Overland Storage, Inc.

New SnapServer DX Models Deliver Their Full Value with Dynamic RAID and Provision Free Storage

2011-10-26T10:00:00Z

More storage capacity, new options to configure storage capacity and a starting price point of under $2,000 -- that's the at-a-glance description of the newest Overland Storage model, SnapServer DX, available in a 1U and 2U form factors, SnapServer DX1 and SnapServer DX2, respectively. But what makes the new NAS/iSCSI SAN SnapServer DX so compelling is the increased flexibility that it offers to organizations to manage and scale, using the new DynamicRAID technology which contribute to eliminating the need for organizations to provision storage altogether.

Nearly every new generation of every storage array is inevitably accompanied by corresponding increases in storage capacity and performance and in this respect, SnapServer DX is no different. Both the DX1 and DX2 may start with as little as 600GBs of storage capacity and two (2) GbE ports with the DX1 scaling up to 120TBs in storage capacity and four (4) GbE ports and the DX2 scaling up to 288TBs in storage capacity and six (6) GbE ports. The most important difference between these two models is the increased flexibility they offer to manage additional storage capacity with SnapServer DX's new DynamicRAID technology. While the SnapServer DX models still give organizations the option to configure and protect disks using traditional RAID options, they can now choose to configure their DX models with DynamicRAID to receive new flexibility to manage disk drives in them so they can more quickly respond to changing storage requirements in their environment.

Many businesses are challenged by accelerated data generation and rapidly changing storage environments and traditional RAID is not well positioned to meet these new demands. To optimize storage using traditional RAID presented as volumes or LUNs, administrators need to be constantly monitoring and managing them. This is a task that many no longer have either the time or the inclination to do.

With Overland Storage's DynamicRAID technology the historical problems associated with managing and optimizing storage utilization go away. Now administrators have the flexibility to dynamically increase or even decrease a volume size as application demands change without causing either business disruption or downtime.

The SnapServer DX and its DynamicRAID technology also provide organizations a number of other benefits that many will only come to see after they implement this storage system in their environment. For example, they can:

Take advantage of mix and matched hard disk drives (HDD). Most traditional RAID technologies require that all of the HDDs in a particular RAID pool are all of the same capacity or, if they are not of the same capacity, the maximum amount of capacity that can be used on a disk drive can be no more than the smallest HDD in that RAID group. For example, if a four disk RAID5 group consists of three (3) 500GB drives and one 1TB drive, the RAID5 group could only use 500GB of the 1TB drive.

DynamicRAID removes the limitations of traditional RAID. Any similar disk type in the SnapServer DX storage array may be of any size or speed. Further, DynamicRAID takes advantage of all of the capacity on each of these drives so whether a 1TB drive is added or a 3TB drive is added, organizations get full use of all of the capacity on that drive

Avoid provisioning storage altogether. While having extra storage capacity is great, administrators and application owners routinely request and allocate too much storage to specific applications "just in case." While this approach works fine when a storage array only supports one or two applications, when it starts providing storage for dozens of applications, this philosophy of providing extra storage "just in case" starts to cost a lot of extra money.

To preserve this safety net of allocating extra storage to applications without requiring organizations to spend extra money or effort, the SnapServer DX features a new auto-provisioning feature that requires no manual intervention. This feature tells the application that it has the extra storage capacity that it may eventually need but it only assigns as much storage to the application as it is actually using.

Now as the application stores more data, the SnapServer DX gives it more storage capacity. In addition, this auto-provisioning feature also works in reverse such that as the application uses less storage capacity, SnapServer DX releases the extra storage capacity and gives it back to the storage pool, enabling a reallocation of capacity to other applications that need it.

Deploy larger disk drives more quickly using SnapServer DX's 64-bit OS. The SnapServer DX 64-bit OS is a feature that is easy to overlook and may seem only marginally relevant when buying a storage array. But by upgrading the OS to 64-bit, Overland Storage laid the foundation for the SnapServer DX to deliver even greater storage capacities in the future.

