Spectra Logic Unveils New Tape Library For Small Businesses, Remote Sites

The T50 offers LTO technology to smaller businesses and is based on the same code base as Spectra Logic's T950 and T120 enterprise-class tape libraries, said Molly Rector, director of technical marketing at the Boulder, Colo.-based vendor. The T50 supports up to four half-height or two full-height LTO tape drives. Though both types of drives offer the same capacity, there is a performance hit when using half-height LTO tape drives, Rector said.

The library has room for up to 50 LTO tape cartridges, which are loaded into the unit in groups of five through the company's TeraPack magazines. One or two of the magazines can be configured as separate virtual tape libraries for remote management, according to Rector.

"It's a good solution for remote offices where there are no technical people, but where there is mission-critical data to back up," she said.

The T50 is a scalable library, Rector noted. Customers can start with as few as 10 slots and add more slots in increments of five via a downloadable license key. If customers outgrow the library, they can trade it in for a larger library. "This means easy upsell opportunities for the channel and a recurring revenue stream," she said.

The library's remote user interface shows the information on the front panel to offer permission-based marketing through the Web browser, which allows solution providers to market new promotions to customers, such as a deal to upgrade a tape drive, Rector said. Customers can also use the panel to order new tapes, and they can turn it off.

If the T50 detects a problem, such as a fan that is close to failing, it can self-develop a repair ticket and send it to the solution provider by mail or via some other method, letting VARs be proactive in servicing customers, Rector added. Customers that pay an extra $200 over the cost of their four-hour maintenance contracts can also have spare parts such as a drive, fan, power supply and cleaning tape for instant replacement by their solution providers, she said.

The T50 competes with StorageTek's L20 and L40 libraries, ADIC's Scalar 24 and Overland Storage's NEO 2000 and NEO 4000, Rector said. The list price for the T50 starts at $9,300, which includes one half-height LTO-2 drive, 10 media slots enabled, a remote management interface, a barcode reader, a color touch screen, and a 4U rackmount enclosure or a desktop enclosure.