News

With new storage solution, more is less

• By Jason Turcotte
• July 26, 2006

Who says you can’t have your data and store it, too? A new solution claims to offer the largest capacity for small and mid-size IT departments, expanding storage by 50 percent and claiming the lowest cost-per-gigabyte on the market.

Overland Storage, Inc. released the latest of its entry-level tape automation solutions with new ARCvault autoloaders and tape libraries that bring new efficiency to backing-up and archiving data. The ARCvault 12 autoloader and the ARCvault 24 rack-automized library yields nearly 20 TB of space at a rate which Overland reps say is up to a 45 percent lower cost-per-gigabyte than its competitors.

And IT professionals are taking the bait.

“Initially, we planned to buy a standalone drive for restoring tapes at the DR site if needed,” said Billy Vaughn, IT operations manager, San Jacinto College, Harris County, Texas, who sought a solution that would extend the institution’s existing backup and recovery environment with additional protection. “ARCvault made much more sense because it gave us the opportunity to take advantage of tape automation while obtaining 12 times the capacity of a standalone drive at a similar price point.”

More companies are looking for new data protection options that include both disk and tape solutions but the penny-pinching process often proves too costly. According to Brian Garrett, analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group, ARCvault’s affordability lets IT management invest in the best of both worlds.

The ARCvault is said to offer easy-to-install functions and management options. Its features include:

• Compact 2u form factor, reducing need for rack space
• Support for LTO-2 and LTO-3 tape drives
• Removable 12-cartridge mags for off-site storage
• Barcode support for media management
• Replaceable components, limiting costs
• Remote management for control, troubleshooting functions

ARCvault 12 offers up to 9.6 TB of capacity and ARCvault 24 provides up to 19.2 TB. Both allow users to upgrade vaults to a higher capacity, next-generation tape drives, as their data grows. Both solutions start around $5,000 and are available now.