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	C2C Systems was established in 1992 to develop enterprise messaging solutions to enhance management of email, reduce risk associated with email and improve use of system resources. Today, C2C offers automated data archiving and management for email, files and SharePoint content. Delivering solutions for capacity, e-policy enforcement, compliance and e-discovery, C2C optimizes performance, reduces storage management costs and minimizes risks associated with content. C2C’s software utilities are implemented world-wide and their customers include Fortune 1000 companies across every industry.
	With CommVault's Simpana® software, backup is just the beginning. Simpana software’s single code base and common platform delivers the industry's only true holistic data management solutions. This revolutionary architecture enables companies to immediately reclaim space on primary storage, reduce offsite storage by up to 90 percent, and eliminate up to half their tape drives (not to mention deduplicate data across all tiers as well as archive, preserve, and search information for eDiscovery). The result? Data management cost savings of up to 40 percent, in under one year.
	Traditional storage vendors promise to reduce the amount of time and money spent on storage, but instead deliver a patchwork of complicated and inefficient point products that are difficult to learn, integrate and manage. By starting from scratch, without the burden of software legacy code and the limitations of a proprietary hardware platform, Compellent’s Storage Center was developed into an enterprise-class Storage Area Network (SAN) designed to lower costs, reduce administration, provide high availability and enable virtualization. Compellent's solutions uniquely manage data at the block-level, maximize utilization, automate tiered storage, simplify replication and speed data recovery.
	Data Domain, an EMC company, provides deduplication storage systems that dramatically reduce the amount of disk storage needed to retain and protect enterprise data. By identifying redundant files and data as they are being stored, Data Domain systems provide a storage footprint that is 10x-30x smaller, on average, than the original data set. Backup data can then be efficiently replicated and retrieved over existing networks for streamlined disaster recovery and consolidated tape operations.
	Dell’s EqualLogic storage solutions deliver the benefits of consolidated networked storage in a self-managing, iSCSI storage area network that is affordable and easy to use, regardless of scale. By eliminating complex tasks and enabling fast and flexible storage provisioning, these solutions dramatically reduce the costs of storage acquisition and ongoing operations. With its unique peer storage architecture, the PS Series delivers high performance and availability in a flexible environment with low cost of ownership.
	ExaGrid Systems, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, with satellite offices throughout the world. The ExaGrid system is a cost effective and scalable disk backup solution that works with your existing backup application. It meets the needs of IT organizations who seek to bring the benefits of an online disk-based data protection system to their current environment while retaining, supplementing or replacing their current offsite tape strategy.
	Since 1994, IceWEB has been highly successful in the federal computing space working with unstructured geospatial data, as well as managing and storing block data as an ASP in the enterprise and federal space. The IceWEB Storage System is a high-performance unified storage platform for file and block data of all kinds that’s easy to install, and provides built-in, all-inclusive storage management features including de-duplication; unlimited snapshots; thin provisioning; local or remote, real-time or scheduled replication; capacity and utilization reporting, and VMware integration.
	If you are looking for a partner who will be an extension of your in house team, then check out Indmax. They succeed at their goal of becoming part of your in-house team to increase productivity. That’s exactly what you need in Managed Services Outsourcing framework to manage mission critical infrastructure 7x24. Indmax was started by "techies" whose experience with enterprise IT projects spans 10 countries over the last 12 years. They bring best practices driven technology and services to the table and manage mission critical (7x24) infrastructures with qualified and certified engineers. They can be your frontline soldiers with consistent 100% uptime metrics.
	Infortrend is a leading provider of cost-effective, high performance Networked Storage Solutions. Infortrend's ESVA (Enterprise Scale-out Virtualized Architecture) and EonStor RAID subsystems support all storage interfaces including Fibre, iSCSI, SAS, SATA and SCSI. Founded in 1993, Infortrend manufactures and markets feature-rich products through a worldwide network of key value added resellers that are strategically placed throughout the world. With leading engineering capabilities and years of experiences, Infortrend can provide highly-adaptive solutions which suit various needs and bring satisfying values to customers.
	Mimosa Systems, part of Iron Mountain Digital, enables enterprises to harness the value of their unstructured and semi-structured information, and improves business process performance and productivity. As the recognized visionary in enterprise content archiving, Mimosa is driving innovation in the industry and is continually delivering cutting-edge solutions to address the evolving needs of customers around collaboration, communication, productivity and social media.
	In business more than 25 years, Overland Storage delivers robust data backup solutions that are affordable, flexible, and easily integrated into existing network attached storage infrastructures. They offer a broad portfolio of tape libraries and autoloaders, virtual tape libraries, and disk-based backup systems. Overland's fast, reliable disk storage solutions include integrated data protection software, offering users the ultimate in data protection and availability, while remaining cost-conscious for today's economic environment.
	Promise Technology is recognized as a global leader in the storage industry and as an innovator in RAID technology. Everyday enterprise class data centers around the world choose Promise RAID solutions as the technology of choice to protect their critical information and to ensure continuous data availability. Their confidence in these RAID solutions is a reflection of Promise's commitment to providing the quality, reliability and support that these data centers demand. This commitment to quality is why enterprise class performance and reliability can be found in every Promise product.
	QuorumLabs' innovative solutions make it affordable and easy for any company to keep their critical business systems available. Unlike traditional backup or off-site "cloud storage," they provide an end-to-end solution that integrates everything needed to get systems running again within minutes of any storage, hardware or even a complete site failure. QuorumLabs has brought together all the elements required to bring enterprise-class business continuity to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)—in a turnkey package that is both affordable and easy to use.
	Scale Computing's architecture is robust, redundant, versatile, and scalable. From the simplest setup to one that employs thousands of bricks, a Scale storage cluster grows seamlessly, and easily managed. It’s also a self-healing storage pool, so even if you were to lose an entire brick due to hardware failure, reckless interns, or marauding ninjas, your entire data store remains fully accessible with no interruption in service. Redundant, scalable, versatile storage – at an affordable price.
	The SEPATON® ContentAware™ approach starts with an architecture that enables them to solve your business problems, from backup performance to energy consumption concerns. In addition to their unique technology, SEPATON provides deep technical and applications expertise and a focused commitment to introducing data protection solutions that enhance existing business and technology operations. SEPATON doesn't just sell boxes; they collaborate with our customers to integrate new and existing technologies to resolve business challenges.
	Spectra Logic provides automated tape backup solutions, disk and deduplication backup solutions, and general data backup solutions that will protect your data efficiently and securely. Their products include innovative features that save you time and money — such as their tape libraries with integrated data encryption, media health monitoring, low power consumption, and easy upgradability and maintenance. Spectra Logic's data protection and archive solutions are changing the world of storage.
	Billions of transactions, millions of emails, thousands of online documents: information is at the heart of a business, and growing like never before. Everything is generating data – from cell phones to PDAs and even cars. As you read this sentence, the flow of data is continuing to expand by billions of bits and bytes. Imagine a world where (1) you can share this information anytime you want, (2) information is at your fingertips, available any time you need, (3) you can save a customer’s documents, a patient’s records, and a satellite’s images – FOREVER, and (4) you can search the archives anytime you want. GridBank™ Technology allows the information and network to be used for what it’s intended – connecting people and information.
	TERiX is the leading independent provider of flexible and innovative hardware and software maintenance service offerings to more than 1,000 customers worldwide, including many of the Fortune 500. TERiXSTORAGE incorporates the same support disciplines that have created clear market differentiation for TERiX server support solutions delivered to thousands of customers since 1997. The difference is that with TERiXSTORAGE offering, there are Proactive Service options (TERiX ProServe) that can add monitoring, heartbeat, analysis and call-home capabilities to standard service level agreement (SLA) metrics.

