Storage Digest: News from Sony, Exabyte, Broadcom, Iomega

Sony Electronics Inc. of San Jose, Calif., has introduced two mini tape libraries—a one-drive model and a two-drive model—based on its SAIT-1 drive.

The compact, high-capacity tape libraries contain one or two SAIT-1 tape drives with up to 20 SAIT cartridges and 10TB native storage capacity in a 5U rack-mountable configuration. With two cartridges, the sustained native transfer rate can reach 60M bps. The SAIT mini library also comes with WORM functionality, a password-protected electromagnetic lock and a mechanical key lock.

The mini tape libraries are targeted at SMBs (small and midsize businesses), which often must choose libraries that are too small or too large, said Alan Sund, general manager for tape storage solutions in Sony Electronics component and business solutions division.

Resource Library:

The CSM-20S/S1 one-drive model costs $17,995, while the two-drive CSM/20S/S1-2 costs $25,990.

Get more information here.

Exabyte Corp., of Boulder, Colo., introduced two tape libraries based on LTO-3 (Linear-Tape Open) technology. Both the 221L Plus and 110L Plus LTO tape libraries incorporate IBMs LTO-3 Ultrium tape drives and offer capacities of up to 400GB and transfer speeds of up to 80MB per second.

The 221L Plus Tape Library with LTO-3 combines two LTO-3 drives and 21 cartridge slots, with a capacity of up to 16.8TB and data transfer speeds topping 1.1TB per hour. The 221L Plus, aimed at the enterprise market, also provides a native Fibre Channel interface and remote management capabilities.

The 110L Plus Tape Library, targeted at the entry-level LTO-3 market, offers one LTO-3 drive and 10 cartridge slots, with a capacity of up to 8TB and data transfer rates of up to 576GB per hour.

Both tape libraries are built with ExaBotics, Exabytes robotics system that ensures that the companys systems share electronics and processor architectures with drives and bolsters data security, accessibility and retrievability.

Get more information here.

Broadcom Corp.s new entry-level SATA (Serial ATA) RAID controller cards offer a fast and easy path to upgradability through software, allowing organizations to add functionality and features quickly.

The RAIDCore BC4410 and BC4810 cards are designed to allow organizations to move from the basic RAID feature set, which supports RAID0, RAID 1 and RAID10, to a more advanced feature set supporting RAID5 and RAID50.

The solution allows organizations to move to greater functionality without taking the drives offline because the change is done through software, said Tom Marmen, vice president of the Irvine, Calif., companys storage line. The advanced capabilities allow organizations to more easily perform online capacity expansion, online RAID level migration, controller spanning, distributed sparing, online array creation and deletion, and multiple array types per drive, Marmen said.

Get more information here.

San Diego-based Iomega Corp. has upgraded its iStorage online offering for both business and home users.

iStorage Professional accounts allow administrators to manage up to 15GB of secure online storage for multiple users, add users, create groups, set up guest accounts and create personal or shared pools of storage for each account. They also can set access permission for users. iStorage Professional accounts cost from $24.95 per month for 1GB of storage to $159.95 per month for 15GB of storage. Annual licenses also are available.

iStorage Home accounts can hold the backup files of several computers, allowing users to retrieve e-mail files and files from wireless handheld devices. iStorage Home accounts cost $5.95 per month for 250MB, $17.95 per month for 1GB, and $49.95 per month for 5GB.

Get more information here.

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