RDX Storage Blog
RDX Multi-Slot System Libraries Support Medical Imaging Demands
By Rusty Rosenberg, Global Product Management Director, SMB Storage Business, Imation
With the introduction of RDX Multi-slot system libraries (MSSL), RDX is expanding its reach from a direct attach only device to a network storage device that can support a broad range of data center applications. The larger capacity of RDX Multi-slot system libraries, up to 8 TB of online and unlimited offline capacity, opens up support for new applications.
Multi-slot system libraries ensure reliable performance of data-intensive business operations, delivering the scalability, portability and total cost of ownership benefits, along with the speed and durability of disk. The multi-slot system library manages large volumes of data quickly and reliably. Operating in Tape Emulation mode, Multi-slot system libraries function as an 8-slot LTO autoloader. In disk mode (JBOD) mode, Multi-slot system libraries appear to the host as 8 individual and addressable disks with separate drive letters for each slot.
Medical Imaging is one vertical market where these multi-slot system libraries are being quickly adopted. Medical imaging devices (modalities) create data files which require large capacity storage solutions. Medical imaging is the technique and process used to create images of the human body for the purpose of diagnosing or examining a disease. In the past this meant hard copy analog “films.” Today, medical imaging encompasses radiology, nuclear medicine, investigative radiological sciences, endoscopy, thermograph, medical photography and microscopy. One certainty about medical images is that they are digital, higher in resolution and are often large data files.
RDX disk technology is proving itself in medical imaging where RDX Multi-slot system libraries are managing the complex data storage, backup, recovery and archiving functions of this file modality. Following are four emerging uses for multi-slot system libraries in the medical imaging market.
Primary Storage Overflow – Nearline Storage
RDX Multi-slot system libraries are being used as primary storage overflow for medical imaging. Tape has traditionally filled this role, but has had slow performance and lacks the ability to retrieve specific files. But now with the added capacity of a multi-slot system library that can accommodate medical imaging file modalities, not only does the solution deliver the scalability and portability of tape, but it provides the added benefit of the speed of write and retrieval and file format compatibility. It also adds the durability of ruggedized RDX disk technology.
Because RDX is a disk-based technology, the library can double as incremental nearline storage where image files can be retrieved quickly using random access in disk mode. Tape, as a volume-based media, cannot support the requirements of nearline storage where data must be available without the seek delays of tape. The competing technology for nearline storage is fixed disk arrays which lack the expandability, and portability of the RDX technology. RDX allows for simple incremental storage capacity without the investment commitment.
MO Disk library replacement
RDX multi-slot system libraries are also being used as a replacement for Magneto-optical (MO) disk libraries. Magneto-optical disk libraries are popular in some countries for storing medical images where high reliability, long life, and capacity have been driving factors for their use. Today, they are beginning to be replaced with the faster, higher capacity, portable disk RDX Multi-slot system library. An MO library can hold 16 or more disks, however their capacity only reaches 9.1 MB per disk vs. up to 1TB per disk with RDX. Unlike RDX, which is file-based backup, the MO disk library requires specialized archival software to store indexes of data and select disks. RDX Multi-slot system libraries allow the quick retrieval of images and also provide the portability capabilities to share images with other medical professionals.
Backup for Large Files – Medical Imaging
RDX direct attach storage is commonly used for the backup of company data in small and medium-size companies. Because of the increased library capacity of Multi-slot system libraries, RDX is suitable for the backup of the volume and large file modality of medical images. From backup, images can be quickly restored in a usable format through random access to select individual or multiple files thus avoiding the slower seek and restore nature of volume-based backup media.
Tape has traditionally been used for medical imaging backup. Unlike tape, RDX has no generational imitations and as such, is not limited by drive compatibility as tape is. All RDX docks, no matter what generation, can read all cartridges no matter what size; there is generational neutrality. Tape is generally limited in its backward compatibility to a two generation read limitation and a one generation write limitation on a tape drive. This means that data on tape media must be transferred every two to three generations to the current tape drive generation. RDX is compatible across all generations and therefore does not have to be transferred except as bound by the life of the cartridge (30 years). Additionally, because RDX is file based, it does not require the elaborate tape backup software and the overhead that comes along with it. Image file by image file backup is possible.
Medical Collaboration and Long Term Archives
It is a well known fact that network bandwidth can’t keep up with the volume of data companies produce today. Transport over the network is not practical. With medical units needing to share images for diagnostic and disease monitoring, the portability of RDX ruggedized cartridges offer a clear advantage. RDX ruggedized cartridges can withstand a drop of up to 1 meter onto a concrete floor making them ideal for hand-carried transport or shipping offsite.
RDX cartridges provide a simple, fast transport mechanism for hand, courier or overnight delivery. A Multi-slot system library cartridge can be extracted and transported to another Multi-slot system library or a direct attach RDX dock providing dock-to-dock connectivity. The RDX cartridge compatibility between Multi-slot system library and direct-attached RDX provides a means for medical personal to quickly share images.