]]> Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:01:04 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/nodisplay.php?itemid=49
C2C Systems was established in 1992 to develop enterprise messaging solutions to enhance management of email, reduce risk associated with email and improve use of system resources. Today, C2C offers automated data archiving and management for email, files and SharePoint content. Delivering solutions for capacity, e-policy enforcement, compliance and e-discovery, C2C optimizes performance, reduces storage management costs and minimizes risks associated with content. C2C’s software utilities are implemented world-wide and their customers include Fortune 1000 companies across every industry.
With CommVault's Simpana® software, backup is just the beginning. Simpana software’s single code base and common platform delivers the industry's only true holistic data management solutions. This revolutionary architecture enables companies to immediately reclaim space on primary storage, reduce offsite storage by up to 90 percent, and eliminate up to half their tape drives (not to mention deduplicate data across all tiers as well as archive, preserve, and search information for eDiscovery). The result? Data management cost savings of up to 40 percent, in under one year.
Traditional storage vendors promise to reduce the amount of time and money spent on storage, but instead deliver a patchwork of complicated and inefficient point products that are difficult to learn, integrate and manage. By starting from scratch, without the burden of software legacy code and the limitations of a proprietary hardware platform, Compellent’s Storage Center was developed into an enterprise-class Storage Area Network (SAN) designed to lower costs, reduce administration, provide high availability and enable virtualization. Compellent's solutions uniquely manage data at the block-level, maximize utilization, automate tiered storage, simplify replication and speed data recovery.
Data Domain, an EMC company, provides deduplication storage systems that dramatically reduce the amount of disk storage needed to retain and protect enterprise data. By identifying redundant files and data as they are being stored, Data Domain systems provide a storage footprint that is 10x-30x smaller, on average, than the original data set. Backup data can then be efficiently replicated and retrieved over existing networks for streamlined disaster recovery and consolidated tape operations.
Dell’s EqualLogic storage solutions deliver the benefits of consolidated networked storage in a self-managing, iSCSI storage area network that is affordable and easy to use, regardless of scale. By eliminating complex tasks and enabling fast and flexible storage provisioning, these solutions dramatically reduce the costs of storage acquisition and ongoing operations. With its unique peer storage architecture, the PS Series delivers high performance and availability in a flexible environment with low cost of ownership.
ExaGrid Systems, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, with satellite offices throughout the world. The ExaGrid system is a cost effective and scalable disk backup solution that works with your existing backup application. It meets the needs of IT organizations who seek to bring the benefits of an online disk-based data protection system to their current environment while retaining, supplementing or replacing their current offsite tape strategy.


Infortrend is a leading provider of cost-effective, high performance Networked Storage Solutions. Infortrend's EonStor RAID subsystems support all storage interfaces including Fibre, iSCSI, SAS, SATA and SCSI. Founded in 1993, Infortrend manufactures and markets feature-rich products through a worldwide network of key value added resellers that are strategically placed throughout the world. With leading engineering capabilities and years of experiences, Infortrend can provide highly-adaptive solutions which suit various needs and bring satisfying values to customers.



