Ultera Tapes It Up With Exabyte - new tape RAID solution - Company Business and Marketing

Computer Technology Review, Dec, 1999

Ultera Systems and Exabyte Corporation announced a partnering relationship to deliver breakthroughs in backup performance and reliability with a new tape RAID solution built around Exabyte's 690D DLTtape library. This partnership offers backup to tape, while also providing a level of fault tolerance. The Exabyte-Ultera tape RAID solution combines Exabyte's multi-terabyte scalable DLTtape 690D library with Ultera's Striper-3 Tape Array RAID controller to create a next-generation network backup solution that provides performance and data availability with data rates up to 144GB/hr.

"This tape RAID solution offers backup time and assurance that the backup job will be successful," said Tim Studebaker, vice president of automation business at Exabyte. "With Ultera's tape RAID, customers not only increase throughput, shorteningthe required backup time, but they also receive a level of fault tolerance. This means this solution can sustain either a failure of a single drive or media without losing the backup job."

The Exabyte 690D DLTtape library was designed to take advantage of the performance enhancements enabled by Ultera's Tape Array RAID technology. The library array solution is the result of a collaboration between Exabyte and Ultera engineers that empowers 690D customers to scale up to supercharge their backup operations by upgrading to tape RAID capability in a plug-and-play installation. An Ultera Striper or Imager array controller module can be installed into an internal compartment on the 690D that was designed for the OEM and system integrator who wants to incorporate Ultera's tape RAID technology directly within the library itself. The integration also enables a library operator to control the tape RAID controller via the front panel LCD on the Exabyte library. The result is the first turnkey DLTtape RAID product on the market.