Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

NVIDIA CORPORATION SELECTS SPECTRA LOGIC AIT TAPE LIBRARIES

Spectra Logic Corporation, a leading manufacturer of high-performance tape libraries providing mission-critical data protection for companies worldwide, announced recently that NVIDIA Corporation, a world leader in visual processing, chose Spectra Logic as its library provider of choice. NVIDIA chose Spectra Logic's enterprise libraries for their dynamic drive sharing capability as well as high performance.

As a technology leader in the graphics market, NVIDIA wanted to deploy a centralized and shareable backup system utilizing Gigabit Ethernet, which enhances dynamic drive sharing capability. The need for more space in the data center and improved throughput emerged as the top deciding factors for purchasing a new library.

NVIDIA's previous backup process involved separate, direct attached DLT tape drives that supported a slow throughput rate of just five megabytes per second per drive. Today, the company backs up nine terabytes of data per month, and has improved backup performance to about 14 megabytes per second per drive since implementing Spectra Logic libraries for backup.

"As an engineering manager, I've been extremely impressed with Spectra Logic's ability to handle our installation in such a clean fashion," said Kelly Alexander, NVIDIA's manager of engineering systems. "The integration of the Spectra 64K was one of the easiest IT projects I have overseen since I joined NVIDIA. Spectra Logic came into our facilities, set up our Spectra 64K tape libraries, and we have since been able to absolutely forget about them. Spectra Logic's libraries offer top performance backed by superior customer service."

By using Gigabit Ethernet with the Spectra 64K library, NVIDIA is able to dynamically share the individual AIT-3 tape drives among filers, thus better utilizing the drives. This is very similar to a Fibre Channel SAN but without the added cost of implementing a Fibre Channel network/infrastructure. Spectra Logic's TAOS (Tape Appliance Operating System) makes this possible due to its imbedded Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) support. TAOS provides NVIDIA additional cost savings because there is no need to purchase software licenses to enable this type of dynamic drive sharing between filers.

"AIT-3 technology has proven very reliable and low maintenance for NVIDIA," said Bill Reed, Spectra Logic's senior vice president of sales and marketing. "They experienced one or two DLT drive failures per month with their previous backup process. Since going into production with the Spectra 64K, they have not experienced a drive failure. Our libraries' individual hot swappable drives add peace of mind; it is simple to replace one drive without shutting down the entire system, which is often required with other tape libraries."

NVIDIA purchased two Spectra 64K tape libraries from Spectra Logic -- one for the engineering IT department and another dedicated to its corporate IT applications.

About Spectra Logic Corporation

Spectra Logic Corporation is a leading manufacturer of high-performance tape libraries providing mission-critical data protection for companies worldwide. Spectra Logic's products enhance organizations' abilities to protect, store, and manage rapidly-growing data centers by offering libraries with capacities ranging from 60 Gigabytes to hundreds of Terabytes. In addition to providing innovative data storage automation, Spectra Logic offers advanced interface technologies to address emerging storage network systems such as Storage Area Networks (SANs), Network Attached Storage (NAS) architectures and IP Storage. Spectra Logic's storage offerings are available through a global network of resellers and OEMs. For more information, contact Spectra Logic by phone at 800-833-1132, or visit the company's Web site at www.SpectraLogic.com.

Contact: Leigh Grace, Spectra Logic Corporation, 303-449-6400x1221, leighg@spectralogic.com.