Mimosa Systems, part of Iron Mountain Digital, enables enterprises to harness the value of their unstructured and semi-structured information, and improves business process performance and productivity. As the recognized visionary in enterprise content archiving, Mimosa is driving innovation in the industry and is continually delivering cutting-edge solutions to address the evolving needs of customers around collaboration, communication, productivity and social media.
In business more than 25 years, Overland Storage delivers robust data backup solutions that are affordable, flexible, and easily integrated into existing network attached storage infrastructures. They offer a broad portfolio of tape libraries and autoloaders, virtual tape libraries, and disk-based backup systems. Overland's fast, reliable disk storage solutions include integrated data protection software, offering users the ultimate in data protection and availability, while remaining cost-conscious for today's economic environment.
Promise Technology is recognized as a global leader in the storage industry and as an innovator in RAID technology. Everyday enterprise class data centers around the world choose Promise RAID solutions as the technology of choice to protect their critical information and to ensure continuous data availability. Their confidence in these RAID solutions is a reflection of Promise's commitment to providing the quality, reliability and support that these data centers demand. This commitment to quality is why enterprise class performance and reliability can be found in every Promise product.
Protocol Networks provides professional and managed services to help customers Create, Connect & Evolve their communications across their business to improve their processes and profitability. They focus, not only on getting the right resources to a problem, but also on serving you with “Old Fashioned" customer service, one of their key tenets. We are confident that once you experience their professional customer service, you will understand why we at TriAxis chose them as an extension of our own storage service offerings.
Scale Computing's architecture is robust, redundant, versatile, and scalable. From the simplest setup to one that employs thousands of bricks, a Scale storage cluster grows seamlessly, and easily managed. It’s also a self-healing storage pool, so even if you were to lose an entire brick due to hardware failure, reckless interns, or marauding ninjas, your entire data store remains fully accessible with no interruption in service. Redundant, scalable, versatile storage – at an affordable price.
The SEPATON® ContentAware™ approach starts with an architecture that enables them to solve your business problems, from backup performance to energy consumption concerns. In addition to their unique technology, SEPATON provides deep technical and applications expertise and a focused commitment to introducing data protection solutions that enhance existing business and technology operations. SEPATON doesn't just sell boxes; they collaborate with our customers to integrate new and existing technologies to resolve business challenges.
Spectra Logic provides automated tape backup solutions, disk and deduplication backup solutions, and general data backup solutions that will protect your data efficiently and securely. Their products include innovative features that save you time and money — such as their tape libraries with integrated data encryption, media health monitoring, low power consumption, and easy upgradability and maintenance. Spectra Logic's data protection and archive solutions are changing the world of storage.
Storage at enterprise data centers continues to grow. But every new technology, strategy, or process raises storage complexity, and the existing multi-vendor storage infrastructures found in most data centers compromise end-to-end visibility and control. Veritas storage software solutions from Symantec are the industry leading heterogeneous solutions to ensure data in the enterprise is protected by leveraging backup and recovery, storage management and archiving technologies.
With over 12,000 deployments worldwide, Syncsort customers include 96 of the Fortune 100 companies. Syncsort’s Backup Express (BEX) exploits unparalleled technologies to deliver the full suite of data protection capabilities needed to carry your organization well into the future, while providing numerous ways to reap returns. BEX is the only data protection solution to facilitate, in a single product, high-speed backups and recoveries with high success rates, significant data reduction, and zero-impact virtual machine protection – with no side effects and without requiring substantial hardware investments.
Billions of transactions, millions of emails, thousands of online documents: information is at the heart of a business, and growing like never before. Everything is generating data – from cell phones to PDAs and even cars. As you read this sentence, the flow of data is continuing to expand by billions of bits and bytes. Imagine a world where (1) you can share this information anytime you want, (2) information is at your fingertips, available any time you need, (3) you can save a customer’s documents, a patient’s records, and a satellite’s images – FOREVER, and (4) you can search the archives anytime you want. GridBank™ Technology allows the information and network to be used for what it’s intended – connecting people and information.
TERiX is the leading independent provider of flexible and innovative hardware and software maintenance service offerings to more than 1,000 customers worldwide, including many of the Fortune 500. TERiXSTORAGE incorporates the same support disciplines that have created clear market differentiation for TERiX server support solutions delivered to thousands of customers since 1997. The difference is that with TERiXSTORAGE offering, there are Proactive Service options (TERiX ProServe) that can add monitoring, heartbeat, analysis and call-home capabilities to standard service level agreement (SLA) metrics.
Waterford Technologies is the only company that offers Email and File Archiving and Management solutions that are truly easy to install, deploy and use. Since 2001, they have brought to market MailMeter Insight, MailMeter Archive, MailMeter ISR, MailMeter Investigate, MailMeter Storage Manager, MailMeter Compliance Review and, in 2008, MailMeter File Archiver. This expanded the storage savings and management to network file servers. IT departments can automatically monitor and manage the huge amount of individual files across all file servers. It is available for Exchange and Notes environments.]]> Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:00:00 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/news.php?itemid=124
Sepaton is positioning Secure Erasure – an optional software feature priced at $5,000 per node – as a cost-effective way to comply with data destruction policies.Shredding a physical tape cartridge or zapping it with a magnetic field are sure-fire ways to erase data in compliance with organizational policies or federal regulations but, in the world of disk-based backup, a different set of rules apply. To that end, virtual tape library (VTL) vendor Sepaton is now offering Secure Erasure, a licensed option for its S2100-ES2 data protection appliances that guarantees the erasure of information on virtual tape cartridges.

Sepaton is positioning Secure Erasure – an optional software feature priced at $5,000 per node – as a cost-effective way to comply with data destruction policies.

"A lot of people want to keep [all their data] forever now that 2TB disk drives cost a little more than $100," says Jay Kramer, Sepaton's vice president of worldwide marketing, "but having deletion policies in place is bubbling up as a significant part of an overall information asset management and data protection strategy."

The Secure Erasure option handles the grunt work. The software manages tape selection, scheduling and reporting via the GUI and eliminates the manual steps required to remove, reinsert, or transfer media. Secure Erasure then generates audit reports for each erased cartridge and e-mails them to an organization's compliance officer.

"There is no way that anyone applying forensic procedures to a virtual tape [that has been erased using Secure Erasure] could recover the data," says Peter Quirk, Sepaton's director of product management.

Quirk says Secure Erasure also helps stem the tide of eco-waste created by the destruction of physical media because, unlike physical tape, virtual tape cartridges are useable after the data is overwritten.

Each node of a Sepaton S2100-ES2 disk-based backup appliance can be configured with up to 96 virtual devices as either a virtual tape library or a virtual tape drive (up to 768 per system) for a maximum of 5.3 million virtual tape cartridges and 1.6PB of data per appliance.

by Kevin Komiega

Note: to see this article in its original state, click here.]]> Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:35:18 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/news.php?itemid=123
At EMCWorld, the company announced VPLEX.VPLEX, a set of external, special-purpose hardware appliances that create a heterogeneous storage pool to enable shared access to local and remote SANs and non-disruptive volume migration between them. On his blog, storage analyst Greg Schulz (Twitter @StorageIO) offers a really detailed explanation of VPLEX. Bas Raayman (@BasRaayman) provides some good links for additional reading over on his blog.

A quick glance at available specs tells me it’s not for small or most mid-sized enterprises. VPLEX uses a half or full rack of multi-CPU servers which are inserted between all SANs and servers. An entry level high availability VPLEX system includes total of eight quad-core XEON CPUs, 128GB of cache and 128 8Gb FC ports to connect all front end servers and back end SANs.

The VPLEX software interface comes from EMC’s YottaYotta acquisition and includes a mix of command-line, GUI and custom application tools. You could say there’s a lotta bang for a lotta bucks. This is great news for customers with EMC Symmetrix-sized budgets. However, enterprises facing flat or declining budgets may want to understand the real costs and consider alternatives that are more cost-effective with features and functions that customers will use without adding significant footprint to their data center.

Several folks have pointed out the similarities between VPLEX and Compellent’s Live Volume technology. Both solutions tackle the problem of non-disruptive volume migration, which is very useful in disaster avoidance, load balancing or maintenance situations. The end-user’s storage stays online and the IT department has a lot more flexibility. However the similarities end there as EMC’s VPLEX and Compellent’s Live Volume approach volume migration in entirely different ways.

I sat down with Bob Fine, director of product marketing, to analyze the VPLEX announcement and clarify how it differs from Live Volume. Bob also recaps the difference between Live Volume and VPLEX in a short video clip, below.