One of the problems with 32-bit operating systems is that once disk drive sizes went over 2TBs in size the OS could not effectively address all of the additional storage capacity on those drives. This is why it has taken some time for many storage providers to certify 3TB drives in their systems even though these size HDDs have been available for a while. Even if they did certify them, the OS on their storage arrays could not effectively utilize all of the storage capacity on these drives.

With the OS upgrade to 64-bit, SnapServer DX can effectively use and manage all of the capacity on today's 3TB drives and accommodate larger capacity drives that come in the future. In so doing, organizations can expect to continue to easily scale their SnapServer DX to even higher capacities going forward as new HDDs become available.

The two new Overland Storage SnapServer DX models may on the surface appear to be simply two new unified storage arrays with increased storage capacity and performance at an attractive price point. But a peek under the hood reveals the new DynamicRAID technology and 64-bit operating system that lay the foundation for easier storage management today and storage scalability tomorrow.

However these two new SnapServer DX models deliver more than just storage capacity and scalability at a lower price -- it delivers them in such a way that organizations need to spend less time and effort managing these features while enabling them to fully utilize their available storage capacity. That's a value that is bound to impress any organization.

SnapServer N2000 Assumes Multi-faceted Role in Neumont University's Backup Environment

2011-07-07T12:00:00Z

When companies discuss their backup strategy, disk and tape are almost always part of that conversation. But in a recent interview that I did with Matt Jorgensen, the system administrator at Neumont University, we did more than talk about how the value of the Overland Storage's SnapServer N2000 and NEO 2000e in its backup strategy. We also discussed the critical role that the SnapServer N2000 plays in supporting the two different backup products in Neumont's environment.

Neumont University is like any other organization in this respect: It wants to get as much value as possible from its investment in data protection. So when Jorgensen sought to add disk to Neumont's backup strategy in 2011, he needed a solution that fit into his budget, enabled him to leverage his skill set and positioned Neumont for the future.

Two requirements somewhat unique to his environment were:

A desire to use a disk-based solution that supported iSCSI
Ability to concurrently handle backups from two different backup software products

His desire to use iSCSI as the preferred backup protocol instead of file-sharing protocols like CIFS or NFS stemmed from his experience managing VMware environments. He had already implemented an iSCSI SAN in support of his VMware environment so he was familiar with it and knew the performance advantages that it offered over CIFS and NFS.

What was also driving his decision to adopt disk as a new backup target was that he was planning to use Veeam as his preferred backup software for his virtual environment to complement his existing Backup Exec implementation. While he planned to configure Backup Exec to backup to his new disk target, Veeam could only backup to disk. So whatever disk-based solution he selected would need to act as a backup target for both of these products.

In comparing the features of a number of disk-based solutions on the market and how much they cost, the one that immediately differentiated itself from the competition was the Overland Storage SnapServer N2000.

While Jorgensen was already familiar with Overland Storage's tape-based NEO offerings, he was surprised to find that the SnapServer line of products offered the technical features he needed at a price that fit within his budget. He says, "The SnapServer price point was a big attraction plus it was going to do what we wanted it to do."

What he specifically liked about the N2000 was that it enabled him to start small and scale capacity as Neumont's backup needs dictated. At the time he was evaluating the N2000, he was still in the process of planning to deploy Veeam so he only needed sufficient storage capacity in the N2000 to initially handle backups from Backup Exec.

The N2000 enabled him to do this. Rather than having to fully populate the entire 2U frame with twelve (12) disk drives, the N2000 gave him the flexibility to start with four (4) 2 TB disk drives and then add on more disk drives as his storage demands increased. It was this flexibility coupled with the N2000's affordability that led him to select and deploy the N2000 in February 2011 with an initial storage capacity of 8 TBs.

But as Jorgensen anticipated, he quickly needed to add more storage capacity as approval was internally given for him to purchase Veeam to protect his virtual environment. So to store this data, he purchased another 8 TBs of storage (four more 2 TB drives) and installed them in the N2000. This still left him room for another 8 TBs of capacity in the N2000 should he need it in the future.

Jorgensen has now fully deployed both Veeam and the N2000 in his environment. In configuring the N2000, he presented four 2 TB iSCSI LUNs to Backup Exec for it to use as backup targets and one 1 TB LUN to Veeam for it to use as a backup target.

