Features - Storage Innovations:

SONY DELIVERS ITS FIRST SAIT-BASED STORAGE LIBRARIES

Sony Data System Solutions, a division of Sony Electronics, announced the availability of its SAIT PetaSite tape storage library systems, providing the first Sony branded automated solutions based on the industry's current highest capacity tape technology.

The Data Storage Division of Ovation Data Services (Ovation) is the first Master Systems Integrator to have purchased an SAIT PetaSite mass storage library, and the first to offer Sony-branded SAIT-based drives and libraries to value-added resellers (VARS) and system integrators in the United States.

Sony SAIT PetaSite systems deliver enterprise and digital content providers with native storage capacity from 10 terabytes (TB) to up to 1.5 petabytes (PB) in an automated solution that packs up to 250 TB of native capacity per square meter of floor space. The systems also feature a sustained transfer rate of up to 2.88 gigabytes (GB) per second (a standard file can be restored in just over one minute).

"As enterprise data volumes begin to reach the petabyte level, today's IT departments are demanding robust solutions that can effectively manage a continually increasing level of critical data and can easily scale to meet the storage demands of the future," said Tom Yuhas, director of data systems solutions for Sony Electronics' Business Systems & Solutions Company. "The availability of Sony's SAIT PetaSite systems answer the call by equipping IT managers with high-capacity, high-speed content management, data backup and enterprise data storage applications."

"We are proud to offer this new-generation Sony-branded SAIT technology to resellers and integrators in the U.S., as well as to our current customers. SAIT technology by far outperforms previously available technology. It is cost-effective, scalable, and can be easily incorporated into existing environments. We expect demand to be high from enterprise customers, whose needs continually grow for high-capacity near-line storage and access solutions, such as oil exploration and production companies, research laboratories, and government services," said Gerald Johnson, general manager of the Data Storage Division of Ovation.

A basic SAIT PetaSite system contains two SAIT-1 drives, an Ethernet hub, a terminal server, and a PetaSite control unit. This basic entry system, encapsulated within a standard 19-inch rack console, is scalable to house up to 12 drives and 216 cartridges for up to 108 TB of native capacity in a flexible and highly available configuration. Up to seven cartridge and/or drive consoles can be added to the basic system. The cartridge consoles allow users to add up to 330 cartridges for 165 TB of extra native capacity, and the drive/cartridge consoles house up to 12 additional drives and 258 additional cartridges, totaling nearly 135 TB of extra native capacity.

Since data management software is critical to support data warehouses that are seeing double-digit growth each year, Sony is delivering each SAIT PetaSite tape library model pre-configured with trial versions of its Sony's PetaServe hierarchical storage management (HSM) and PetaBack high-speed backup software applications.

PetaServe software is designed as a policy driven server storage management software that allows the end user to achieve maximum storage performance by automatically transferring data from hard disk to tape to achieve a cost-effective storage balance. This enables administrators to efficiently manage file migration through policies, while the data movement remains transparent to the end-user who is retrieving the files.

PetaBack software provides quick, automatic backup of files to the SAIT PetaSite system's drives, with high-speed restoration of data to the host computer's hard drive. Yuhas said that PetaBack software, as part of Sony's PetaApp system solution, is optimized for LAN-free backup in storage networking environments.