LN: What is the VPLEX Hardware?

BF: VPLEX is a rack mounted hardware system that sits in‑band between heterogeneous storage arrays and servers. A VPLEX system can support one, two or four VPLEX engines. Two VPLEX engines are required for each SAN for high availability. Each VPLEX engine has:

<> Two quad-core XEON processors
<> 32GB of cache
<> 32 x 8Gb FC ports

LN: What about cost?

BF: Based on our research, VPLEX starts at about $77,000 for a local-only interconnect system. A high end VPLEX system can scale to over $500,000. These prices do not include the SANs themselves, professional services, the expense of rewiring the data center or the cost of the additional switch ports required for the new high port count devices.

I also wonder about the potential hidden costs because not much is known yet whether VPLEX supports true thin provisioning, RAID6, SSDs, FAST, or other complementary next-generation storage virtualization features.

LN: What are the use cases for VPLEX?

BF: EMC is advocating a high level, “data everywhere and anywhere” storage federation message but the products planned for this year are limited to data center or metro distances. The EMC solution requires multiple high end VPLEX hardware engines and many high bandwidth, low latency network connections. That’s the biggest difference between Compellent and EMC VPLEX. Compellent’s focus is on integrating a software solution that scales. EMC has a significant focus on high-end bandwidth, and all that comes with a hefty price tag. VPLEX uses a great deal of high end hardware to bring several of the Live Volume features to the EMC platform.

LN: Zero downtime maintenance and non-disruptive change management are solid benefits provided by VPLEX. What are the limitations?

BF: VPLEX is not part of the EMC SAN products themselves, but instead is designed as an add-on set of rack mounted servers. VPLEX requires the overhaul of the data center topology and the creation of a new in-between configuration. EMC’s hardware-heavy response is in stark contrast to the Compellent Fluid Data architecture, which enables to non-disruptive data migration to be delivered relatively inexpensively in a software-only configuration. EMC’s technology requires a large complement of dedicated, single-purpose special hardware to deliver the same kind of distributed storage capabilities. Other considerations:

<> Requires major hardware investment at each site with one or more high end VPLEX servers for each site plus additional local and remote switch ports
<> Major changes to system topology with all SAN and server connections routed through VPLEX
<> Write performance decreases with distance and latency
<> Conversion of Virtual Machines to VPLEX is not automatic, and requires either additional storage or for the applications to be shut down to complete the process
<> Software interface is not integrated with the Clariion software, many features require a command line, others use “AccessAnywhere” or GUI

LN: So what is Compellent Live Volume?

BF: A software feature in the Compellent Storage Center SAN, Live Volume is a virtualized storage application that provides non-disruptive storage migration between SANs in an integrated environment. Live Volume enables on‑demand volume migration, zero downtime maintenance and disaster avoidance capabilities at a fraction of the price of EMC’s VPLEX and requires no hardware, no outages and no system reconfigurations. The Live Volume solution supports any Storage Center configuration or network connections, including iSCSI and Fibre Channel. Live Volume can leverage existing network connections without impact on write performance.

Compellent has made Live Volume to select customers since Q1 of 2010, available with Storage Center 5.1 or later.

Additional features:

<> Live Volume is a software-only upgrade and supports all Storage Center models and configurations
<> Software is tightly integrated in both Enterprise Manager and the Storage Center GUI
<> Asynchronous interconnect is less expensive and enables full performance data writes -- write performance is not dependent on network latency or distance
<> Flexible configuration enables unlimited number of Live Volumes between systems, and point-to-point volume migration between more than two data centers
<> On-the-fly conversion enables non-disruptive conversion of any volume to a Live Volume—any Compellent system can add Live Volume functionality at any time

Compellent Live Volume

LN: So what’s the starting price for Live Volume?

BF: Live Volume licenses start at under $5,000. As you know, pricing is available from our channel partners and can depend on maintenance and software support options.

LN: Can you summarize Compellent’s point of view on data migration?

BF: From our perspective, data migration capabilities should be built into the architecture itself to reduce complexity, overhead and cost. EMC’s response to Live Volume non-disruptive data migration capabilities further validates Compellent’s vision for a global, shared storage network. The difference is in the implementation. The EMC approach is an external add-on model and is very expensive. The Compellent approach is dramatically more efficient as the core engine is built into the Fluid Data architecture itself.

Comparing CML Live Volume and EMC VPLEX

Additional links:

<> Greg Schulz blog
<> Bas Raayman blog
<> YouTube clip of Compellent VP of Technology and Services Marty Sanders describing Live Volume at C-Drive 2010 can be found here.
<> Bob recaps the difference between Live Volume and VPLEX:

by Liem Nguyen, Director of Corporate Communications — May 12, 2010

Note: this article can be found in its original location here]]> Fri, 21 May 2010 15:51:47 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/library.php?itemid=122
Talk about fighting a tough battle. As data center managers continue to seek ways to work within increasingly shrinking budgets... ...the data entering their environments continues to expand. Short of closing up shop altogether, there’s no way to stop that data from pouring into the data center, regardless of the storage budget’s size.

“Most data center managers consider storage to be their most critical asset,” says Mike Smith, vice president of product marketing at Solarflare Communications (www.solarflare.com). “In many cases, the business runs on data, so protecting it and making sure users have access to it is almost always a top priority. As a result, data center managers are very conservative with storage relative to other areas of the data center. At the same time, performance and cost effectiveness can provide competitive advantages, so these can’t be ignored.”

Making the most of your storage budget doesn’t necessarily require fancy tricks or creative manipulations of investments or hardware. Instead, experts advise to step back and look at the bigger picture before plowing forward with changes.

Inside Knowledge
The first step to optimizing your storage budget and making smart investments is gathering a better understanding of your specific storage pain points, explains Bradley Brodkin, president of HighVail Systems (www.highvail.com). If you’re looking to buy new equipment, you should have a good idea of what you already have, how new systems compare to your existing equipment, and what might be missing in your current environment. This approach can help you improve your storage efficiency without burdening your budget with unnecessary costs.

“While storage demands are increasing, data center and IT managers shouldn’t just buy new equipment,” Brodkin says. “They must also look outside of the box and consider new and alternative technologies like virtualization, deduplication, and thin provisioning and how they can help them do more with less. Also, by understanding their total cost of ownership—and not simply the [dollars per terabyte]—for storage tiers and analyzing work patterns, they can focus their storage dollars where they make the most sense for the business.”

