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| Editor's
pick of D2d and VTL companies? |
Disk to disk backup used to be a hot
topic here on StorageSearch.com - occupying a similar position in reader
interests to that of solid
state disks today.
So if I listed all the companies in
the disk backup market which have been mentioned here on StorageSearch.com -
then you'd get a very long list of over 500 vendors (and thousands of news /
article mentions).
That wouldn't be
very useful.
So, instead - I suggest you use the site search below
- or
click
on this link - which prepopulates the search with terms related to disk to
disk backup. You can then add your own refinements to the search to aim it
better at what you're looking for (on or off this site). | |
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| Is Deduplication of Data
Safe? - and More Deduplication FAQs |
One of the problems with
disk backup is scalability.
For small and medium sized companies the speed and convenience of disk backup
outweighs any other considerations - and in most cases is cheaper than the
alternatives. But if you're backing up data associated with tens of thousands of
internal users - then eventually the cost of the disk media (compared to
traditional tape - even with
tape's intrinsic
lumbering speed, high service costs and unreliability) may start to become an
important feasibility issue. |
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In theory that's where deduplication comes in -
because (moving beyond that other must-have D2d technology - compression) it
offers the promise of saving more unique data to less disks.
But is
dedupe scalable? Is it safe? And what about performance?
The ultimate
dedupe faqs is a good starting point to learning more. ...read the article | | |
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| Editor:- this article comprehensively reviews
the why? how? and where? of today's modern enterprise
hard disk backup techniques. Themes surveyed include:- snapshot, CDP, coherency
and recovery, energy efficiency, deduplication, branch offices etc....read the article | | | |
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"I'm
impressed by your new hotSTOR disk backup"
said Megabyte. "Does
it make coffee too?"
"The more you drink, the faster it goes."
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Lortu announces 20TB
virtual SFF D2d
Editor:- May 17, 2011 -
Lortu today
unveiled the LDA-Mini - a
small form factor HDD backup appliance with upto 20TB of virtual capacity -
with internal dedupe
- with MSRP of 680 euros.
Editor's comments:- in my 2010
article - this way to
the Petabyte SSD - I explained that one of my assumptions was that designers
would start to put dedupe, compression and library management features inside
SSDs. Although Lortu's product is aimed at the
HDD market - it's one
step along the way to a new class of bulk storage devices.
Surveys show SSDs still have low adoption in SANs
Editor:-
February 25, 2011 -Dataram
recently announced the results of a survey which they funded into
FC SAN performance.
200
people responded to the survey which was carried out by a 3rd party.
48%
said they add more storage and/or spindles to solve performance problems.
(This is the tradional solution.)
45% said they are
considering solid state storage for improved performance and efficiency, but
less than 15% have already implemented a solid state solution.
Jason Caulkins,
Dataram's Chief Technologist said "The fact that only 15% of respondents
have deployed solid state indicates that there is plenty of room for growth in
this market..."
Editor's comments:- these results are in
tune with a different recent
survey by Xiotech which said "only 9% already use or are evaluating
SSDs. Another 8% responded that SSDs were in 2011 plans."
These
results support the view that there is plenty of
upside potential
for the enterprise accelerator SSD market - because maybe as many as 80% of
organizations which use SANs haven't yet deployed SSD accelerators. See also:-
SSD market research.
was it worth it? - the ROI of a web page is the beating heart
of all web business
Editor:- February 8, 2011 - in a new blog
today -
what's the
life of a web page? - I look at the economics of online content.
Does
Google calculate ROI on the cost of indexing different web pages? - That's
something I muse about too. ...read the
article
WD has 50% of enterprise HDD market
Editor:- January
18, 2011 - Western
Digital announced the availability of its 2nd generation
WD S25 SAS drives
(2.5" 450GB 10,000 RPM).
"Over the past 3 years, SAS has
established itself as the preferred interface for
HDDs in servers and
enterprise storage systems, representing more than 50% of all HDDs
shipped for enterprise applications in 2010," said John Rydning, research
director, hard disk drives at IDC.
Editor's comments:-
11 years ago WD
announced its exit from the enterprise hard drive market. It re-entered the
enterprise HD market in
February 2003
with its SATA compatible Raptor.
Hard drives haven't got any faster
in random IOPS
in the intervening period. What's happened instead is that consumer HDDs have
got more reliable -
and the differences between a consumer and enterprise HDD are much easier to
manage as an incremental value engineering process in the design. If you want
to know where the performance is in SAS drives? It's in
SAS SSDs.
Idealstor launches USB3 SMB disk backup
Editor:-
November 8, 2010 - Idealstor
announced today the release of a
new rugged
USB 3
removable HDD based
backup product called the Bantam.
At time of launch capacity options are 320GB ($199), 500GB, 750GB and 1TB.
Bantam cartridges are made from a rugged aluminum design and come with shock
proofing which the company says will survive more than a 3 foot drop to a
tile over concrete floor. They ship with with Idealstor's Windows compatible
iBac Lite software - which
includes dedupe
options.
"For years we've offered businesses an enterprise class
removable disk backup
solution designed to completely replace tape based backup," said Nandan
Arora, CTO for Idealstor. "As much as our solutions were an affordable
alternative to tape, there
was a large segment of the market that needed a solution like ours but didn't
have the amount of data or the budget to afford even our entry level products.
We finally have a solution designed specifically for the SMB with the Bantam."
Editor's comments:- I asked marketing manager Ben Ginster
about performance - and where the name of the product came from.
Re
performance:- he said - "Speed depends on lots of factors and anyone
that gives you a "real world" speed is blowing smoke. I've seen speeds
up to 2.5GB/minute on some backups and less than 1GB on others. When we
originally were testing the unit we were planning on having eSATA and USB3 on
this drive but we found that USB3 speeds were faster than eSATA so we
decided to just go with USB3. We have controllers for (customers with) systems
that don't have USB3."
Re the Bantam (which for me having kept chickens - I had latched
onto as a opportunity to add yet another inmate to my
storage animal
metaphors zoo / article) - I was wrong. Ben Ginster told me " We came
up with name after the
Bantam
Weight in boxing/wrestling. Small but
powerful. If you pull up Wikipedia the Bantam weight in boxing was named after
a small chicken called the
Bantam so I guess
you could say we're named after an animal – indirectly of course."
Lortu simplifies disk backup for SMBs
Editor:-
October 19, 2010 - Lortu
Software today
announced
a new family of disk backup
appliances for SMBs that provides
deduplication and
remote replication capabilities.
Models range from 30TB to 600TB
capacity and Lortu also offers a remote backup service, which enables
customers to have a complete backup solution without requiring them to purchase
another appliance for remote
backups or to have their own remote facilities. Lortu says a 5Mbps
internet connection supports replication of about 4TB / day of deduped data.
Lortu's D2d
systems run an internal procedure which prevents the system from running out of
space. They can delete the oldest files in accordance with retention policies
defined by the user, so it's always possible to store new data.
SEPATON article on tape dinosaurs
Editor:- August
30, 2010 - Jon Mills, Director of European operations at SEPATON recently
published an article -
Tape
- the T Rex of backup? - which provides anthropological comparisons between
tape libraries and these
popular creatures.
I guess it takes one soon-to-be-extinct dinosoar to
recognize another. My own view is that
hard disk based backup will
eventually be replaced by solid
state backup. So enjoy chewing the spinning magnetic leaves while they
last. | |
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