News

posted on 09 June 2008 14:00

Enterprise Virtual Tape Library (VTL) supplier Sepaton has announced a new enterprise VTL, the S2100-ES2 Series 1000, which uses 1TB drives and has enhanced DeltaStor deduplication software.

The previous Series 750, with 750GB RAID 6-protected SATA drives, offered a maximum of 1.2PB of usable capacity. The disk upgrade increases this by 33 percent, 400TB, to 1.6PB, meaning more weeks and months of backup data can be stored on the product. The footprint density of the product increases by a third as well

There is no change to the 4Gbit/s Fibre Channel interface or to the maximum number of processor nodes - 16.

Version 5 of the DeltaStor software includes:-

- A new graphical user interface that enables customers to select the data they want to deduplicate.  

- Tunable deduplication algorithms deliver optimization for the data types and applications used in the customer's environment.

- New custom reporting capabilities feature views of deduplication performance by backup names or cartridges.

- To facilitate capacity planning, DeltaStor now offers detailed system capacity information.

- Configurable email alerts are also included in the new DeltaStore GUI.

DeltaStor is a post backup process deduplication method. It stores the most recent copy of all data in full form and replaces older redundant data with pointers. This method enables nearly instantaneous file restores and sustained backup and restore performance over time. Sepaton says it is also content-aware and will vary its deduplication approach depending upon the file type, such as Word or Excel files.

Jon Toigo, managing principal, Toigo Partners International, said: "Continuity is one of the 'C-4' issues on the front burner for both company directors and IT managers today - the others being cost-containment, compliance and carbon footprint reduction. SEPATON's latest blend of VTL, de-duplication and remote replication is well aligned with that business goal. I am also impressed by the sensibility of SEPATON both in terms of their desire to work within existing disk-tape ecosystems rather than joining their competitors' misguided 'tape is dead' chorus ⁽¹⁾, and in their future plans to evolve their solution into a broader data management play.”

Sepaton offers a Hifn DR 1000 hardware compression card to potentially double capacity.

Pricing for the now-orderable S2100-ES2 Series 1000 Rack Ready starts at $69,000 for 10TB usable capacity. The new DeltaStor version 5.0 software is available as an option for the ES2 Series 1000.

^{1. Lovers of irony can look at the term 'Sepaton' and read it backwards to enjoy this comment. The Sepaton VTLs have, compared to FSC's CentricStor for example, little or no ability to integrate with physical tape drives.}

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}