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SMB Storage Gets Personal

While companies may know the value of their data and the negative impact of data loss on their businesses, many are still not protecting their data adequately. According to Small Business Computing magazine, 40% of SMBs don’t backup their data, and 60% of all data is stored on PC desktops and laptops. Looking at SOHO users, only 73% of those who have a personal backup device backup at least monthly and only 40% back up daily. This failure to protect data adequately can have severe consequences. FEMA even estimates that 40 to 60 percent of SMBs never re-open after a data disaster.

SMB companies are having a growing awareness of the importance of effective backup and archive practices. For example, in litigation discovery a company is responsible for producing the needed information quickly. The inability to easily retrieve data could substantially influence the outcome. The absence of effective backup and archive practices could be devastating. SMBs are also becoming increasingly aware of the need for effective disaster recovery programs so in the event of a natural disaster (fire, water damage, etc.) they can quickly access another copy of their corporate data and be up and running quickly.

The right storage device, such as an RDX Storage device, can help SMBs protect their valuable assets. RDX removable disk storage solutions are suitable for SMB and SOHO data protection, archive, retention, and recovery strategies. RDX removable disk technology supports both fast and drag-and-drop backup and recovery. RDX technology allows you to remove your backup data for archive, and restore your data in seconds — And because RDX removable disk technology can scale to large terabytes of data, you will never run out of storage capacity. SMBs require an easy to use, simple to integrate, fool-proof and cost-effective “all in one” storage solution. The key features that appeal to SMBs in any external storage device are capacity, throughput and portability. RDX Storage technology meets these.

RDX Storage Technology Offers New Flexible Archiving Solution for SMBs & SMEs

Recently a new solution has been introduced to the market for SMBs and SMEs which provides a flexible open platform delivering active data archive management and removable disk offsite disaster protection. The solution combines open platform archive management software with an RDX iSCSI-attached, removable disk library designed to provide a multi-cartridge platform for short-, medium-, or long-term archiving.

The archive management software provides a flexible open interface that helps to make the RDX removable disk library an obvious archive solution for SMBs through SMEs and is particularly well suited for businesses that rely on small IT departments and limited budgets. It can be easily installed on servers using a range of operating systems including Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mac. Using the RDX LTO library emulation mode, the open platform archive management software allows multiple RDX cartridges to be seen as a single share (drive letter) or mount point. Using non-proprietary operating system search engines, users can actively search and retrieve archived files. All metadata is retained on a disk cache within the chosen server platform, so even files on an RDX cartridge that have been removed from the RDX removable disk library can be found. Once an offline file is accessed, an email notification is automatically sent to the administrator to request the media be returned to the RDX removable disk library.

Design firm relies on RDX Removable Hard Disk Storage System

Data Loss Opens Designer’s Eyes
Early in its life, a Brooklyn-based design firm that specializes in illustration and graphic design brand development, lost a year’s worth of work when a hard drive failed and they hadn’t made a backup copy. With RDX Removable Hard Disk Storage System, they are confident the firm won’t have to repeat that experience.

Fortunately, they learned this valuable lesson early in the firm’s career. Research shows that few small- and medium-sized businesses back up company data regularly, and most do not have a data protection strategy. Inattention to data protection has a cost: in fact a DTI/PriceWaterhouseCoopers report found that 70 percent of small firms that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year.

One of the firm’s first clients asked for a specialized concept that would be at once ornate, detailed, gritty and coarse. The firms work on this job inspired a finely-detailed, Victorian style that became their signature, and they started researching, scanning and storing countless clip art images as a foundation for future projects.

As the firm grew, so did the need for digital filing capacity. The backup software built into the existing computer’s operating system could not keep pace, and their online backup service lacked the reliability and speed they required.
The firm knew they needed a better way to store and back up digital files – and quickly. The new backup system had to be easy, with rock-solid reliability and scalable enough to handle the growing business.

Through a colleague, the owner heard about the RDX® Removable Hard Disk Storage systems, which are designed to provide small- and medium-sized businesses with cost-effective, easy and reliable backup, data security and expandable storage. The PC and Mac-compatible system provides up to a full terabyte of capacity in each rugged, removable disk cartridge, and a docking station for easy, automated backup. The system can back up more than 125GB of data per hour and allows instant file access.

