Nexsan, Diligent Team to Offer Low-Cost Data Protection Solution

The solution will allow customers to use disk rather than tape in their backup and recovery operations without hindering an existing setup.

Disk-based backup and SATA storage vendor Nexsan Technologies Ltd. is partnering with virtual tape software vendor Diligent Technologies Corp. to offer a low-cost data protection solution that will allow customers to use disk rather than tape in their backup and recovery operations without hindering an existing setup.

The solution combines Diligents VTF Open software, which emulates tape libraries, with Nexsans SATA/ATA-based disk arrays. The combination allows customers to implement disks rather than tape in their backup and recovery operations without changing existing policies of the users current backup configuration, said Brendan Kinkade, vice president of marketing at Nexsan, of Los Angeles.

Diligents VTF Open virtual tape software emulates one or more tape libraries and allows data to be backed up to disk, Kinkade said.

To the backup application, the solution appears as one or many actual tape libraries, said Mike Parise, vice president of sales and marketing at Diligent, of Framingham, Mass. The backup application accesses drives, robotics and cartridges with Diligents VTF Open software as it would with a physical tape library, he said.

Data storage is growing faster than total bandwidth. Does this mean were at the point of overlapping backups? Click here to read more.

Combining Nexsans SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives with Diligents software is a good fit and will allow the companies to compete with similar solutions from companies like ADIC (Advanced Digital Information Corp.), Overland Storage and Quantum Corp., said David Hill, principal of Mesabi Group, of Westwood, Mass.

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"Diligent gets a partner that has been very successful in pushing the adoption of SATA technology, and Nexsan gets a partner that has the software it needs to provide a full solution," he said. "Together, they are solving a problem with backup thats pretty much universal."

For customers, the combination of heavy-hitter Nexsan and Diligent may be a powerful one, offering a name-brand player and significant flexibility, Hill said.

"If somebody already has a Nexsan product, they now have the ability to do more things with it. It gives them the flexibility of an all-in-one Swiss Army knife approach to doing things," he said.

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