Review: Sepaton's Virtual Tape Library Successfully Swaps Tape for Disk Backup

What happens instead is that customers using tape backup worry about their systems. Switching to a different backup mechanism can be costly, both in dollars and in time.

Disk-based backup vendor Sepaton has a solution for those customers: virtual tape library. Sepaton's S2100 DS2 Series 500 writes data onto the hard disk dive, but it is designed so that it looks like a tape drive to the backup software. The DS-2 is the company's second-generation VTL specifically designed for the SMB that requires less than three Tbytes of data backed up every night.

For this review, Channel Test Center hooked up a S2100-DS2 to a media server from Hewlett-Packard. Sepaton says the DS2 is compatible with most of the major backup applications, including Symantec's NetBackup and Backup Exec, EMC's NetWorker, BakBone, CA ARCserver, and IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager. Test Center engineers used NetBackup software for the test system and evaluated the product's ease of installation, use, and maintenance. The DS-2 makes the switchover from tape backup to disk-based backup easy because the change occurs entirely on the back-end. As far as the backup software is concerned, it's still tape.

Priced at $15,900, the DS-2 is a heavy 3U unit with 16 drive slots. The bays are easy to open and loading the 500 Gbyte SATA drives into each one was a snap. Despite its size, it has a fairly standard look and feel, looking like just another SAN device.

Even though the DS-2 is specifically designed for the SMB (ES-2 is for the enterprise), its price tag means customers should have an annual storage hardware budget greater than $15,000 to make this system worthwhile.

However, Sepaton has made deployment a snap with its 30 Minutes Box-to-Backup configuration. The system comes preconfigured with the most common options so installation is a matter of cabling the unit, assigning an IP address, and defining the network settings. A placemat that accompanies the unit outlines the six steps for setting up the DS-2, beginning with unpacking the box and ending with running the QuickStart CD to set up the network. The placemat pictorially shows where the power, Fibre Channel and Ethernet cables plug in on the back. The placemat also explains how the LED indicators on the device light up depending on whether it is a 7-Tbyte system or a 3.5-Tbyte one. After connecting the cables and turning it on, Test Center engineers placed the QuickStart CD into a laptop to complete the management configuration. The software detected the DS2 on the network and configured the rest of the network settings. Installation took only 23 minutes.

Tape backup has disadvantages other than rumors of its demise. Tape takes a long time to write data and requires a wide backup window while servers go offline. It also has slow restore times. Tape drives have reliability issues and there's a lot of maintenance housekeeping required to make sure the drives are mounted and running. Finally, with growing data volumes, tape quickly becomes unwieldy and difficult to manage while storing all the cartridges

The DS-2 solves the speed problem handily. The unit boasts speeds of 300 Mbytes per second, drastically shrinking backup windows. "When we sell this, the customers have a backup window that is out of control. They see it's a shorter window using this technology, and they see that we are telling the truth [about the DS-2]," said Mike Adams, storage practice leader at Lighthouse Computer Services, a Sepaton partner.

Restores are also much easier with a disk-based backup than tape. The exact data can be accessed immediately on disk " something that's not possible with tape since it has to be read sequentially to find the data. Test Center engineers found the DS-2 was very fast. There were some video files and basic data files on the media server. Unlike tape backup, the speed of data being backed up is no longer limited by the drive. It depends on the backup server; the DS-2 will write data as fast as the server can send it.

The DS-2 also simplifies maintenance. It monitors system status automatically, providing a real-time server health status on the management console. The DS-2 has automated all of the disk management tasks such as capacity provisioning, de-fragmentation, and load balancing.

The web-accessible console is the strongest feature of the product. The health monitor, while a little confusing to figure out, is a great first step for troubleshooting. It detects component failures and helps fix the problems. The console also presents all the VTLs, SRE nodes, tape libraries, and disk drives attached to the DS-2 in a hierarchy. The view presents the entire backup/restore environment in a straightforward manner.

Along with overall system health, the DS-2 performs several monitoring functions in real-time. It tracks the amount of storage space used and how much is available; the virtual cartridge's capacity, free space, and write-protect status; as well as the number of cartridges and drives currently installed. The console also lists the status for the fan, CPU, and power supply.

The console can handle other maintenance activities, such as adding and deleting virtual libraries, virtual tape drives, and virtual tape cartridges; mapping the SRE node port, LUN, and LUN masking; and expanding and shrinking the size of the "cartridges". The system's firmware can also be updated and the unit restarted from the console. Finally, the console also simplifies adding and expanding new storage components " a very common maintenance task.

Sepaton's de-duplication technology can take 100 terabytes of data and store it on 10 terabytes of disk space. The system can take in more data in less space and keep it accessible for much longer.

Sepaton offers a one-year warranty on the unit. Before purchasing the unit, customers can try it out for a 30-day qualified evaluation period.

Revenue opportunities for solution providers lie primarily in margins, services, and licensing fees. They can take care of maintenance, troubleshooting the network and the unit when the management console indicates there is a problem. They can also offer technical support and training. Sepaton offers partners direct access to the support and sales teams and to the online portal. Sepaton also generates leads and hands over qualified leads to the partners.

The DS-2 is a step in the door for solution partners, said Adams. "It's a keystone to establishing trusted relationships between the customer and the partner," he said. Once the customer likes the product and the partner, other projects " more complex and sophisticated " follow.