ADIC Launches New Disk-Based Backup Solution
Monday September 22, 7:03 am ET
Pathlight VX First to Combine Disk Performance and RAID Reliability With Integrated Path to Tape
biz.yahoo.com
REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 22, 2003--Advanced Digital Information Corporation (Nasdaq:ADIC), leader in Intelligent Storage(TM) solutions for the open system market, announced today the ADIC® Pathlight® VX integrated disk-to-tape backup solution, the first product in the industry to combine the benefits of disk and tape in a single data protection solution.
The Pathlight VX works transparently with end users' existing backup and restore environments to provide disk performance and RAID reliability along with a fully automated path to tape for secure, long-term data retention. The Pathlight VX is the first in a series of new solutions from ADIC, designed to support both existing and emerging data protection architectures.
With the Pathlight VX, enterprise IT departments benefit from the performance that disk-based storage can provide for their backup and primary restores -- without changing their backup software or introducing new procedures. With disk based storage, not only can write times be shortened, but overall data recovery performance can be dramatically improved through a combination of a random access file location process and the elimination of the need to find and load separate pieces of media. Because it supports automated export of standard format backup tapes, the Pathlight VX provides these performance advantages while it retains all of the long term data security, low cost scalability, and portability advantages of traditional backup.
"The Pathlight VX makes backup work better by providing the power of serial ATA disk as part of an integrated solution," said Scott Roza, ADIC Vice President of North American Storage Products. "Backup and restore performance is boosted, RAID reliability is built in, and ownership costs stay low because there's no need for IT departments to integrate more pieces or change their disaster recovery process. And with the Pathlight VX, users can have confidence in the safety of their data because the entire solution comes from ADIC, the leading supplier of backup systems for open system environments."
"Storing data on tape as part of backup is a critical element of sound disaster recovery and data retention policies, and one that we recommend be included in every comprehensive data protection plan," said David Hill, Vice President of Storage Research at the Aberdeen Group. "Using disk to emulate tape as a first stage in the process, as ADIC has done with the Pathlight VX, can provide significant performance and availability advantages. We think this approach will become an important component in open system backup."
The Pathlight VX helps IT departments eliminate the problem of expanding data and shrinking backup windows by allowing them to shift the time at which they write their data sets to physical tapes. "The Pathlight VX allows users to perform their primary backup and restore operations using random access serial ATA arrays, and then move that data off to physical media in the background," Mr. Roza said. "This data movement takes place during off hours, and it uses an internal data moving agent so that there is no negative impact on application server performance and no increase in network traffic. This combination of performance, flexibility, reliability, and long term security will set new standards for the industry."
The Pathlight VX disk-to-tape backup solution features an integrated management unit that both controls data I/O and provides disk/tape transparency, ensuring that existing software applications work seamlessly. The Pathlight VX appears to applications as one or more logical libraries, eliminating the costly and time-consuming "dual target" requirements of other approaches. Not only are backup throughput and data restore performance significantly improved, but the Pathlight VX's RAID protection provides increased data integrity and minimizes performance degradation in case of system faults.
Designed for enterprise storage environments, the Pathlight VX offers up to 40 TB of disk-based storage capacity and a total throughput of up to 1.0 TB per hour. The Pathlight VX features RAID 5 redundancy and 2Gb Fibre Channel system connectivity. The system mounts in standard 19-inch rack cabinets, and provides scalability in both capacity and performance. Tape export functions at initial availability support ADIC Scalar® libraries with LTO1 or LTO2 technology, but the technology is designed to be independent of both media type and library brand.
"The Pathlight series is one the key milestones in our multi-year strategy to develop and acquire core technologies in order to deliver innovative solutions that solve real customer problems," said Peter van Oppen, ADIC Chairman and CEO. "Its unique combination of performance, appliance-level integration, and policy-based data movement leverages the technology foundation that also created our StorNext data management software, Pathlight SAN appliances, and our Scalar intelligent tape library solutions." |
