HP Debuts Scalable LTO LTFS Library for SMBs

A proliferation of data is being driven primarily by the increase in unstructured content. This growth, combined with the need to maintain data for longer periods of time, is creating scalability, security and cost challenges for data protection and archive. However, midsized companies cannot afford large enterprise systems to meet these escalating data requirements.

Unlike traditional monolithic tape libraries, which can only scale in large increments, the new StoreEver MSL6480 Tape Library from Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. is built on a modular, scalable architecture designed to meet both the short-term data protection and long-term archive requirements of midsize businesses. It can start small and grow flexibly as needs change, offering a combination of scalability, density and performance at a competitive price point.(2)

Capacity and performance scalability
Keeping up with data growth, spikes in demand for services, and variances in backup windows and retention periods is challenging for midsize organizations. They need fast storage systems with flexibility to increase performance and capacity on an as-needed basis without impacting productivity.

The MSL6480 delivers performance of up to 60.4TB/hour and accommodates scalable data growth from 240TB to 3.5PB in a single tape library. This represents 2.1-times faster performance, 1.3-times more scalability and 1.3-times more density than the nearest competitive midrange tape library.(1)

Other customer benefits include:

• A pay as you grow pricing model that enables customers to purchase additional tape drives to increase capacity and boost performance.
• Reduced costs with the ability to scale from 80 to 560 slots without the need to rip and replace smaller, individual products as storage needs grow.
• Effortlessly increase performance and capacity with continuous robotics and expansion modules for addition of tape drives and cartridges.
• Easy to install with the highest storage density of any midrange tape library

The MSL6480 is customer-installable and easy to configure without complicated cabling, tools or technical support. It provides storage density of 81TB per 1U, or 1.75 inches, of rack space, enabling customers to share racks with other hardware. High storage density reduces power and cooling consumption, minimizes storage footprint requirements and lowers costs. Customers can further maximize their investment in StoreEver MSL Tape Library models by reusing existing StoreEver MSL tape drives and tape media to avoid reoccurring costs.

Making offline storage
as easy to use and manage as online storage
The MSL6480 simplifies data protection management and archiving for midsized businesses with:

• StoreEver Tape Assure technology, which delivers intelligent, proactive and predictive reporting on tape library performance, utilization and health
• Front-panel color touch screen, web-based remote management and diagnostics from across the room or across the globe
• StoreOpen with LTFS for ‘tape as NAS’ file management capabilities, making tape as easy to access and share as disk based file systems
• Support for LTO standards allowing the reuse of current HP MSL Tape Storage drives and LTO tape media in MSL6480 tape libraries for investment protection

Enhancing security
of long-term data retention and protection
When paired with StoreOnce Backup for information protection or StoreAll Storage for information retention, the MSL6480 reduces risk by placing data on offline, portable media for protection against online threats such as viruses.

MSL6480 also features library-based encryption and key management as well as WORM protection to prevent accidental overwrites.

It integrates with HP Converged Storage, HP Data Protector, and third-party backup and archive software and solutions. As a result, it delivers a data protection and archive architecture that balances cost and performance.

MSL6480 is the latest addition HP’s tape storage portfolio, StoreEver Tape Storage(2) family that includes tape media, tape drives and tape libraries that store up to 75PB of data in a single tape library.(3) In addition, StoreEver Tape Storage drives and libraries support removable tape media for virtually limitless capacity, to support growing digital archives.

Meeting big data scalability demand
Traditional backup software architectures are unable to meet the scalability demands of today’s enormous growth in structured and unstructured data. The new Data Protector 8 backup and recovery software offering scales to protect environments of up to 1 trillion unique filenames, over 100 times larger than other enterprise data protection software applications available on the market today.(3) In addition, its performance scales to provide a single session backup performance of up to 144TP per hour with StoreEver LTO-6.(4)

Data Protector 8 expands HP’s approach to data protection across primary storage, disk backup and tape archive. It now includes native 3PAR StoreServ snapshot integration, expanded support for StoreOnce including the new StoreOnce VSA, and automated migration from disk backup to tape archival solutions, as with MSL6480.

Pricing and availability(5)
The MSL6480 scalable base module is available at an entry price of $30,000. Data Protector 8 is available at a starting price of $1,238. Both offerings are available worldwide from HP and authorized channel partners.

HP StoreEver Tape Storage info-graphic about the changing role of tape

(1) Based on HP internal comparison of published specifications of similarly priced and featured competitive products, accurate as of May 2013.
(2) Using a fully populated 16 frame ESL G3 LTO-6 tape library with 2.5:1 compression.
(3) Based on HP internal comparative analysis of publicly available data from major competitors.
(4) 400MB/sec LTO-6 performance at 2.5:1 compression, 100 parallel tape drives in a single backup session.
(5) Estimated U.S. list prices. Actual prices may vary.

Read also:
BDT Entering Into LTO LTFS Archive Solution
Its OEMs will appreciate.