Features - Storage Innovations:

QUANTUM OFFERS NEW HIGH-CAPACITY SDLT TAPE DRIVE

This latest offering comes from Quantum Storage Singapore Pte Ltd., which has announced its highest capacity mid-range tape drive, the Super Digital Linear Tape (SDLT) 320. Its Asia-Pacific sales and marketing general manager Alex Tan claimed the new SDLT 320 is the highest performing tape solution in the market, offering 60% greater capacity than competitive offerings. The drive, which is based on the industry standard DLTape technology, holds 320 gigabytes (GB) of compressed data or the equivalent of 80 full-length feature films on tape cartridge about half the size of a standard VHS tape.

It is capable of transferring data at speeds up to 32 megabits per second (Mbps) compressed, therefore enabling customers the performance they need to deal with shrinking back-up windows. It also has backward-read compatibility with the previous generation drives and media durability of one million passes.

Available this month, the SDLT 320 drive has a suggested retail price starting at US$4,495, depending on the configuration requirements of customers.

At the recent product announcement, Quantum Singapore also launched other storage solutions such as the StorageWorks Superloader, Quantum DX- 30, M2500 and the Guardian 14000.

The StorageWorks Superloader is a modular, expandable autoloader with what the company claimed is the highest cartridge capacity in a 2U rack-mount form factor. It allows for a "hands-off" approach to data back-up where physical space and personnel resources are limited for the customer. It is an expandable, stackable, rack-mounted unit that stores 320GB of uncompressed back-up data with a data transfer rate of up to 10.8GB per hour. Customers can scale the Storage SuperLoader to 640GB of uncompressed storage by simply adding a second eight-cartridge magazine as their back- up needsexpand.

Disk-based back-up system Quantum DX-30 is designed to be extremely dense and helps improve back-up and restore time. It incorporates RAID protected discs into the back-up date path. The DX-30 is operating system-independent and the initial version of the product will contain more than three tera bytes (TB) of native capacity within a 2U (3.5 inch) rack mounted package.

Meanwhile, the automated tape library product, the M2500, provides the highest density, scalability and flexibility. It is stack compatible with the existing M1500, meaning that it allows businesses to scale their tape back-up solutions in case their back-up requirement increases. It can scale up to 18 tape drives and can be expanded up to 300 cartridges and provides capacity up to 60TB. Each M2500 module comes with eight removable magazines (each with 10 Super DLTtape or 12 LTO Ultrium cartridges) that allow for easy bulk loading and unloading. It can also be configured in a standard rack to function as an integrated single library by utilising the StackLink pass-through mechanism.

Lastly, the Guardian 14000 is designed to handle the storage of businesscritical data in enterprise environments. It provides multiple levels of RAID support (5, 1, 0), hot swappable and redundant disk drives, power supplies and cooling fans, and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports with load balancing and failover capabilities to ensure maximum availability.

Pricing of the new products depends on the configurations.