“My firm is small, but we have big-business data storage needs,” the owner said. “With the RDX system, we get a scalable storage solution to back up and store our files quickly and reliably and with instant access provided. We also get endless space because we can easily add more removable cartridges as our firm and data storage needs grow.”
Once the removable RDX disks for his Macintosh computer were formatted, they launched the software and followed its step-by-step instructions to create a backup schedule. “I’m not that technically adept but setting up the RDX storage system was easy for me,” the owner said. “I set it up to conduct a backup every evening. I don’t have to think about it – it’s awesome.”

The firm mirrors his hard drive on a 500GB RDX cartridge. They also use two 160GB disks to back up business-critical files, such as current design work, QuickBooks data and e-mail messages.

“A backup system has to be working 100 percent of the time. For businesses like mine, this system is critical.”

Backup performance improves by up to eight times with SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and new SSD cartridges

Tandberg Data is now offering a new series of RDX removable disk products with the introduction of USB 3.0 connectivity for its RDX QuikStor data protection product. Tandberg is also offering a new line of RDX cartridges based on solid-state disk (SSD) technology.

The RDX QuikStor is an RDX-based storage system, ideal for SMBs and remote offices. It combines the benefits of tape with the benefits of hard disk technology and delivers 20:1 deduplication and data protection when activated with the RDX AccuGuard.

The RDX QuikStor SuperSpeed USB 3.0 docks are compatible with all RDX cartridges, and achieves speeds of up to eight times that of the USB 2.0 and SATA versions.

The new cartridges come in standard high-capacity RDX cartridges or new RDX solid-state disk cartridges. The solid-state disk cartridges are designed for mission-critical applications, such as medical and military, and include capacities of up to 512 GB. Standard RDX is available up to 1 TB

RDX brings Nearline Back

By Senior Analyst Eric Slack of Storage Switzerland. “Nearline” is a term that typically describes storage products that are somewhere between high performance disk arrays and media sitting on a shelf. While it’s also been used by disk drive vendors and dedupe appliance vendors, nearline usually refers to removable media, at least that’s how Wikipedia and TechTarget define it. When you call spinning disk storage “online” and tapes on a shelf, “offline”, it makes sense to call “nearline” removable media that’s in a replay device (a drive) or in a library.

Using this definition, nearline’s original implementation was probably as part of a hierarchical storage management (HSM) system or information lifecycle management (ILM) system – essentially the precursors to today’s tiered storage. For a while, there was the option of using optical media, which provided a random-access format that could be handled by a robotic library as well. But the capacities of optical technologies never caught up to tape and it’s all but gone now, hastened by the advent of WORM certification for other storage media, like tape and spinning disk.

Nearline was a logical concept that never really caught on, partly because its economics in the ILM and HSM use cases relied on saving money on disk storage. This strategy has always been difficult from an economics standpoint, thanks disk’s continual drop in per-GB hard drive costs. Another problem nearline had was performance, based mainly on the media it used. Serial technologies, like linear tape, required long seek times after the media was loaded into a drive. This isn’t as much of an issue for applications that stream large files, such as media and entertainment, oil and gas, medical imaging, etc., and tape ‘active archives’ are a good fit for these industries. But this access latency makes individual file retrieval difficult and nearline as originally implemented, not as good of a fit for archiving smaller file reference data.

RDX may be a better option for the nearline application as defined above, especially for users that aren’t in the large end of the archive market. It’s WORM certified and can replace optical disk formats that may have been required for regulatory compliance in certain industries. But being truly random access, RDX is the removable media format that’s closer functionally to online spinning disk. When archived data sets need to be pulled back to active status, RDX can make the contents of the entire cartridge available instantly. There’s no need to copy part or all of a piece of serial media back onto spinning disk in order to make it more accessible to applications. In some respects it provides the best of the other removable media types, but also adds something else – format longevity.