SMB and SOHO Data Storage and RDX Storage Technology
Driven both by corporate business needs and government regulations, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) today face the challenge of safely storing and protecting their corporate data—whether those assets are in the form of data, images, video or audio. RDX Storage Technology meets and exceeds these requirements.
Did you know that:
• A hard drive crashes every 15 seconds
• 2,000 laptops are stolen or lost every day
• 32% of data loss is caused by human error
• 31% of PC users have lost all of their PC files to events beyond their control
• 25% of lost data is due to the failure of a portable drive
• 44% of data loss is caused by mechanical failures
• 15% or more of laptops are stolen or suffer hard drive failures
• One in 5 computers suffer a fatal hard drive crash during its lifetime
(University of North Carolina Technology Survey)
The quantity of the information SMBs generate and consume daily is estimated to be growing at an alarming rate of 60% annually. Just like their larger counterparts, SMBs must manage and safeguard this data and other physical records or face business disruption, devastating losses or potential failure of the business itself. SMBs storage needs are similar to those of large corporations, but the fact is that the storage solutions must be completely different. The key component of an effective data storage solution can enable SMBs to simultaneously establish practical and highly effective backup and archival practices.
A Convergence of Factors
The backup and storage capacity requirements have been fueled by a convergence of factors: companies today require 24×7 access to increasingly large amounts of data; compliance regulations now extend the retention periods for documents and data; and companies have gained a growing awareness of the need to back up their data as part of an overall business continuity or disaster recovery plan.
Instant access to data is now taken for granted, whether in the office, on the road or working remotely. This has become a business imperative as unmanaged or poorly managed data can bury decisions under even higher piles of conflicting data. This can also cause companies to waste time looking for information, reducing overall productivity and leading to missed opportunities to grow the business, from losing individual sales to losing customers.
At the same time, the expanding body of state and federal government legislation and compliance requirements now mandate how and when certain types of information may be used, stored, retained and destroyed. In addition, certain industries have regulations mandating how information must be stored and made available, and the Internet has produced a growing body of privacy laws.
Properly managed, data is a strategic corporate asset. Improperly managed, it can become a significant liability. In the case of a litigation request, for example, companies are responsible for producing the required information that is needed for its defense. Company executives have the responsibility of producing the right records at the right time.
Therefore, companies have a growing awareness of the necessity of disaster recovery programs that include the regular backup and archiving of data so that in the event of a natural disaster (fire, water damage, etc.) they can quickly access another copy of their corporate data and be back up and running again quickly.
However, while companies may recognize the value of their data and the negative impact of data loss on their businesses, many are still not adequately protecting their data. According to Small Business Computing magazine, 40% of SMBs don’t back up their data at all, and 60% of all data is stored on PC desktops and laptops. Looking at SOHO users, only 73% who have a personal backup device back up at least monthly, and only 40% back up daily. This failure to protect data adequately can have dire consequences. Disasters aren’t always extreme—an extended power outage can devastate a small business just as a major earthquake or flood. Personal disasters are even more likely, according to the following statistics from research at the University of North Carolina’s Information Technology Service:
40% of SMBs don’t backup their data at all, and 60% of all data is stored on PC desktops and laptops.
SMB Storage Gets Personal
Today’s Dynamic: Technology Evolves To Keep Pace with Storage Requirements
The good news is that the right storage devices, such as RDX Storage Technology, can help SMBs share data, collaborate in an automated way and protect their valuable assets. In addition to avoiding wasted time and improved collaboration, SMBs can move more quickly and arrive at key decisions more efficiently if they manage, backup and intelligently migrate data on an ongoing basis.
Unlike large enterprises; smaller companies usually have a systems administrator that will handle storage as an added task rather than a dedicated storage expert, necessitating that data protection be simple to understand, implement and administer.
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 and throughput, with portability and an external button to start their backup as other key features. RDX Stoarge technology meets these.
Establishing Personal Storage Best Practices
There are numerous laws, regulations, standards and business practices that include data retention requirements. SMBs must comply with the record keeping requirements defined by regulators, their industry and by legal precedence. The retention requirements vary significantly from one type of data to another and the same data may be required to be kept for different time periods by different states.
SMB Storage Gets Personal - Today, RDX Storage Technology solves these problems for SMBs and SOHO.
Ultimately, by instituting a records management and storage process:
• Storage becomes highly reliable and error-free
• Archived assets are easy to preserve, locate, reuse and resell
• Archival storage becomes the standard, rather than a luxury
• Disaster recovery best practices can be instituted
Summing it Up
RDX Removable Hard Disk Storage System makes your data backup easier, faster, more reliable and more secure. It uses a rugged, removable disk cartridge and docking station that backs up just like a tape drive. Yet its speed makes it a smart replacement to 8mm, VXA and DLT performance tapes. In fact, the RDX Storage System is able to back up more than 125GB of data per hour and allows you to access files instantly. Cartridge capacities range from 160GB to 1TB, making storage options extremely flexible. And you’ll never run out of storage space, simply add more removable cartridges as your data needs expand.