However, managers should still be cautious when considering the move to a new technology. Kelly Lipp, CTO of STORServer (www.storserver.com), recommends determining your business requirements before looking at any storage technology because it’s easy to become enamored with something new and forget that you’re trying to solve a business problem. Although technology companies introduce new products and change existing products often (and for good reason), it’s not in a data center manager’s best interest to simply follow every trend. Instead, be wary, Lipp says.

Smart Scaling
When existing equipment (or changes to that equipment) won’t suffice for increasing storage demands, managers must determine how best to add to their storage architectures. Scalability remains a big part of storage budgeting, and Brace Rennels, project manager at Double-Take Software (www.doubletake.com), notes that disk space is cheap and that you should forecast your storage requirements for the next two to three years. A successful forecast depends on your ability to accurately gauge the scalability of your current hardware.

“You must also consider if another disk array can be added to the existing one, if the size of the drives can be updated to a larger capacity, and if there is enough power and/or Ethernet or SCSI connectors available in the rack to expand,” Rennels says. “Part of the capacity planning should include future storage requirements and also determining if the required infrastructure is in place to accommodate that future expansion.”

Extend Your Storage Strategy
Getting a better handle on your storage budget shouldn’t be a one-shot deal, but instead an evolution that rolls with the changes of your storage architecture. Because your storage needs can change throughout the year, it’s wise to track those changes to ensure you are making the right investments that can accommodate increased storage needs when necessary without overshooting your budget. One way to track your storage is through auditing, which can identify opportunities for improvements where needed.

“Data center and IT managers should have data classification initiatives to audit their systems and allow the right placement of data,” says Dr. Mickey S. Zandi, managing principal, consulting services, SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com). “Organizations need to ‘right-size’ their storage environment. Data can be moved to less-expensive SATA or tape storage. . . . Improvements can often be made by knowing what has to be backed up to the most expensive disk files and removing or cleaning up what is currently considered lower-tiered data.”

Finally, don’t disregard perhaps the ultimate budget-saver when it comes to storage: the DELETE key. “The cheapest storage is that which we don’t actually consume,” Lipp says. “If [data] has no value to the organization, get rid of it. Storage bloat is probably the No. 1 problem in data centers today. In many cases, we capitulate to the notion that it is just too expensive to find and remove data that we don’t require. This may be true for those with unlimited budgets, but for the rest of us, it probably isn’t.”

by Christian Perry

Note: to view this article in its original state, go to http://tinyurl.com/29rjgxv]]> Fri, 21 May 2010 15:27:53 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/events.php?itemid=101
Check back for updated calendar
of technical events!We are working closely with both our customers and our vendors to put together a series of timely educational events that will be worthwhile. Your host for these events will again be Tom Mumford, as he brings his decades of experience into the mix, ensuring that the information is relevant. This schedule should be finalized soon -- stay tuned.]]> Thu, 20 May 2010 08:20:00 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/news.php?itemid=121
Next-generation file storage offers fluid integration between SAN and NAS to consolidate data management.Compellent expands its unified storage offerings with the Compellent(R) zNAS(TM) (network-attached storage) solution, which consolidates file- and block-level storage on a single, intelligent platform based on the ZFS file system. With its Fluid Data(TM) architecture, Compellent zNAS can actively manage and move data in a virtual pool of storage, regardless of the size and type of block, file or drive. As a result, enterprises can simplify management, improve performance for critical applications and reduce complexity and costs.

According to the "Unstructured Data in 2010: Trends to Watch" report issued by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), the rise in unstructured data, such as office documents, digital images and video, will account for the bulk of growth within the data center, driving IT to consider unified platforms to alleviate the strain. Compellent customers can now benefit from consolidating multiple file servers along with block data onto a single Compellent zNAS system, reducing hardware, administrative overhead and associated IT staff costs in the process.

Fluid Data Architecture Enables Superior Utilisation and Efficiency

-- Compellent unified storage with zNAS offers a single interface to streamline management of heterogeneous Unix, Linux and Windows file and block data.

-- Fluid Data architecture increases storage efficiency and utilisation by automatically tiering file storage at the block-level, intelligently thin provisioning storage for unstructured data and delivering rapid data recovery and thin replication.]]> Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:17:35 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/news.php?itemid=120
Paula Long, the driving force of EqualLogic engineering, has left Dell. The engineering team, which will be growing by 50%, is going to be lead by Brian Nadeau, one of EqualLogic's first ten employeers.Dell EqualLogic engineering boss leaves

She was VP of Storage for the Product Group focused on EqualLogic, and came to Dell with the EqualLogic acquisition. Its development centre stayed at Nashua, New England, separated from Dell HQ in Round Rock, Austin, Texas. Her LinkedIn entry reads: "After 2 years at Dell as a VP focused on EqualLogic, and almost 7 years at EqualLogic as EVP of Products and Strategy, and Founder I am taking a break." She left Dell in February.

Steve Duplessis, founder and senior analyst at ESG, said: "Paula was a huge part of Equallogic - she built the stuff. One of the very, very rare companies that I've dealt with who laid out an outrageously aggressive development plan, and always hit it. I give her a ton of credit for that."

One source close to the situation said: "Paula was always the most important person there. [She] had incredible loyalty in engineering and elsewhere."

After the Dell acquisition: "EqualLogic engineering maintained its excellent track record by releasing its high density 6500 SATA product, its 10GB Ethernet products and their SSD products ... The lack of new major software functionality since the acquisition does make me wonder how things are going. Dell doesn't seem to understand software development all that well."

In general: "Dell had a hard time embracing EqualLogic at first, mostly due to their familiarity and reliance on Clariion for storage revenues. I think Dell missed an opportunity to promote iSCSI because they didn't want to detract from their plans for FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) on Clariion."

How well did EquaLogic's team fit in at Dell? Dell was "about as welcoming as a large remote corporation could be, which was not all that welcoming, but Paula had a strategy to run the EqualLogic engineering group like it was a wholly-owned subsidiary, in other words at arms length from Dell. Minimising distractions from Dell probably helped the EqualLogic team stay on track for their deliverables."

With Paula gone, "there is little chance that Dell will be able to retain the engineering group and innovate. It means the technology will be mostly frozen from that point. ... It will be interesting to see what happens."

His is a picture in which Paula Long fought the EqualLogic fight inside Dell against the pro-EMC forces and lost. So, frustrated, she left.

