Features - Storage Innovations:

COPAN ANNOUNCES DISK-BASED ALTERNATIVE TO TAPE STORAGE

COPAN Systems announced Revolution 200T, the first and only storage solution to deliver a disk-based long-term data repository with the performance, availability and data protection of disk and the price and scale of tape. Based on COPAN Systems' patent-pending architecture, Revolution 200T is purpose-built for write once­read occasionally applications, delivering two to three times the density of tape, and 10 times faster data access than tape. Designed to fit seamlessly into current IT environments, the Revolution 200T is targeted toward backup/restore and scientific research applications.

"Our vision is to change the way long term digital data is stored and accessed. The majority of Fortune 500 enterprises are currently caught in a stranglehold between the cost-benefit of tape, the growing business costs of tape-based access, and the high price and lack-of-scalability of disk-based storage," said Dave Davenport, COPAN president and chief executive officer. "We have combined the best of tape and the best of disk in the Revolution 200T to fill the hole in the storage hierarchy."

"Relying on tape for backup and recovery is a risky proposition at best. To create an environment when tape even begins to approach enterprise-class reliability requires an unreasonable amount of effort. New approaches such as disk staging only address the problem of backup windows, as all the data still goes to tape," said Sunny Vanderbeck, CEO of Data Return. "COPAN Systems will address the entire problem set -- cost, scale, performance and protection."

Most large enterprises currently keep 85 percent or more of their business data on tape. As enterprises are required to keep more data available for faster backup and recovery, scientific research and legal requirements, the inefficiency of tape and the cost and scalability barriers of disk are causing enterprises to look for a new solution. For backup alone, enterprises spent $1.7 billion on disk-based storage in 2003, according to Michael Peterson at Strategic Research. Enterprise Storage Group states that in two years, 53 percent of all protected data will be backed up to disk at some point in its lifecycle.

"IT and storage managers have struggled to figure out the right balance of storage infrastructure and specifically what will effectively sit between traditional tape and disk," said Steve Duplessie, founder of Enterprise Storage Group. "COPAN Systems offers a 'no-compromise' implementation: A disk-based archive solution of massive scale with robust TCO advantages that doesn't impact current IT processes. Until now, disk has been seen as a short-term storage repository. With its innovations, COPAN has created a disk-based system for long-term storage."

Revolutionary Architecture

COPAN Systems Revolution 200T moves beyond standard MAID architectures with four key patent-pending innovations to deliver the performance, availability and data protection of disk at the price and scale of tape.

• Power-Managed RAID provides greater data protection by spinning only the drives necessary to meet the needs of the application. This reduces heat and vibration which enables higher-density packaging and cost reduction.
• Disk Aerobics monitors and manages drive health to ensure data vitality, delivering enterprise class SATA reliability and extending drive life by four times ­- equivalent to SCSI.
• Three-tiered architecture scales performance with capacity while minimizing cost.
• Unique form factor, packs 14 drives in a 3.5TB canister.

COPAN Revolution 200T

The Revolution 200T provides enterprise-class performance and reliability, allowing customers to minimize use of tape at a cost that is affordable. Key features of the Revolution 200T include:

• Massive Scalability ­- scales from 56 to 224TB in a single cabinet with up to 896 drives.
• High-bandwidth -- 2.4 TB per hour.
• Data access -- 10 times faster than tape.
• Increased protection -- all data is protected by RAID.
• Seamless integration into current environments using the virtual tape library interface.
• Cost-effective -- $3.50/GB uncompressed.
• Enterprise class management and reliability.
• Purpose-built for active archive applications characterized by write once­read occasionally.

Revolution 200T supports NetBackup, CommVault, and BakBone applications running on Solaris and Linux platforms. Additional support will follow.

Ideal For Backup/Restore And Scientific Research Applications

Designed to fit seamlessly into current IT environments, Revolution 200T can be applied to an application or function where cost and performance are currently at odds. However, with this first release, COPAN Systems has focused its solution on backup/restore and scientific research applications. Key benefits include:

• Removes difficulties of tape and enables all data to remain online.
• Significantly improves backup speeds and time to restore.
• Speeds time to market by increasing research efficiency.
• No increase in complexity.
• No technology migration required by tape.
• Less hardware, less management, less time (performance, access).
• Total cost of ownership is up to 20 percent less than tape (TCO), almost 50 percent less than D2D2T architectures.

COPAN Systems architecture has been validated by over 100 enterprise customers, including many Fortune 500 institutions spanning financial, media, manufacturing and high-end computing industries.