Tape Libraries Advance Storage Capabilities In Enterprise

ADIC unveiled its Scalar i2000 library, which scales up to 12 LTO or DLT tape drives or 24 AIT drives, with up to 400 tape cartridges, in a single module, said Matt Chew, product manager at ADIC, Redwood, Wash. List price with installation and one-year, on-site service starts at about $83,000 for two LTO drives and space for 200 cartridges. Additional modules provide a maximum capacity of 48 drives and 1,674 cartridges.

Sony Electronics, San Jose, Calif., recently introduced PetaSite tape libraries, which use the vendor's new SAIT tape drives. The libraries scale from two to 96 drives with a maximum capacity of 1.2 petabytes, said Tom Yuhas, director and general manager of Sony's Data Storage Solutions Group. A base configuration with two SCSI or Fibre Channel drives and up to 216 cartridges starts at $103,000. In June, Sony plans to offer modules to expand drive and cartridge capacity, he said.

Exabyte, Boulder, Colo., unveiled a new family of LTO-2 tape autoloaders and tape libraries to its channel partners. The family includes a one-drive Exabyte 110L tape autoloader and the Exabyte 221L, featuring one or two SCSI or Fibre Channel drives and up to 21 cartridges. The enterprise-class Magnum20 library puts up to 150 cartridges into a 20U enclosure. It can be partitioned into up to four virtual libraries using a mix of LTO-1 and LTO-2 drives. The base price is $16,499.

"These new libraries can be used as near-line storage and have virtualization capabilities,both features [that] have been in the mainframe world but are new to open systems," said Kevin Reith, manager of strategic technology at Info Systems, a Wilmington, Del.-based storage solution provider.