News

posted on 13 May 2008 13:56

Data protection vendor Spectra Logic has picked FalconStor to provide deduplication and virtual tape capabilities for its nTier secondary storage drive arrays.

Spectra will integrate FalconStor's Virtual Tape Library and  deduplication software on its nTier Intelligent Secondary Storage (ISS) appliances. It will pre-configure and optimize the nTier Deduplication feature to ensure it arrives ready to deploy, saving customers' hours of installation and configuration time.

Virtual tape library software makes a drive array look like a tape library and tape drives to backup software, enabling fast backup to disk and disk speed restores compared to the slower sequential restore from tape catridges. De-duplication looks for block-level repetitions in files and replaces them with space-saving pointers. Such repetitions are common in backup files enable significant reductions in backup file size, of the order of 20:1 or greater.

Spectra's nTier ISS disk backup products—the nTier300, 500 (pictured left) and 700—are scalable from 10TB to 600 TB logical capacity, and are ideal for SMB and enterprise customers. The new nTier300, at just 3U, is uniquely suited for remote offices with smaller data sets, and will begin shipping this week.

Spectra's nTier ISS line, powered by FalconStor VTL software, offers replication, global deduplication and scalability for any sized customer.  The nTier300 is designed for small and distributed offices, the nTier500 for small to medium enterprises, and the nTier700 for large enterprises.

Heidi Biggar, an analyst for ESG, said: "Spectra's dedupe capability makes it possible for organizations with multiple remote offices to de-duplicate data across sites before any data is moved over the WAN, making the dedupe impact that much greater."

Nathan Thompson, Spectra Logic's CEO, said: "The FalconStor partnership is a perfect match and helps further Spectra Logic's dedication to secondary storage. Spectra can now offer global replication and deduplication capabilities to tens of thousands of existing tape library users, and open the doors for new business opportunities."

The Spectra nTier300 offers a virtual tape library (VTL) interface, FC or Ethernet connections, remote replication and global deduplication with an average of 20:1 data compression.  Spectra nTier Deduplication begins shipping this week. Entry-level list pricing for an nTier300 with deduplication functionality begins at $12,500. Spectra will also offer FalconStor's enterprise solutions, which have the capability to scale beyond 1PB of logical storage.

Is there any data protection vendor left that FalconStor can sell to now? The firm seems to have made a clean sweep of all the ones without in-house de-dupe or VTL facilities and even some of those who have.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}