Yet what makes the N2000 configuration particular appealing to Jorgenson is that he uses Backup Exec in conjunction with Veeam to offer a D2D2T solution for his virtual environment.

Even though Veeam cannot move data off to tape, Backup Exec can take the backups that Veeam has completed of Neumont University's virtual environment, copy them and store them on tape on Neumont's NEO 2000e. This gives Jorgensen the freedom to move his virtual environment backup data offsite via tape that he needs for disaster recovery even as the N2000 provides him with sufficient capacity to store 2+ weeks of backups online from both his physical and virtual environments.

In using the N2000 solution, Jorgensen accomplished two important objectives for Neumont University: affordably backup to disk and use it as a single target for two backup software products. He says, "We plan to use this dual approach to backup for the foreseeable future so we can backup and recover from either VMDKs or the file level and use either disk or tape media. The Overland Storage N2000 and NEO 2000e give us the flexibility to do so at a price we can afford."

Use Tape to Keep a Firm Grip on Data Stored in the Cloud

2011-03-10T11:00:00Z

To many enterprise organizations, the question of whether or not they will store backup data in a cloud is already a foregone conclusion: it will be stored there. But that does not mean they should abandon tape in their new cloud-centered environment. Practical use cases for tape abound since tape enables enterprises to keep a firm, long-term grip on data that they temporarily or permanently store in the cloud.

It is clear that tape's role in data protection has changed. The declining cost of disk coupled with the availability of multiple service providers that offer cloud-based backup services has made it both practical and affordable for almost any size enterprise to use a cloud-based backup solution.

But as enterprises transition to the cloud, the question they are bound to ask is, "What role, if any, should tape have now that we are storing our data in a cloud?" Answering that question requires understanding some of the shortcomings of using a cloud as a primary target for backup data, as well as differentiating between the needs of short-term primary backups and long-term archival storage.

Here are concerns that enterprises looking to use the cloud as a backup and recovery target should be prepared to answer:

Backing up the first copy of data to the cloud. A first backup is almost always a full backup and that can take a long time to complete if sending a large amount of data over a WAN connection.

Recovering data from the cloud. Recovering large amounts of data from the cloud can be just as tedious. While recovering some files, a few directories or maybe even an entire server may not be a problem, recovering multiple servers or an entire site over a WAN link will take some time.

Meeting compliance requirements. Storing data to the cloud means that enterprises give up some level of control of their data to include possibly not knowing where exactly their data is stored, how it is being handled, who has access to it and how secure it is.

The cloud does not absolve enterprises of their data management responsibilities. Just because data is stored in the cloud does not mean it is forever secure and accessible. Cloud providers can lose data or even go out of business. But for financial and healthcare organizations that need to keep data seven years, ten years or even longer, that does not absolve them of their responsibility to produce that data even if their cloud provider is no longer in business or mishandles the data.

While a lot of questions about cloud-based storage remain, one thing is for sure... tape is well positioned to address these concerns that organizations have about adopting the cloud as their primary or sole storage medium. For instance any time a large amount of data needs to be moved either for backup or recovery, data may be first copied to tape and then the tape taken to the site where the data will be recovered.

In the case of doing an initial first full backup of all data to the cloud, it may be more economical and faster to backup all this data to tape, send that tape to the cloud provider and then only backup incremental over the WAN to the cloud after that. Conversely, if a large restore needs to occur quickly, first restoring data to tape, sending the tape to the client site and then using the tape as the source to restore the application may again be faster than trying to send all of the data over the WAN to the client site.

In terms of meeting compliance requirements, tape still has the features of immutability and longevity on its side. So by storing data that is subject to compliance requirements on tape and then keeping that tape copy in a secure location, enterprises have the assurance that they can economically store the data that they are required to keep and can produce it whenever to satisfy any specific regulations to which they are subject.

The cloud may be the future of data storage for many organizations but that does not mean that the role of tape has disappeared. Instead tape is finding for itself a new and better role within enterprises that it is better suited to satisfy: complementing disk-based storage technologies.

By enterprises leveraging tape in this new role that takes advantage of tape's economy, immutability, longevity and power savings, enterprises are able to realize the best of both of what the cloud and tape have to offer while keeping a firm grip on the integrity and security of their data.

