Jukebox Hits
SANTA CLARA, Calif -
February 26, 2008 - PowerFile Inc. today introduced the Archive
Facilitator which automatically discovers, classifies and moves fixed content
to the company's (optical) Active Archive Appliance.
PowerFile's
Archive
Facilitator is scalable and and manages tens of terabytes per appliance
and hundreds of terabytes per enterprise deployment. ...PowerFile profile,
Optical Libraries
Fantom's New eSATA+USB Desktop MegaDisk
TORRANCE,
CA - February 20, 2008 - Fantom Drives today announces its new G-Force
MegaDisk eSATA + USB external storage systems.
Now available in
1TB ($319.95), 1.5TB ($459.95) and 2TB ($649.95) capacities , the MegaDisk
storage system includes both
eSATA (300MB/S) and
USB 2.0 (60MB/S )interfaces
and also includes NTI
Shadow Backup. Fantom Drives' new offering has
RAID built in and is
housed in a desktop aluminum enclosure.
...Fantom Drives profile
IDC Reports on Storage Replication
Technology
FRAMINGHAM, Mass
- February 19, 2008 - Dynamics in the storage replication software market are
shifting, according to a new study from IDC.
While
array-based replication accounted for close to 84% of worldwide market revenues
in 2007, the highest annual growth came from smaller segments, including
host-based methods (+25.4%) and network and appliance-based replication
approaches (+20.6%).
"Future opportunities for replication
suppliers are numerous," said Laura DuBois, program director,
Storage Software at
IDC. "To succeed, vendors need to increase their focus on heterogeneous
replication and replication/recovery management, and integrate replication
services with other high availability services and virtualized server
environments. They should also expand into data reduction approaches and offer
replication-as-a-service to reach new market segments."
...IDC profile,
Market research
DataCore Enhances Disk Backup Support in
Virtual iSCSI SANs
FORT
LAUDERDALE, Florida - February 11, 2008 - DataCore Software today
brought to market Virtual Infrastructure Foundation PLUS.
Like
the original VTF it includes thin provisioning,
iSCSI support, SANmotion
data migration technology and performance caching. However, VIF+ adds support
for thin provisioning storage pools up to 4TBs, includes snapshot technology for
high-speed disk-to-disk backups
and supports high-speed Fibre
Channel networks.
VIF+ is portable software that can run on
standard Intel/AMD hardware servers, blades or on Virtual Machines (VMware,
Citrix XenServer, Oracle VM, Sun VM, Virtual Iron, and Microsoft Virtual
Servers). Pricing starts at under $2,750. ...DataCore Software profile
Double-Take Predicts Another Great Year for Disk Backup
Worcester,
UK - December 11, 2007 Double-Take Software today announced its
predictions for the business continuity market during 2008.
Double-Take¹s key prediction is that developing end-user requirements,
including growing regulatory compliance pressures and enhanced risk management
practices, will combine with advances in available technologies to make
disk-based backup a clear
winner of the 2008 business continuity IT market.
A key advance in
disk based recovery technology during 2007 has been the ability to recover full
systems, not just stored data. It is now possible to protect an entire server in
real-time, making recovery of systems much faster and simpler. ...Double-Take profile
Audavi Ships 250GB HardTape
San
Jose, CA - November 26, 2007 - Audavi Corp today announced the
addition of a 250GB capacity cartridge to its HardTape family of portable rugged
storage devices.
The 250GB cartridge, based on 2.5-inch
hard drive technology
has a 50MB/s sustained data transfer rate. Rugged enough to survive a 2-foot
drop onto concrete, the HardTape cartridge is an excellent alternative to
tape for client data
backup and disaster recovery, medical image storage, and security video
recording. HardTape is significantly faster than "burning"
CD/DVD disks for data
back-up and archive applications. HardTape cartridges can move easily from
system to system using a bay or cable connection through any of the standard
interfaces (USB,
FireWire,
SCSI,
SATA). Featuring a
black anodized aluminum case for additional durability, HardTape cartridges are
pocket-sized and weigh about 8 ounces. ...Audavi profile
SEPATON Launches Fast Petabyte VTL
Marlborough,
MA - November 13, 2007 - SEPATON, Inc. today launched the S2100-ES2
Series 750 virtual tape library which scales to 1.2 petabytes uncompressed (or
up to 60PB with compression and DeltaStor dedupe).
The ES2
can perform backups and restores at a rate of 34.5TB/hour. Pricing
starts at $59,000.
"We recognized that our very large
enterprise customers have unique requirements that no other VTL on the market
could address," said Miklos Sandorfi, CTO, SEPATON, Inc. "We designed
the new Series 750 with the speed, de-duplication efficiency and capacity
scaling that they require." ...SEPATON profile,
Record Breaking
Storage |
|
Overland
Extends VTL to 114 Terabytes
SAN
DIEGO, CA - October 22, 2007 - Overland Storage, Inc. today
introduced hardware compression to its high-end REO SERIES disk-based
backup, recovery and virtual tape library appliances.
The new
product - REO 9100c includes upto 66T of raw data capacity, which can be
compressed to 114T of usable virtual tape capacity. MSRP starts at
$63,343.