He said: "Working with Dell has proven to be more frustrating than anyone imagined. Dell storage people liked EMC and didn't embrace EqualLogic. Dell finance guys liked EqualLogic but Dell storage guys never really believed in it. There's only so much a person can take. I think that paints a realistic picture."

Duplessis had a different take: "EqualLogic has received tons of love and support from Dell. The stakes (read $$) were high and Dell didn't cut any corners ... Dell was smart, they basically left the team alone in New Hampshire (NH) - allowing them to take their time and do things right instead of creating a shotgun integration and moving things to Austin. It's now been years, and Dell NH is fully integrated. It's a Dell operation now."

He thinks the reason she left was that the Dell integration job was complete, and there was no mischief involved: "I think she had a 'run for the ages' and saw it from inception all the way to a successful hand off to a very, very big brother. She made a ton of money, kept all her people employed, and personally saw through the transition. My guess is that it was just time to go. I'm not sure if she has another one in mind, or if she's going to enjoy her success to fullest, but I think she just felt that her run was over and there wasn't anything else for her to do there.

"I think she's off to whatever life holds for her next. I'm sure she will be missed, those kinds of people are rare - but the Dell Machine is big and strong and they will be fine."

Our second source sees things differently: "When you've been the technology driver of your own company, I don't think its that much fun being a part of a larger corporation ... Her departure will probably have an adverse impact on software schedules simply because hardware companies, like Dell, typically can't manage software development effectively.

"It wouldn't surprise me if there is a brain drain from that team in the months to come, but if the team is given sufficient motivation it can probably hold together."

Dell effectively declined to comment by being unable to confirm Paula Long's status for some days after being asked.

(Note: to see this article in its entirety on the web, click here.)

Dell growing EqualLogic engineering team by 50 per cent

The Dell EqualLogic engineering team is going to be lead by Brian Nadeau, one of EqualLogic's first ten employeers.

Like the founders Nadeau worked at Digital Equipment Corporation, now absorbed into HP courtesy of its Compaq acquisition. He was involved in SCSI things inside Ultrix, DEC's Unix-alike offering. After leaving DEC he worked in the storage area with a couple of start-ups before joining a third startup; EqualLogic. Paula Long, the inspirational and now departed engineering leader at Dell/EqualLogic nominated Nadeau as her preferred successor.

When Dell acquired EqualLogic around 95 percent of the then 130-strong engineering team stayed on. That team is now around 200 strong and is set to grow to 300 or so next year, and remain in New Hampshire. It's expected that there will be some involvement with the scale-out NAS engineering team at the Dell-acquired Exanet operation in Israel.

This suggests that unified file and block storage has a role to play in EqualLogic's future, and/or that scale-out clustering is going to feature too.

EqualLogic marketing lead Travis Vigil commented that solid state drives (SSD) were interesting and that customers would appreciate anything that could be done to make the movement of data from hard disk drives to SSDs and back again easier.

The net of this is that EqualLogic engineering is in a good state, is going to grow substantially, and has interesting things to accomplish.

(Note: to see this article in its entirety on the web, click here.)]]> Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:12:29 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/news.php?itemid=119
To accommodate increased demands for application uptime, customers can effortlessly combine EqualLogic snapshots with application-aware Simpana software agents under a single end-to-end protection policy without requiring time-consuming customization or complex scripting. As a result, companies can improve SLA (service level agreement) delivery, reduce internal IT costs and eliminate production backup windows.

SnapProtect policies help maximize the speed and efficiency of Dell EqualLogic snapshots to reduce the operational impact and meet recovery objectives for mission-critical applications and file systems. One-pass backup with multi-option restore operations and one-click recovery features expedite restores of entire storage volumes, distinct application stores and critical folder/file groups. Simpana software’s offline mining tools also support the ability to select granular messages, documents or Active Directory components from database snapshot copies.

As a core Simpana software feature, CommVault’s SnapProtect enabler for the Dell EqualLogic PS Series can be leveraged by both new and existing customers to elevate protection of Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle and Windows, Linux and Unix file system environments. Automated storage policies drive secondary protection copies to deduplicated disk, tape or cloud storage for longer-term retention, while reducing data lifecycle costs and compliance demands.

While Simpana software enables customers to choose their desired data protection platform, the special automated setup and disk provisioning features on the Dell PowerVault DL2100 appliance reduce administrative burdens and seamlessly connect critical data sets residing in the Dell EqualLogic array.

CommVault has further extended its end-to-end data protection benefits by integrating its recently announced Simpana cloud storage connector directly into the Dell PowerVault DL2100. As a result, CommVault offers Dell PowerVault customers the flexibility to tier infrequently accessed backup and archive data from on-premises disk and tape storage onto low-cost private or public cloud storage platforms.

With automated policies and tight API integration developed jointly by Dell and CommVault, users can select the EqualLogic snapshot option in the drop-down list, which eliminates the traditional complexity of coordinating actions, mapping application structures, creating, validating and aging off expired snapshots. Users also can monitor a consistent set of application and file system protection policies within a centralized management console to minimize operations, alerting and reporting efforts.

End-to-end policies based on storage policy rules simplify the creation and movement of selective copies across secondary tiers of disk, tape and cloud storage to meet organizational needs while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). Users no longer need to track uncoordinated data movement on spreadsheets across legacy backup tools as every data copy is accounted for under Simpana software’s singular approach to data management and embedded reporting capabilities to streamline auditing, costing and charge-back reporting.

The Simpana SnapProtect client ensures application-consistent recovery copies to simplify recoveries from any copy of application data, while eliminating the traditional complexities of recovering applications from snapshots, transaction logs and offline copies. To accelerate recoveries, users simply pick a point in time from the protection client collection to restore the application without the need to rewrite files and data into a usable application instance.

Companies can leverage CommVault’s single platform architecture to help maximize performance while lowering data management costs. Embedded data deduplication, for example, reduces the storage and cost requirements of retaining the collection of SnapProtect secondary copies on disk, tape and cloud storage. In addition, data encryption can secure vaulted copies stored outside of the enterprise to ensure compliance with privacy regulations, while mitigating the risks of unauthorized data exposure.

Available immediately, pricing for the SnapProtect client starts at $4,000 including support for one application.]]> Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:00:00 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/library.php?itemid=118 Tape Without Pain
Tape, far from being dead, is increasingly necessary in data centers and as the emphasis on the green data center continues, tape will become increasingly important. Its future provides additional possibilities not available through the use of other storage methods, including disk.

