With a mind to plug gaps in its strategy for managing customers’ storage
layers, StorageTek will unveil a new tape system, software and a partnership
with long-time chum Sun Microsystems at the Storage
World Conference 2004 in Long Beach, Calif., this week.
Like rival EMC , StorageTek
has embarked on
a plan to provide information lifecycle management to help shepherd
customers’ information from its inception to its disposal through a tiered
storage network. Customers use such systems to meet stringent compliance
regulations for data retention.
But unlike EMC, which recently embraced tape storage through a partnership
with ADIC, StorageTek has long been a believer that tape storage is an
important piece of the ILM puzzle, which also includes a smattering of
disk-based storage, software, hardware and services to make a complete
portfolio.
That’s why StorageTek plans to unveil the StreamLine
SL500 modular tape library for mid-market customers.
Jon Benson, vice president and general manager of StorageTek’s Automated
Tape Solutions Group, said the SL500 leverages capabilities from the
company’s SL8500 to
bring customers enterprise-grade features.
“If you take a look from the customer’s point of view, he’s sitting there
and he puts data in and he wants data back,” Benson told
internetnews.com. “If you look at tape automation prior to the
StreamLine series, you had lots of [products with] single points of failure,
so then you have to migrate the data because of something like that; it’s not
available for the customer. That’s the reason we put out the 8500 a few
months ago and that’s the reason for the SL500.”
Benson said the SL500 offers mixed-media support to help companies
consolidate UNIX and Windows computer systems, as well as incremental
upgrades of capacity and throughput. To the point of availability — a
hallmark of storage devices — customers looking to upgrade their tape
systems may do so because the SL500 can be scaled within the same library
system.
The system starts at 30 LTO cartridges and scales to over 500 LTO cartridges
while storing over 100 terabytes of data. It also uses a dense cartridge
design to save floor space in the customer’s data center. Pricing for the
SL500 will be announced at the time of its availability, which is slated for
late 2004.
StorageTek has also produced a new piece of back-up software to address the
dearth of products geared toward managing mid-range tape systems, Benson
said. The Backup Resource Monitor (BRM) provides a single window view into storage
operations for customers of StorageTek StreamLine and L-Series tape
libraries.
“[Before BRM], you basically could talk to the library, SAN or application,” Benson
explained. “But nobody’s really bundled it together for you to provide the right
solution that brings all of those to bear. So BRM allows
you to look at the [back-up] application, whether it be Veritas, Tivoli or
Legato, or the SAN, whether it be Brocade, McDATA or Cisco from an overall
point of view.”
Benson said BRM gives IT managers a reprieve from having to monitor each
little step in a back-up process to make sure it’s working. BRM does it for
customers and each BRM license allows customers to monitor a single library,
a backup
application and up to two SAN switches.
BRM single license list price for StorageTek’s mid-range tape libraries
ranges from $15,000 to $25,000.
Lastly, Benson said StorageTek has gotten cozier with systems vendor Sun,
agreeing to an OEM
market and sell StorageTek’s SL8500, under Sun’s StorEdge brand, along with
StorageTek’s Powderhorn 9310 tape library and the L-5500, L-700e and L-180 tape
libraries.
Unlike previous OEM deals between them, Sun and StorageTek will work closely
to market and sell the products.
StorageTek Pads ILM Strategy
