Features - Storage Innovations:

NEW BREECE HILL DATA PROTECTION APPLIANCE AIMED AT SMBs

Breece Hill LLC, a manufacturer of tape autoloaders, libraries and integrated information storage appliances, announced the general availability of the iStoRA 4000, a combined-media data protection appliance. The iStoRA 4000 is the first in a family of data protection products that delivers seamless Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape (D2D2T) functionality to meet the needs of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and departments within enterprise organizations. By allowing staged backup, rapid restore and regulatory-compliant technology in a well-priced, plug-and-play package, the iStoRA offering brings high-end features and benefits to smaller businesses.

Single-Box System Delivers Up To 13TB Of Data

The iStoRA 4000, based on Breece Hill's Information Storage and Retrieval Architecture, is a 4U rackmountable, combined-media data protection appliance for backup, recovery and archival. It features a 1.5TB Serial-ATA disk array and a tape autoloader with a choice of tape formats and capacities up to 13TB. The iStoRA 4000 also integrates an Intel-based server and data protection software that performs policy- (or rules-) based data traffic and storage management. The iStoRA 4000 combines the best features that disk and removable storage can deliver:

• An affordable backup, recovery and archival solution from a single-box architecture that is easy to deploy, manage, use and extend.
• Staged backup from network clients and network-attached storage (NAS), where the most frequently accessed data is stored on disk while reference data is archived on tape.
• Policy-based, multi-staged and fully managed replication and migration of protected data throughout a combination of storage devices including disk arrays and several choices of tape media.
• File grooming, where all data is backed-up to disk initially and individual files are moved to specific units of media based on file types, ownership and/or other parameters.
• Full media tracking that delivers individual file-level recovery from media that is online, near-online, offline or offsite.
• Data authentication and legal compliance from optional WORM media that provides a non-erasable and unalterable record to meet the needs of the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) Rule 17a-4, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

"At Breece Hill we recognize that every organization can benefit from the sophisticated data protection and storage management capabilities found in high-end products that utilize disk and tape, which in the past, only the largest companies could afford," said Breece Hill President Phil Pascarelli. "The iStoRA 4000 is our first offering to deliver these high-level features with disk-to-disk-to-tape storage capabilities in an integrated, easy to manage, turn-key appliance that is affordable to small and medium sized organizations as well as departments and remote offices of enterprise companies."

iStoRA 4000 Fills Unique Market Niche

Breece Hill resellers are excited about adding the iStoRA 4000 to their product mix, as they have seen a market need for this product for quite some time. Scott Leif, president of Globalstor Data Corp in Chatsworth, Calif., has been integrating his own RAID-to-tape solutions to meet market need. "Breece Hill's iStoRA 4000 gives companies the ability to decrease their backup window, increase their individual file restore time and have a redundant solution in a single, integrated box," he explained. "This solution is so much simpler than trying to integrate heterogeneous products not meant to work together."

David Breisacher, chairman and CEO for GST Inc of Lake Forest, Calif., agreed. "The iStoRA 4000 will become the product of choice for the small and medium enterprises that want a reliable data storage solution that so simply answers the need to back up data in a smaller window," said Breisacher. He also cited that the product's ability to use WORM-based technology makes it the ideal solution for companies concerned about compliance issues.

Noted storage market analyst Fred G. Moore, president of Horison Information Strategies, agrees. "The iStoRA 4000's combined media data protection approach is quite different from the emulation and virtualization schemes predominant in most disk-to-tape data protection offerings today," said Moore. "The iStoRA 4000's all-in-one box design coupled with the Integrity data protection software represents a unique, easy to use, turn-key solution that is attractively priced for small- to medium-sized businesses and departments. With the value of data increasing daily, the amount of time it takes to recover data has become very costly. iStoRA delivers significantly faster backup and recovery times when compared to traditional solutions enabling businesses to resume operations more quickly while minimizing the impact of an outage."

The State of Arizona Treasury Department recently purchased an iStoRA 4000. "After researching the market, we chose the iStoRA 4000 based on the unique way it seamlessly migrates and replicates data between the storage mediums, yet still enables us to manage the disk and tape as independent backup devices," said John Turner, senior project manager. "We also feel the product was priced well and will give us a good return on our investment."