...Overland profile | |
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| The article -
History of Disk to Disk
Backup - chronicles the key milestones and technology and market inflection
points in the past 10 years - from the time when
tape backup ruled supreme
to the present day. | | |
Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps?
Backing up your data to an SSD may
sound like a crazy idea today - but no more so than the idea
10 years ago - that
disk to disk backup would one day replace
tape.
I've been
backing up my data to flash storage (in rotation with hard disk storage) for
about 5 years. There have been less failures in the flash backup media than
the hard drives - which translates to a lower TCO. But I'll keep using more
than one type of media - because I'm
paranoid about losing
data.
SSDs
cost more per gigabyte than
hard drives, but that
gap is closing fast.
New generations of MLC SSDs offer 2x the
capacity at the same silicon price, and some companies in Q108 have already
sampled 4x devices - with 8x maybe just a year or so away.
Most
SSD oems claim that
flash SSDs have
much better MTBF than hard drives. While that may be true - the uncorrectable
data corruption rates in some types of SSD may be orders of magnitude worse
than SLC SSDs, and worse than HDDs.
And the theoretical operating life
of SSDs varies by 100 to 1 between different brands and technologies of SSD.
Storage reliability is
more than the longevity of the storage media. It's about survival of the data.
This
article shows the technical reasons why multi level cell flash SSDs may work
OK in notebooks and PDAs - but may not work satisfactorily in a rackmount
datacenter environment. ...read the article | |
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| November 12,
2007 - NetApp's
CEO Dave Hitz said in his blog today "...I'm surprised how important
creating real tapes from the VTL has remained. Despite all the hoopla about
disk-to-disk backups, 80% of VTL customers still rely on
tape for some part of
their process." | |
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Nibble:-
the changing face of disk to disk backup
the Small Business and Home
Workplace Market
The 5.25" hard drives used in the
early days of the IBM desktop PC (1982) were too delicate to be any use as
removable backups. For most of the 1980s even the process of installing a new
5.25" drive could destroy it, unless you took precautions and had shock
absorbent material on your work bench. But a new generation of more rugged disks
was evolving in parallel.
In 1983 the newly formed
Compaq Computer launched
the first IBM PC compatible portables. These used the new style of 3.5"rugged
disk drives from Connor Peripherals which were better able to survive shock and
vibration. Initially more expensive than other drives, they had the added
advantage of taking up less space and a lower dead on arrival rate for systems
integrators.
However, during most of the 1980s the cost and
unreliability of removable
hard drives prevented them from being widely used as a backup medium. The
exception was the military.
Special shock absorbent elastometric shuttles were designed to enable disks to
be used in high vibration environments and to be easily removed and locked away
for security reasons. The problem was that the shuttles cost more than the disk
drives and were out of reach of most users' budgets.
During the early
1990s, backup for most home PC users (if they did it at all) meant using
multiple floppy disks.
In 1995
Iomega simplified this
process with the launch of their Zip drive. The Zip drive offered the
equivalent storage capacity of about 100 floppy disks on a single super floppy.
A few years later the Jaz drive, a 1G byte removable disk with rugged handling
characteristics provided one of the first examples of true affordable disk to
disk backup.
By the year 2001 the newest generations of
hard drives designed
for portable PCs and cameras were rugged enough to use as external backup
devices with little or no additional mechanical protection. Connecting simply
via USB or
Firewire, an external
hard disk backup became the cheapest form of backup device for the home
workplace. Dozens of manufacturers such as
CMS Products now supply
these solutions with integrated software.
See also:-
FireWire storage,
Removable disk drives,
USB storage | |
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Virtual
Tape: Can You Afford to Ignore It? - article by MaXXan Systems
Network
connected disk to disk backup systems for the enterprise have come a long way
since the first pioneering products started to appear in the pages of
STORAGEsearch.com in the late 1990s.
Some of the growing
sophistication in the market can be seen by the way that the marketing
terminology has morphed from the early D2d (let's kill tape backup), via D2D2T
(let's be friends with tape / peaceful coexistence) to the current VTL (Virtual
Tape Library - let's just see if they notice that it's more reliable and works
faster - and don't tell them that there isn't a tape in the box) type of
approaches.
But if you think that speed, reliability and cost are the
only things you need to know about the "virtual" versus "real"
tape library argument - take a look at this comprehensive article from MaXXan
Systems which shows there are a lot more benefits than that. ...read the article,
...MaXXan profile,
Disk to disk backup | |
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Disk to
Disk Backup versus Tape - War or Truce? - article by Engenio
Will
disk to disk backup make tape backup obsolete? That's a question that's been
debated hotly here on STORAGEsearch for many years.
At the extreme
polarized ends of the argument are tape media makers like Sony, who in
an article here made a
case for the long term survival of tape, and at the other end of the argument
are disk to disk supporters like STORAGEsearch whose
editorial view has been
that tape doesn't have a viable role the midsize market any more. In the
middle of this argument are the moderates who say that maybe tape and D2d can
co-exist. This article by Steve Gardner at Engenio takes the middle course line
- and says why he thinks there's still a place for both. See if you agree. ...read the article,
...Engenio profile,
RAID systems,
Disk to disk backup | |
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| Tape libraries |
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| Events | |