Overland Storage SnapSAN S1000 Rekindles the Passion for Server Virtualization among SMEs

2010-11-01T13:00:00Z

Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) love the cost savings and new found flexibility that server virtualization offers their organization. Yet when they start uncovering all of the costs associated with implementing the networked storage infrastructure needed to support their virtualized server infrastructure that joy can quickly fade away. It is those SMEs despairing about these virtual server storage costs that should look to the new Overland Storage SnapSAN S1000 as a way to rekindle their passion for virtualization.

Entry level storage arrays are probably one of the fastest moving and most dynamic segments of the storage industry right now. Yet it is SMEs who are adopting server virtualization that are largely driving the innovation in this space. As they implement server virtualization, they are almost universally implementing networked storage to support their newly virtualized environments.

The challenge that SMEs are running into, however, is finding entry level storage arrays that meet their technical needs without breaking their budgets. It is common for many of the application servers targeted for virtualization to currently use internal or direct attached storage. As such, the cost of these drives is probably one tenth to one fifth of what a networked storage solution with a comparable amount of storage capacity would cost.

The natural tendency among SMEs is then is to identify an affordable entry level storage array to address these concerns. However using an entry level storage array in the sub-$10,000 range is rarely an option as these systems may lack one or more of the following features:

A choice of disk drives. Entry level solutions typically only offer SATA disk drives but SMEs may also be looking to virtualize more performance intensive applications such as Microsoft Exchange or SQL Server. To do so, they need higher RPM SAS disk drives that will deliver the performance these applications need.

A choice of storage protocols. Entry level storage systems with iSCSI Ethernet connections abound. However when it comes to finding storage systems that support higher performing Fibre Channel storage networking interfaces, they are almost non-existent in this space.

Virtual server OS certification. Most products in the entry level storage space support virtual operating systems but those that are also certified with the leading virtual server OS providers (which is needed if you ever want support from that OS vendor) is surprisingly small.

High availability. This may be the largest deficiency of entry level storage arrays as many only offer one controller. But when SMEs virtualize their servers, they are betting their business on high availability so they need storage arrays that match their business requirements.

This is the virtual gap that the recently announced Overland Storage SnapSAN S1000 fills in the entry level storage array market. The SnapSAN S1000 has many of the features found in enterprise midrange arrays but, with a starting price of $6,995 for 4 TB's of iSCSI storage, is one of the first entry level storage arrays to have enterprise characteristics that today's SMEs need.

For example:

The S1000 supports a mix of three (3) drive types including SAS, SATA and Green SATA drives. While the S1000's support of SATA is no surprise, the S1000's support of SAS is definitely a plus as users can configure RAID groups with those drives and then assign those groups or LUNs to high performing applications.

Further, Overland Storage's decision to support Green SATA drives that can be spun down when the application is not accessing them should also resonate with SMEs. Archiving data to disk is a fast growing trend across all size organizations, and SMEs are not excluded from it. The S1000's support of Green SATA drives now gives SMEs the option to archive data on disk that keeps their costs down over time.

It offers FC storage network connectivity. While it is unclear how many SMEs may need or want FC, the S1000's support for FC opens the door for it to find its way into enterprise accounts that may already have FC SANs but want to cost-effectively introduce extra storage capacity into that environment.

It offers an Active-Active controller configuration. The Active-Active controller configuration of the S1000 is probably the one feature that sets it apart from most other entry level storage arrays. Granted, when configured as Active-Active, the S1000 will run more than the advertised $6,995 price point as that price is based on a single controller configuration. But in this configuration, SMEs can create a highly available storage system at a much lower price than to what they are accustomed to seeing.

Further, the S1000 gives SMEs the option to start out with one controller and then scale to two at some later point should they need it. This puts the S1000 in a class of its own among entry level storage arrays.

The S1000 is certified with all leading virtual server OSes. Every SME knows that at some point it is eventually going to need support for their environment and, odds are, that support call is going to somehow involve the OS provider. Therefore the last thing any SME wants to tell them is that they are using storage that is not certified with their OS. To Overland Storage's credit, it has already addressed these concerns with the S1000 by certifying it with Citrix, Microsoft and VMware.

