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Overland Storage's Neo 4000 Series tape library has recently been enhanced with support for the new high-capacity SDLT 320 drive from Quantum. This latest implementation of Quantum's SuperDLT technology raises the capacity of the Neo library by almost a third, to 33.2TB, with a maximum transfer rate of 1.84TB/hour - both figures are potentially doubled when compression is applied.
A key selling point of the Neo 4000 Series is its modular format. This enables capacity and performance to be increased as and when the need arises, while also enhancing system availability because modules can be swapped.
The base building block is a 10U rack-mountable unit that can accommodate up to four tape drives. The drives can all be hot-plugged, just like the twin redundant power supplies that power each unit.
There is also a choice of DLT8000, SDLT 220 and the new SDLT 320 technology, plus the increasingly popular Ultrium tape drive from the LTO consortium. On the downside it is not possible to mix different drives in the same library with the Neo.
The robotics built into each Neo module are impressive, with slots for up to 52 DLT/SDLT cartridges or 60 of the slightly smaller LTO Ultrium tapes. These are loaded via doors at the front, using four separate magazines. Two mailbox slots are also provided in each Neo module to allow ad-hoc changes and quick backups without disturbing the magazine setup.
A touch-screen at the front of each unit enables local management. However, in practice cartridge changes will usually be carried out via the built-in remote Web interface or via the software tools. The Neo can be used with all the leading types of backup software on a wide range of platforms.
Expansion is achieved by stacking the Neo modules, up to four high, using additional XpressChannel hardware at the rear to shuttle cartridges from one module to another. This approach enhances availability and the library can continue to work even when one or more modules are removed - for example, for maintenance or repair. Each module is fitted with its own controller card, communicating with others in the stack via a private Ethernet LAN, with failover facilities in the event of a failure of the nominated master controller.
A separate 10Mbit/s Ethernet port is provided for remote Web-based management while host connectivity is achieved using the built-in LVD Ultra Wide SCSI interface or optional HVD interface. Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) connectivity is supported with an add-in FC-2 adapter capable of supporting server-less backup with a sustained transfer rate of 150MB/s on the latest 2Gbit/s SANs.
Price: £17,000 for a unit with a single SDLT 320 drive and 52 cartridge slots
Contact: Overland Storage 0118 989 8000
Have your say: contact IT Week
See also:
HP's StorageWorks Ultrium 460 tape drive handles 200GB of uncompressed data and offers 30MB/s sustained transfer rates 29 Nov 2002
All Back-up Storage
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