Introduction
Spectra Logic, with 30 years experience in the fast moving field of high technology, is committed to protecting data—your data. Spectra has extensive expertise with all forms of backup, and therefore understands the continuing and increasingly important role of tape in protecting data. To that end, Spectra Logic has set itself a goal: Tape Without Pain.

Have You Looked at Tape Lately?
Tape has the misfortune of serving as the point revealing backup success, along with failure, which is more acutely remembered. Backup failure and its association with tape has let disk vendors promote disk as a cure all for the backup blues. In fact, disk vendors have successfully promoted disk to the point that it is and has been considered more press worthy than tape for some years. At the same time and without fanfare, tape has continued to evolve into media that, when coupled with the best automation, serves extremely reliably and in ways that disk simply cannot.

In fact, now that users have implemented disk as backup over the last few years, the majority of disk only data centers—68 percent—plan to add tape back into their data protection environment. Although disk is a very valuable asset in protecting data, it is not a utopian solution that solves all data backup woes. Tape’s indispensability is slowly being acknowledged, even by disk aficionados.

Tape is Fast
Tape drives now write data faster than most networks can transfer it. “LTO [generations have] seen a geometric increase in […] performance since their introduction at the turn of this past
century.”1

“With native transfer rates of up to 120MB/s, the LTO 4 tape drives stream up to 864GB of 2:1 compressed data per hour, easily equaling or surpassing the backup speed of the majority of today’s disk drives in data streaming applications.”2 And while disk has incredibly high burst transfer rates, a recently released enterprise class hard drive is advertised as “the first drive to break the 100 MB sustained transfer rate barrier, delivering up to 125 MB/s.” The LTO 43 tape drive’s 240 MB/s compressed is simply faster than disk’s “breakthrough” rate of 125 MB/s. LTO 5 is even faster, with a native transfer rate of 140 MB/s, and 280 MB/s compressed.

Disk is fast, too—but the key question is, fast at what? The answer: disk gets to individual files and restores them very quickly thanks to its random access method of storing and retrieving information. This underlies the proper use of disk in data backup and archival strategies: rapid data retrieval. Tape is also fast, specifically when backing up and restoring large quantities of streaming data. It is illogical to use disk to achieve faster backup or to reduce backup windows when tape is faster than disk at storing large quantities of data. Disk is fast. So is tape. Used properly, each is key to a strong backup and archival process.

Tape is Reliable
A number of myths have grown up around tape reliability. This was spawned in part by some unreliable media technologies—notably DLT. Even so, the vast majority of failures that created this myth are caused by sources other than tape: human, software and system errors.

Technological advances have improved LTO technology reliability by more than 700% over the past decade. “Advances in the coating of tape film, read after write data verification and powerful error correction codes provide confidence in the integrity of data stored on tape. These robust tape cartridges are coupled with drive technology that features simpler tape paths and servo tracking systems to promote error free tape handling.”4

Tape reliability improvements do not stop at just media and drive improvements. Tape library vendors such as Spectra Logic have added intelligence into the library that has greatly increased tape’s reliability through automation features.

Tape is Affordable
Increasing Capacity: Each generation of LTO has roughly doubled in capacity.

Cost per Gigabyte: Compared5 to disk pricing, tape remains unarguably the most affordable media in terms of cost per gigabyte. Experts in the storage industry predict that this will continue as new generations of tape and disk are released. It is worth noting that in assessing cost per gigabyte, the disk and library costs are evaluated in the context of working systems, to take into account otherwise hidden infrastructure costs. Typically, disk vendors include only the cost of a single gigabyte of disk without including the cost of controllers and other components required to actually use of a gigabyte of disk.

Power use: Especially compared to disk, tape is extremely energy efficient. Disk is typically always spinning–using energy—while tape is capable of storing data without requiring any power. A Clipper6 Group analysis compares real world costs of powering similarly configured tape and disk systems. The difference in cost is startling between the site used in the study scenario, with a savings of well over half a million dollars. Savings alone are a compelling incentive to use tape wisely in a data center, rather than moving solely to disk.

What is Tape without Pain?
Spectra is building on tape’s technological advances by continually enhancing libraries with features that:

o Proactively manage the environment to help prevent users from being caught by surprise due to component, media or data integrity issues
o Optimize data protection in the data center through blended tape and disk solutions
o Curb obsolescence with technology that withstands the test of time

These features provide an experience of tape without pain.

Never Caught by Surprise: Proactive Management
Proactively managing tape helps take away the sting of unwelcome surprises. Spectra libraries provide proactive management features, singular in scope and unique in straightforward usefulness that let you prevent unwanted surprises.

o Remove ailing tapes before critical data is stored on them through the use of Media Lifecycle Management (MLM). MLM takes the mystery out of media management by monitoring and identifying faulty media. Retire these tapes before they store critical data.
o Spectra libraries ensure library health through Library Lifecycle Management (LLM). By monitoring and tracking hardware components over their lifetime, administrators can identify components that may be ailing, well before errors occur.
o Identifying and removing problem drives before they affect operations, through Drive Lifecycle Management.
o One last surprise that organizations do not want: ad hoc costs that may result from lost tapes. Spectra Logic can’t make sure that the tapes are where they are supposed to be, but Spectra libraries can, at no charge, encrypt data as it is written to tape, resulting in data security regardless of the tape’s location.

MLM: Checking Tape Health
An InfoStor summary7 of annual readers’ surveys reports that one of the major causes of failed backups is media. Identifying failing tapes early so that administrators can remove them from rotation greatly improves backup reliability. MLM lets administrators do just that, and is included at no extra charge in Spectra T series libraries. Throughout the life of a Spectra Certified LTO cartridge used in Spectra libraries, data about the tape is continuously added to the cartridge memory chip. MLM uses that data to create reports that let administrators track tape health. Any tape that may be at risk is flagged, using an algorithm that takes into account multiple factors about the tape, including number of uses and number of errors over time.

Healthy Tape for Long-term Data Storage
Moving data off site and storing it for a potentially lengthy period are critical for recovering from disaster. Tape is the only technology that is easily moved off site and that has proven long term storage capabilities. With MLM, administrators have an additional layer of protection by having access to more information about the health of their tapes before the tapes are stored for the long term.

DLM: Managing Drive Health
BlueScale Drive Lifecycle Management provides a suite of easy to use tools and reporting so you can track and test drive health. Use DLM to identify drives that may be at risk, so you can act before a drive issue affects backup operations. The easy to use red/yellow/green icons, also used with MLM, make it easy to check drive health at a glance.