Server virtualization is probably one of the most exciting technologies to happen to SMEs in a long time as it opens the door for them to create enterprise like computing environments on SME budgets. But to do that, they need the right infrastructure to deliver on that vision.
Up to now, the storage infrastructure has been somewhat of a hindrance in realizing that dream as they oscillated between the cost savings associated with internal or direct attached storage and the feature functionality of networked storage systems.

The Overland Storage SnapSAN S1000 largely addresses those concerns. By bundling enterprise features into the S1000 and then putting a very attractive price tag on it, SMEs now have access to a storage solution that meets both their technical and budgetary requirements for their emerging virtualized server environments.

eClaris Finds All the Evidence It Needs to Prove that Overland Storage is the Right Tape Library for eDiscovery

2010-09-14T14:00:00Z

Evidence. It is that crucial item that can exonerate a company or subject it to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in penalties. So in today's world where organizations are occasionally tasked with sorting through mountains of data stored on tape to locate a critical piece of information to proof innocence or guilt, the difference between the right technology and the wrong is what may determine whether or not an eDiscovery job gets done. This is what eClaris, an eDiscovery consulting firm, recently found when it selected Overland Storage and its NEO 4000e to do its eDiscovery from tape.

Quickly doing eDiscovery in today's age of explosive data growth requires organizations adopt a sophisticated, scientific approach to accessing, indexing and searching data and especially as it pertains to data stored to tape. Many organizations still store both their archival and backup data stores on tape to take advantage of tape's economy, portability and simplicity. But when it comes to accessing the data on these tapes as part of a broader eDiscovery search, the process gets a bit more complicated.

eClaris' Founder and President, Jacques Ngue, explains that eDiscovery is all about examining massive volumes of information. The process generally involves extracting and analyzing the data from these tapes which is then used by eClaris to build repositories that act as data warehouses. He says, "Once the data is aggregated we can help a law firm produce the information it needs to complete its eDiscovery."

It was this type of client request that recently led eClaris to select the NEO 4000e over competitive tape library models. eClaris was asked to assist a law firm in a search investigation that involved 1500 LTO-3 and LTO-1 tapes which contained approximately 1 petabyte (PB) of data. Further, there was a tight deadline associated with this investigation as eClaris had less than 60 days to extract the data, index the content and build a database that would end up holding close to 6 billion records.

To meet the objectives of this client's project, eClaris needed a tape library that supported a large number of LTO tape cartridges as well as other intangible features such as:

Quick turnaround. eClaris did not own a sufficiently large tape library that that could store all of their LTO tapes. So with the clock ticking, eClaris started to get bids on appropriately sized tape libraries only to find that it could take three (3) weeks or longer before they could get one onsite.
Highly reliable. eClaris was no stranger to tape libraries having used them in prior search investigations but the high amount of data to go through coupled with the short window of time in which to complete the task made eClaris nervous. It had experienced as much as 10% downtime on other tape libraries it had owned and it did not have that luxury in this particular circumstance.
Fast throughput. eClaris had less than 60 days to complete all of the tasks assigned to it but that did not mean it could spend the entire time accessing, indexing and searching the data on tape. All of the data had to be retrieved as quickly as possible from the tapes and, since many of the backup jobs consisted of multiple tapes (up to 40), it needed a tape library that supported multiple tape drives that could quickly stream the data from tape to disk so it could then be accessed, indexed and searched.

eClaris early on identified the Overland Storage NEO 4000e as a tape library that had the needed features to help it get the job done (support for up to 240 LTO tape cartridge slots and 16 LTO tape drives). However it was the intangible benefits that Overland Storage and the NEO 4000e provided that prompted eClaris to use Overland Storage to handle this particular tape eDiscovery case.

One of the main reasons that Overland Storage got the nod over its competitors was its ability to quickly deliver a tape library. As Ngue began looking to place an order for a tape library, he found that the lead time for comparable tape libraries from other vendors was well over three (3) weeks. He says, "Overland Storage was able to deliver its NEO 4000e in less than five (5) business days which was a definite plus."

