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StorageTek CHANGES FACE OF TAPE AUTOMATION

StorageTek reinvented tape with the introduction of tape libraries and on-demand access to massive amounts of data in 1987. Today, StorageTek is once again reinventing tape automation.

"In 1987, we advanced the tape industry, and quite frankly, we're doing it again for data protection today," said Pat Martin, StorageTek chairman, president and CEO. "StorageTek's Information Lifecycle Management strategy is about having the right information in the right place at the right time. We are taking automation to the next level and revolutionizing the way companies approach data protection and data management."

At FORUM 2003, before more than 800 customers, partners, exhibitors and industry analysts, StorageTek, the storage services and solutions expert, introduced the StorageTek StreamLine SL8500 Modular Library System.

Designed to make enterprise tape easy to manage, share and grow, the SL8500 is the industry's first tape library to provide true mixed media and interfaces to consolidate enterprise and midrange computing infrastructures and allow for dynamic upgrades of capacity and throughput. With outstanding manageability, scalability, superior reliability and performance, the SL8500 is a fully integrated automated tape system that revolutionizes enterprise tape.

"The performance and reliability are unprecedented," said Gary Francis, StorageTek corporate vice president and general manager of Automated Tape Solutions.

Designed with extensive input from StorageTek's high-end enterprise customers, the SL8500 will be the largest MVS and Open Systems library available in the market that provides breakthrough reliability, availability and serviceability, with fully redundant, hot-swap components and not one, but multiple robots.

"Enterprises need a way to balance the exponential growth of data with the right way to collect, move, share, store and protect it," Martin said. "The StreamLine SL8500 is the first offering in our newest family of modular library solutions that builds on our rich heritage in automated tape and broadens our current portfolio of Information Lifecycle Management options. When we say the SL8500 will truly revolutionize the way companies approach data protection and management for years to come, it isn't hype -- it's fact."

The SL8500 will provide approximately 1,500 cartridge slots with the capability to grow to more than 200,000 slots via pass-through-port capabilities. As opposed to competitive offerings that must be hard partitioned at the magazine or drive level in order to use multiple media, the SL8500 is designed to make consolidation simple and easy to manage. The SL8500 will attach into mainframe, supercomputing, UNIX, Linux and Windows environments providing seamless support for mixed media including the StorageTek T9X40 family of tape drives, LTO Gen2 and SDLT 600. To handle unpredictable peak workloads experienced when sharing a library across many servers, the SL8500 robotics can provide more than 1000 mounts per hour. The SL8500 will also have the highest slot density in the industry with more than 50 cartridges per square foot.

"From the beginning, StorageTek has been innovative in automated tape solutions for both Mainframe and Open Systems computing environments," said Dianne McAdam, senior analyst and partner of Data Mobility Group analyst firm. "The performance, reliability and manageability of the SL8500 are impressive. StorageTek has done an excellent job in understanding customer's data protection requirements and building solutions that meet those needs. The company continues to drive innovation to the tape market with the SL8500."

"StorageTek has been a visionary in high-end, automated tape solutions for both Mainframe and Open Systems computing environments," said John McArthur, group vice president of Storage Research at IDC. "The company continues to drive innovation in the tape market with the SL8500, offering substantial advances in scalability, performance and flexibility."

The StorageTek StreamLine SL8500 provides customers with ultra high reliability, availability and serviceability. IT managers can choose the level of availability based on the mix of hot-swappable, fully redundant components which can be upgraded dynamically on-the-fly as well as by adding capacity or increase throughput without scheduling downtime.

Future functionalities will include the integration of disk to simplify the backup processes, dramatically reduce backup errors, and automate data management. Also, the SL8500 will support policy-based backup management features such as tape copy, media conversion and electronic vaulting. This combination will allow for:

• More Reliable Backups -- By providing a reliable disk buffer in front of the tape drives, the StreamLine SL8500 will then manage any drive or media errors in the background. Backups will complete to the disk buffer, and then if any errors are encountered in moving the data to tape, the SL8500 will automatically complete the backup to a different tape drive and/or cartridge.
• Automatic Media Migration -- Since customers typically keep their enterprise libraries for multiple generations of tape drives, the SL8500 is designed so that new drives can be removed and replaced within the system without affecting the servers. The disk buffer can continue to present the same image to the servers even though the drive technology behind it has been updated. To simplify migration, the old data can be migrated to new cartridges via customer defined policies automatically and without human intervention.
• Drive Sharing -- Since the traditional approach of dedicated drives to particular servers resulted in inefficient drive utilization, the SL8500 will support drive sharing behind its disk cache. IT managers no longer have to manage and balance drive utilization across servers, thus requiring fewer drives to store the same amount of data. Drives can be shared across various flavors of Unix, NT, Linux and mainframe.

For more information on StorageTek's tape storage options, visit www.storagetek.com/products/tape_storage.html.