LLM: Managing Library Health
BlueScale Library Lifecycle Management (LLM) tracks library health, including component specific thresholds that, when met, automatically alert administrators, so library performance can be optimized.

Encryption: Lost Tapes Don’t Have to Mean Data at Risk
All libraries using LTO 4 and subsequent generation drives can encrypt data. But most of those libraries do not let you decrypt the data without additional, complex, and often costly software, hardware, or both.

Encryption uses keys as the basis for the encryption algorithm. The encryption is permanent unless you have a way to track those keys and use them as necessary to decrypt and restore data. Only Spectra libraries provide key management at no extra charge, integrated with the library’s existing management interface. Finding out that tapes are lost may be a surprise, but at least with Spectra libraries and well thought out backup processes, the surprise is tempered in that the data won’t be at risk for use by unauthorized third parties.

Spectra Blended Storage: Tape and Disk
The backup and archive landscape has changed a great deal over the past decade. New demands, including rapid data retrieval for e discovery and remote data replication, have become the norm in data protection. Tape doesn’t meet these needs, and introduces pain when administrators try to use it for purposes that it was not designed for. That’s where disk comes into play.

Spectra Logic’s nTier disk is designed for backup and archive processes, and to integrate with tape—especially Spectra tape libraries. Spectra’s disk supports rapid file retrieval, and can further supply:

o Disk to Disk to Tape (D2D2T) functionality
o Virtual Tape Library (VTL) technology
o Deduplication and remote replication
o Continuous data protection

Disk is superior at rapid retrieval of individual files. Spectra nTier disk supplies this capability at enhanced speeds and simultaneously provides seamless integration with tape.

Curbing Obsolescence
Spectra Logic builds hardware and software modularly, so technological enhancements can be seamlessly integrated. Spectra Logic technology withstands the test of time.

o Spectra Logic tape libraries provide an economical use of floor space and power that is unparalleled by any competing tape automation technology
o Spectra Logic libraries provide scalability needed to support long term data growth.
o Spectra Logic libraries are easy to manage and built to integrate new technologies as they become available and important to backup.
o Spectra Logic itself has been around for thirty years, so IT administrators can be reassured by Spectra’s stability and longevity.

Investment Protection and Low TCO: Space and Power Conservation
Spectra libraries, including the Spectra T950, provide significant, quantifiable advantages8 in space and power use, when directly comparing a wide range of configurations of libraries from other vendors. One of the charts below shows density advantages when comparing libraries where each is configured to its maximum capacity, which should, in theory, be best case for all.

The T950 stores an additional 33 to 100 more tapes per square foot than competing libraries store, when those libraries are configured to store their maximum capacities. T950 advantages hold steady when evaluating energy use across competing libraries.

Accommodating Data Growth
The modular design of Spectra’s libraries makes it easy to scale in capacity, performance or both. With smaller Spectra T series libraries, administrators can protect the initial investment in Spectra technology through TranScaling. This lets administrators keep library components already purchased and simply move them to a larger chassis. At the same time, the library’s identity to the wider network and its configuration data travel with it to the larger enclosure. This preserves both your initial investment in the library and the time already spent fine tuning the library’s configuration. Power supplies, drives, and multiple controllers are just a few of the many parts that can be TranScaled.

On-Going Adaptation
Spectra T series libraries use a modular hardware and software design that supports integration of new technology as it becomes available and necessary. The library’s core intelligence, the BlueScale environment, supports a graphical interface available remotely through a web browser and through the library’s front panel touch screen. This interface is common across all T series libraries, and an easily support advanced features as they are added, such as encryption and MLM. By adding features to existing libraries, the need for a forklift upgrade and the purchase of extra backup appliances is minimized. This contributes to Spectra library longevity in the data center, protecting the initial investment.

Library Manufacturer Stability and Longevity
Given the current economic uncertainties, it becomes increasingly important to determine the health of the library manufacturer, and the level of the vendor’s commitment to tape and its automation. Few library designers/manufacturers remain. Of these, Spectra Logic is the only vendor who has demonstrated a long term commitment to tape.

Why Tape is Indispensable
Tape does some things that simply aren’t possible with disk. Tape protects data across years, protects against data infection across networked servers, and protects data from hacker attacks. Tape is indispensable for the reasons9 discussed in this white paper. Tape provides:

o Affordability in storing continuing data growth data expected to grow 6x by 201010—compared to all other storage methods commonly used, including disk
o Off site storage to protect data in cases of disaster
o Power savings compared to all other storage methods commonly used, including disk
o Floor space savings compared to all other common storage methods, including disk
o Data security through encryption that secures data as it is physically transported
o Long archival life to protect data over the long term to meet compliance requirements
o Proven long term data storage critical to disaster recovery efforts

Conclusion
Although the innovations in tape and its automation have been largely overlooked by the industry press, tape has steadily matured so that it now addresses tape related issues that used to concern IT administrators. In addition, increasing regulatory demands have added to the importance of tape in a data center, given its proven shelf life, off line energy savings, and affordability.

Tape, far from being dead, is increasingly necessary in data centers. Spectra Logic promises to continue its long history and successful methods of providing tape without pain.


1 Reine, David. “Tape Density Evolution? No — Revolution!” The Clipper Group Captain's Log, Report #TCG2008037R, May 24, 2006.
2 Beech, Debbie. “Best Practices for backup and long term data retention” Sylvatica white paper: The evolving role of disk and tape in the data center. June 2009
3 Note that LTO 5 tape technology is available for pre purchase now from Spectra Logic. Please see the web site or contract a sales representative for more information.
4 Beech; see earlier.
5 Moore, Fred. Storage Navigator, Horison Information Strategies, 2008.
6 McAdam, Dianne. “Tape and Disk Costs—What It Really Costs to Power the Devices” Report #TCG2006046L The Clipper Group Explorer, June 4 2006.
7 Simpson, Dave. Reader survey reveals backup and recovery trends, InfoStor, annual survey. Copyright 2009.
8 Reports with data supporting these analyses are available on request.
9 HP. Tape will outlive us all. White paper. www.hp.com/go/tape
10 IDC, The Expanding Digital Universe, March 2007

TriAxis Note: to see a more detailed report, as the above is the summary, click here and you will be brought to Spectra's site. Or, contact Tom Mumford tom.mumford@triaxis.com or at 877-TRIAXIS (874-2947) x101 and he will be glad to forward it to you directly]]> Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:26:12 -0400