ProStor Systems Announces Availability of Multi-Tiered Storage System for Fixed Digital Content

Online, April 18, 2011 (Newswire.com) - ProStor Systems, the leader in enterprise-class removable disk storage systems for business backup, archiving, and retention management, today announced the availability of the InfiniVault® Model 70, a multi-tiered storage system for fixed digital content.

With the emergence of digital assets and continued rapid data growth, fixed digital content now represents over 75 percent of all data. IT departments can dramatically reduce the percentage of their budget dedicated to storage by moving fixed digital content to a multi-tiered storage system that manages the placement of data across a range of storage tiers.

The InfiniVault Model 70 virtualizes data across online, nearline, offline, and offsite tiers based on policy:

-Online disk for rapid access to active data
-Nearline disk for long-term retention
-Offline for integration into existing workflow where removable media is required
-Offsite for additional protection/disaster recovery

The InfiniVault Model 70 can be used to provide long-term data archive or scalable storage pools for the primary and protection copies of fixed digital content from multiple departments, customers, or applications. By centralizing long-term storage for fixed digital content, IT departments can dramatically reduce administrative overhead associated with procuring, scaling, maintaining, and upgrading multiple archive and storage systems.

Penn Foster Career School, the nation's largest accredited school of independent study, uses the InfiniVault to support various tiers of storage for a wide range of data. "Research data, staff email, and student records are all stored on the InfiniVault system," according to Tim Condon, manager of IT services at Penn Foster. "We can align each data type's policies for retention and data placement across tiers to the specific requirements of the users. Centralizing the management of the storage for all these applications on one system has greatly simplified our operations."

In addition to the reductions in OpEx achieved through simplified management, the InfiniVault Model 70 offers significant reduction in CapEx. Using an appropriate storage tier optimized around nearline storage significantly offloads expensive primary and secondary disk-based storage tiers and stops the endless cycle of scaling these expensive tiers, including the capacity, licensing, management, and power/cooling requirements and ultimately needing to migrate the data every three to four years.

"A system that reduces both CapEx and OpEx represents a significant opportunity for IT departments," said Simon Robinson, research director for storage at The 451Group. "Tiering fixed digital content from multiple departments across online, nearline, and offline media in one system has the potential to do just that."

The intelligent data management capabilities inherent in the Model 70 allow administrators or users to dictate a wide range of attributes across multiple copies of the data set - including Read/Write, Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM), Retention, Encryption, Compression, Singleinstancing, Automatic Data Verification, Number of Copies, Placement, and Time-based elements. Remote replication capabilities are included in every system. Automatic Data Verification, a feature that checks the integrity of data stored on the InfiniVault RDX® cartridges then repairs lost data by reconstructing the cartridge, ensures data integrity.

"With the addition of significantly more online disk than previous InfiniVault systems, the Model 70 opens the door to using the system for the primary copy of fixed digital content," said Ian Duncan, vice president of marketing and strategy at ProStor Systems. "With its intelligent virtualization capabilities, the Model 70 will store data in the most appropriate and efficient tier for fast access, long-term retention, or recovery."

As the only vendor offering RDX technology as part of a multi-tiered storage system, ProStor is uniquely suited to provide a cost-effective solution where data is stored at the most effective level given business retention and retrieval requirements. RDX technology allows for highly granular expansion and eliminates the migration cycle. The InfiniVault offers backward- and forward compatibility so that any capacity RDX disk can be intermixed in the system, realizing dramatic cost savings as data grows by eliminating the need to purchase a new system. ProStor has shipped over 200 petabytes of RDX capacity and sold the InfiniVault storage system to over 200 customers.

The InfiniVault Model 70 is now available at a starting price of $59,995.