IBMs New Storage Offerings Push Data-Retention Relief

The company says its new tape and disk storage offerings will help customers take better advantage of moving less critical data onto lower-cost storage options.

Pushing the theme of improved information management and its relationship to escalating data-retention pressures, IBM introduced new tape and disk storage offerings Wednesday designed to help customers take better advantage of moving less critical data onto lower-cost Near-Line disk storage options.

At its Executive Briefing Center in Cambridge, Mass., IBM unveiled its TotalStorage FaStT100 Storage Server and a number of enhancements to its tape product family, highlighted by the debut of the Write Once Read Many (WORM) media technology for the IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3592.

Set to be available in July for small and midsized enterprises, TotalStorage FaStT100 Storage Server builds on the functionality of the FaStT600 Storage Server by featuring a new embedded chip specifically oriented toward a low-cost serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) disk drive in a single rack.

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This enables customers to move as many as 14 terabytes of storage without having to incorporate an add-on expansion unit, as was the case in the past with the FaStT600, according officials at Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM.

IBM said it plans to include FaStT100 as part of its compliance- and regulatory-focused IBM TotalStorage Data Retention 450 (DR 450) offering in the "next few months." DR 450 offers a suite of software and hardware tools for policy- and event-based management of regulated and unregulated data by integrating IBM pSeries Servers, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and IBM TotalStorage products.

In conjunction with the WORM media technology for the Model 3592 tape drive, IBM announced a new 60GB cartridge for the 3592 tape drive, available in WORM and non-WORM formats, targeting applications requiring speedy retrieval response times for individual data sets.

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Additionally, the Model 3592 drive and IBM TotalStorage Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Ultrium Tape Drives will offer support for the Model 3584 tape library.

The WORM-enabled IBM 3592 tape drive will be available later this month, with prices starting at $32,000.

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