Archives : 2011 : April

RDX Removable Disk Drive Has 90% Market Share

An IDC Market Analysis report entitled, “Worldwide Removable Hard Disk Drive 2008-2012 Forecast and Analysis: The Quest for a Viable Tape Replacement”, reports that removable disk storage solutions, including RDX-based storage systems, are gaining appreciable momentum as tape replacement at small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide. The report estimates that revenue from removable disk solutions will grow 1,400 percent between 2007 and 2012 to more than $500 million.

IDC categorizes R-HDDs in two major segments: commercial and consumer. In the report, IDC aggregates both commercial and consumer segments for the purposes of market sizing, forecast, and analysis. RDX technology is an example of commercial-grade R-HDD, according to the research.

More than 250,000 end users worldwide have deployed RDX cartridges to backup their servers and protect their data for the long term.

RDX technology uses a rugged, reliable disk cartridge that backs up like a tape drive and features the performance advantages of a disk-to-disk system.

RDX technology provides forward and backward compatibility – allowing users to upgrade to higher capacity cartridges without having to buy a new dock – resulting in a higher return on investment for SMB users. RDX removable disk technology has been proven to provide long-term preservation of digital data with an archive life of at least 30 years.

Multi-Tiered Storage System for Fixed Digital Content

ProStor Systems, a leader in enterprise-class removable disk storage systems for business backup, archiving, and retention management, announced the availability of the InfiniVault® Model 70, a multi-tiered storage system for fixed digital content.

With the emergence of digital assets and continued rapid data growth, fixed digital content now represents over 75 percent of all data. IT departments can dramatically reduce the percentage of their budget dedicated to storage by moving fixed digital content to a multi-tiered storage system that manages the placement of data across a range of storage tiers. The InfiniVault Model 70 virtualizes data across online, nearline, offline, and offsite tiers based on policy:

• Online disk for rapid access to active data
• Nearline disk for long-term retention
• Offline for integration into existing workflow where removable media is required
• Offsite for additional protection/disaster recovery

The InfiniVault Model 70 can be used to provide long-term data archive or scalable storage pools for the primary and protection copies of fixed digital content from multiple departments, customers, or applications. By centralizing long-term storage for fixed digital content, IT departments can dramatically reduce administrative overhead associated with procuring, scaling, maintaining, and upgrading multiple archive and storage systems.

Accounting for the Blind Spot in the Cloud

By DCIG Senior Analyst Ben Maas: Recent events in Japan have reminded us that we need to constantly be examining our business continuity solutions for blind spots. One such blind spot is cloud storage and services that have become strategic resources for many small and medium sized businesses and enterprises. As such, there are steps that SMBs and SMEs should take to mitigate the risks that the cloud itself presents.

Cloud data services are now generally so ubiquitous and reliable that they can be easy for many SMBs and SMEs to overlook as a single point of failure. Yet the consequences of not taking the risks associated with the cloud into account will depend on the degree to which they are dependent on the cloud to run their business. Consider:

• Online backups (and recoveries) may be impossible to complete if the link to the cloud is down
• Applications that access data stores in the cloud may become inoperative
• The cloud provider (because of its location) may be adversely affected by a tragedy and unable to provide cloud services

So while the cloud and cloud services are certainly the wave of the future, businesses that rely on cloud based storage are still advised to take steps to mitigate their exposure to the risks that these cloud solutions create by also including a local backup strategy.

This does not necessarily mean one has to use tape. If anything, in these circumstances one may actually want to use disk so an SMB or SME can recover its data more quickly or even ideally run their applications from these “backup” disks on which the data is stored.

RDX Removable disk technology (RDX), which utilizes hard drives instead of tape, is a viable alternative to tape as it offers all of the benefits of disk while sporting one of tape’s most desirable features: portability. The use of RDX as the destination for a secondary copy of an online data store, cloud-based backup or even as a target for more advanced backups that use deduplication and replication can drastically improve an organization’s resiliency and availability of its data while removing its dependency on the cloud.

Recent events in Japan should cause every business to reflect on how it would respond to such a disaster and an adage dating back to the mainframe days is advisable to keep in mind now: the most efficient bandwidth on the planet is a station wagon full of DAT tapes. Today we need to update that saying to use “RDX” instead of tape because even though it sounds anachronistic in today’s age of cloud storage and services, it still holds an element of truth to it.