RDX doesn’t rely on a complex piece of external hardware, like a drive, in order to recover stored data. RDX docks are essentially a power supply and an Ethernet connection, as all the read and write processes occur on the disk drive that’s incorporated into the cartridge itself. When Moore’s Law pushes disk drive capacities up, RDX can take advantage of that and increase its cartridge capacity as well. The dock stays the same, regardless of the cartridge it’s used for, which means that newer generations of the technology should not obsolete older RDX media.

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.

Capacity Utilization with RDX

By Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group – Removable storage has had a long history of usage for data protection and information interchange. One major issue that has become exacerbated over time is the utilization of the capacity of the removable storage. This could be considered an important component when evaluating the efficiency of the removable storage.

Depending on the technology used, it may be very difficult to effectively utilize the capacity of the removable storage. If the data must be written in an encapsulated form on a serial access media, the amount of capacity used is typically the amount of data that the application software such as a backup program would encapsulate and write at any one time. The available space could be used by putting another encapsulated collection of data but only after all the previously written data had been passed over. In the past, the general usage case was to put only one of the sets of data on a removable technology at a time. Rarely was the effort taken to utilize all the available media.

In the mainframe world this became more of a problem as the technology improved and capacity increased. Hardware systems and software products were developed to stack multiple “virtual volumes” together on one physical volume. Even then, because of updating and expirations, the utilization was far less than optimal.

The RDX removable disk provides the ability to use the capacity purchased. Representing a disk with a file system, RDX stores independent data files whether they are backup sets, archive files, or interchange data. Additional files can be added at will with the random access ability of disk storage. This inherent technological difference allows a greater effective use of the storage resource.

Purchasing a technology where it is difficult to use the capacity or requires additional hardware or software systems is not recognizing the limitations of the usage model. Having the ability to easily use the available capacity in the same manner as local disk storage is a huge step forward in efficiency. The utilization factor, how much of what is paid for is being used, can be significant in establishing value.

Tandberg Data RDX® QuikStation™

Tandberg Data announced the Tandberg Data RDX® QuikStation™, a network-attached, removable disk library that is based on RDX® technology. The RDX QuikStation delivers robust data protection and offsite disaster recovery for SMB and SME environments in a feature-rich, multi-cartridge 2U configuration. It provides users with all the benefits of tape storage, including removability and archivability, and all the benefits of disk, namely speed, random access, reliability and high capacity.

Quantum Joins RDX Storage Alliance

Quantum is the newest partner of the RDX Storage Alliance. Quantum, a specialist in backup, recovery and archiving solutions, recently announced availability of Quantum RDX. Quantum’s RDX comes with GoProtect data deduplication software, boasting up to 20:1 data reduction during backup. GoProtect software includes integrated protection for Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server databases.

Over the past 30 years, Quantum has become a global leader in backup, recovery, and archive. Combining focused expertise, customer-driven innovation, and platform independence, Quantum provides a comprehensive, integrated range of disk, tape, and software solutions supported by a world-class sales and service organization. As a long-standing and trusted partner, the company works closely with a broad network of resellers, OEMs and other suppliers to meet customers’ evolving data protection needs.

To find out more about Quantum, its products, press articles and releases go to the RDX Storage alliance Quantum Partner Page.

Cloud and RDX – A recent Reuters article

Cloud and RDX – A recent Reuters article said that David Bonderman, one of the founders of TPG Capital, laid out a series of investment ideas on Thursday, among them cloud computing. Bonderman, one of the private equity industry’s early pioneers, is among the top decision-makers at one of the world’s largest private equity funds.

Bonderman pointed out that money was made in industries where there were dislocations, where the key was fixing issues at companies rather than just throwing capital at them, and taking advantage of openings in sectors that had yet to be explored. Of all the ideas that Bonderman has laid out over the years, cloud computing is among the newest.
Bonderman said, at the annual AVCJ conference in Hong Kong, that the cloud computing industry is going through “huge dislocations”.

Cloud computing refers to technology that allows users to access data, software and services over the Internet and corporate networks, and has been touted as the next big trend in the technology sector. To learn more about RDX and Cloud computing see our Cloud Storage solution using RDX by Analyst Eric Slack of the Storage Switzerland analyst firm.