The growth of corporate digital assets and issues such as compliance and disaster recovery have expanded small- to medium-sized business storage requirements. Feature for feature, the RDX Removable Hard Disk Storage System is a reliable, flexible and expandable solution designed to meet these growing data protection needs. Combining the removability and high capacity of tape with the random file access and performance of disk, RDX provides a compelling answer to the onsite/offsite data protection needs of small businesses and branch offices.
RDX Cost Effectively Matches and Surpasses Tape
Attempts to replace tape with various technologies have always failed because they could not match or surpass tape in its removal, capacity, archival or low-cost benefits that users demand. The industry has therefore been searching for and exploring technologies that both complement and address low-end tape’s biggest detractors; its relatively low performance during both backup and retrieval operations, and its relatively high failure rates when compared to disk.
RDX technology successfully and cost-effectively matches and surpasses tape in all of its key aspects AND provides the backup and retrieval performance of random access disk with 99.999% reliability. The RDX technology solution is the only viable removable backup technology for high-capacity desktops and low-end servers.
RDX technology is a removable hard disk drive system that handles and operates like traditional tape drives and media, yet has all of the advantages of disk-to-disk (D2D) systems. The RDX technology device allows for backups to be accomplished in the traditional fashion of working just like tape – moving data directly to a device with removable media. To the computer, the RDX cartridge looks just like a tape cartridge. However, backup performance and reliability are distinctly different.
It takes RDX technology less than half an hour to back up 80 GB of native data at its 45 MB per second transfer rate. For this same operation in the tape world, a DLT V4 drive takes over two hours, a DAT160 drive takes almost four hours, and a DAT72 drive requires over seven hours. And on a restore, RDX technology media has all of the read/write advantages of a hard disk drive. What also takes hours of serialized search in the low-end tape world, takes milliseconds with the RDX technology drive. In brief, a RDX technology backup lets you vastly improve customer response times by allowing you to recover customer files in minutes instead of hours.
Removability and Portability
The 3.5-inch form factor RDX technology drive system utilizes a unique removable media that is ruggedly designed for portability. RDX technology media consists of a mobile 2.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) suspended in a highly durable cartridge. The same 2.5-inch drives are most often used in laptop computers due to their size and locking head feature. With its protective, shock-proof cartridge design, the RDX technology cartridge passes drop tests in excess of one meter onto a tiled concrete floor without damage.
Before the arrival of RDX technology, users had to choose between tape, disk, or a combination of both to back up their high-end desktops and low-end servers—each with architecture, performance, and cost issues. Now there is a viable alternative— RDX Technology. RDX is the only backup technology that offers the best of both worlds: tape (removability, affordability, archivability) and disk (higher performance, simplicity, reliability) — all in one cost-effective package.
It’s What’s Inside that Counts
By Ian Duncan, Vice President of Marketing at ProStor Systems. One of the best sales tools that our team has in their armory is a clear RDX cartridge. It enables us to show customers what the inside of the cartridge looks like. Basically it’s a 2.5” mobile hard drive with additional shock mounting and ESD protections. Because the drive casing is also transparent we can show customers precisely how the technology works – seeing it up close is so much more effective than drawing it on a whiteboard or presenting a set of slides. It’s easy to think about the ‘R’ in RDX standing for Removable (as in Removable Drive Technology) but the reality for many customers is that the ‘R’ actually stands for Retention – it becomes the media that they use to store long term data on.
Most people are painfully aware of the retention requirements that Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and PCI have placed on companies – in addition to these formal requirements there is an absence of data management policies in many companies that results in an attitude of ‘We’ll keep everything forever’. Whilst that isn’t a particularly sustainable approach it does support the fact that companies of all sizes are thinking long and hard about how they most effectively retain information for an extended period of time.
The major technology components that enable both R’s (Removability and Retention) are broadly speaking the same. The standard mobile drive is embedded in a case with additional shock mounting and ESD protection but it’s the drive itself that has the technology that most of the customers are intrigued by when they look at the transparent version. Historically drives have used CSS (Contact Start/Stop) mechanisms which allow the recording head to ‘park’ on the platter when it’s not spinning. RDX drives use Ramp Loaded Heads which come off the platter completely when they aren’t reading or writing to the disk. This has a couple of major advantages;
In terms of Removability it allows a much more significant shock and vibration specification to be stated – because the head is locked down the drive can support a drop of up to 1m onto a tiled floor.
In terms of Retention it eliminates what is known as ‘Stiction’. If the head is resident on the platter (even if it is parked on a neutral zone) and the drive experiences any kind of vibration then lubricant is transferred from the platter to the head. If the drive is then spun down for any period of time that lubricant can actually cause the head to stick to the platter when the drive is restarted. This can cause damage to the platter.
These technologies are at the heart of what gives the RDX drives such a long archive life – a study by the Percept Technology Labs (available here – http://www.rdxstorage.com/PS-WP-Percept-Testing.pdf) found that within a reasonable operating environment (temperature up to 78 degrees F and 5 – 95% Humidity) the RDX drives are a statistically safe storage media for 30 years.
Post contributed by Ian Duncan, Vice President of Marketing at ProStor Systems, ProStor Systems provides solutions, which include RDX Technology, for the cost-effective, long-term storage of digital information.
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.
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.
