Storage Digest: News from Exabyte, Adaptec, BakBone, Unitrends, 3PAR, JMR Electronics

Three vendors teamed up to offer a disk-to-disk-to-tape solution that is geared toward distributed enterprises and SMBs (small and midsized businesses). The solution comes in three versions, all with products from tape storage vendor Exabyte Corp., storage solution vendor Adaptec Inc. and data-protection vendor BakBone Software Inc.

An entry-level bundle, at $6,500, includes Adaptec Snap Server 4200, Exabytes VXA PacketLoader 1x10, and BakBones NetVault D2D2T software. A second option, for $7,000, is similar but replaces the Adaptec Snap Server 4200 with the SnapServer 4500 NAS solution.

A third "performance" bundle, for $10,400, provides the Adaptec Snap Server 4500 NAS solution, the Exabyte Magnum 1x7 Autoloader, BakBones NetVault D2D2T software and a 10-slot library license.

The goal, said Exabyte CEO Tom Ward, was to create a best-of-breed solution that would provide a cost-effective way for smaller organizations to adopt the technologies. And by offering the technologies as a bundled solution, these often personnel-strapped organizations wont have to spend time researching storage options from multiple vendors, he said.

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Unitrends, a business systems recovery vendor based in Columbia, S.C., has introduced a system-protection appliance that combines both system protection software and disk-based storage in a small, rack-mounted appliance.

The DPU2000-1500, aimed at the SMB market, is bundled with the Unitrends system-protection software suite, comprising its backup/restore and bare metal recovery software. The combination of the technologies allows SMBs to recover an operating system—as well as permissions, passwords and settings—within minutes, according to the company.

The appliance, which sells for $9,995, runs on virtually all Windows and Linux variants and can hold up to 2.5 terabytes of compressed data on six SATA (serial ATA) hard drives. The entire unit is contained in a 2U rack-mounted appliance.

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3PARdata Inc., a utility storage vendor based on Fremont, Calif., has announced a software product that lets users optimize storage service levels on demand by quickly converting data volumes from one service level to another within the same 3PAR InServ Storage Server.

3PAR Dynamic Optimization allows users and systems administrators to change service levels for live data volumes from a shared storage pool.

Users can convert between RAID 10 and RAID 50 with 2+1 to 7+1 data-to-parity ratio; choose between massively parallel or finely restricted use of ports, cache processors, loops and spindles; choose data placement on inner or outer tracks of disk platters; and move data between high-performance and high-capacity Fibre Channel drives or ATA-class drives.

By offering these capabilities, 3PAR hopes to help organizations better manage service levels during periods of peak demand and more easily accommodate rapid or unexpected application growth.

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JMR Electronics Inc. of Chatsworth, Calif., has introduced ORCA, a multiterabyte disk array with ultra high availability, scalability and speed.

The JMR ORCA storage system combines a network of DCMs (Disk Controller Modules), each managing an independent workload. The DCMs act as members of a cluster, sharing a virtualized pool of storage.

Each DCM is available to shoulder the load of another DCM if that one becomes unavailable. Each DCM has eight independent 2GB/s Fibre Channel ports, each configurable as either a host or a disk channel, with 1GB of cache per DCM, upgradeable to 2GB per DCM.

The system can start with as few as 30 disk drives, and can scale to more than 840 drives. The architecture is also compact, putting 16.8 TB in 4U of rack space, and it can hold up to 168 TB in one data center rack.

The system is also fault-tolerant, using redundant DCMs with DCM nodes that can be spaced 300M apart. The system also supports most RAID levels, including multiple parity, allowing for the failure of more than one drive per RAID set.

Finally, the system allows LUNs (logical unit numbers) to be masked in any combination of Fibre Channel port or World Wide Name, and allows for as many as 2,048 LUNs. As many as 256 drives can be configured to construct a LUN, spread across multiple ORCAs.

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