Once he had the NEO 4000e onsite, he got to experience firsthand some of the recent enhancements that Overland Storage made in its NEO 4000 product line. Going into this project he recognized that this project would put a tremendous amount of stress on the tape library since hundreds of tapes would be going into it. Tape cartridges would be rotated, read, rewound and reread so he was bracing for the tape library to experience some degree of fatigue as he knew it was a mechanical device and would be subject to failures under these types of conditions.

But in this case nothing happened. What he found remarkable about the NEO 4000e was that it did not have any of these issues. Ngue says, "The NEO 4000e was stellar in that we quickly came to learn we could count on it to run all night, all weekend, and even read data from tape 3 or 4 days straight without any problems."

Finally eClaris took full advantage of all of the tape drives on the NEO 4000e. eClaris found that as it streamed data from tape to disk that the tape drives could achieve in production their advertised throughput LTO-4 tape drive performance rates of 120 MB/second native and 240 MB/second compressed. This enabled to eClaris to access the data it needed when it needed it without unnecessarily waiting on the tape library.

eDiscovery is never an easy task and doing eDiscovery that involves pulling back months or years of data stored on tape cartridges can make things even more complicated. Further, intangibles that may appear to have nothing to do with eDiscovery such as a vendor's responsiveness, the reliability of the tape library and the throughput on the tape libraries are what may ultimately determine whether or not a tape eDiscovery is completed successfully.

It is this lesson that eClaris learned without going through the school of hard knocks. Choosing the Overland Storage NEO 4000e as its primary tape library to handle the retrieval of data gave eClaris the capacity and performance it needed. But because of Overland Storage's prompt response and reliability, eClaris was able to take advantage of these features almost immediately and continuously utilize them without worries about unexpected periods of prolonged downtime.

In so doing, eClaris is now able to help its clients quickly and confidently get the evidence that they need from tape to successfully prove their innocence or convict the guilty. But regardless of guilt or innocence, eClaris' Ngue says, "We would not be able to meet these tight deadlines that our clients sometimes place upon us when doing tape eDiscovery without the use of the NEO 4000e tape library."

NEO 8000e Readies Itself to Assume Archiving Role in Enterprise Data Management

2010-08-30T10:00:00Z

Over the past few years there has been a lot of hype that tape storage is being left dead. But while disk is capturing the fancy of enterprise organizations because of disk's success in solving their primary backup and recovery problems, longer-term issues with data management are just now starting to surface. It is for this reason that enterprise data centers are finding new tape library solutions such as the Overland Storage NEO 8000e well suited for their emerging archiving needs.

Companies are no longer just paying lip service to effective data management; it is now viewed as a core enterprise issue. According to IDC the amount of electronic data created and stored in 2011 will grow to 10X the 180 exabytes that existed in 2006 which totals 1.8 zettabytes. Driving extreme data growth are a number of factors including:

The high cost of data loss
Organizational mandates to drive more cost efficiency out of the infrastructure
Budget constraints
More regulatory requirements regarding data retention.

The challenge for IT then becomes how to balance their new needs for faster, successful backups and recoveries with complementary archiving solutions that provide a low cost per GB, a long shelf life, minimize power consumption and maximize floor space consumption.

It is for this combination of reasons that both disk and tape continue to be used in enterprise organizations. While disk solutions are being used as the primary target for backup and recovery, tape is settling very nicely into its new role as a deep archive for rarely accessed data in these organizations. In fact IDC anticipates that sales of automated tape libraries with more than 100 tape cartridges may actually rise over the next five years.

This is driving innovation in the tape library market as is evidenced by Overland Storage's recent introduction of its new NEO 8000e tape library.

The new NEO 8000e provides up to 3PB of storage capacity on as many as 1000 data cartridges. Further, by including support for up to 24 LTO-5 tape drives that support throughput speeds at 1TB per hour per drive, it can move data at a whopping 24 TBs per hour.

The NEO 8000e includes the features that enterprises expect tape libraries designed for their environments to possess. Redundant robotics and power, remote management, a reduction in the number of moving parts, embedded partitioning and power management are just some of the features offered by the NEO 8000e.

Beneath the covers the NEO 8000e includes a new interface that allows it to direct connect to tape drives. This connection eliminates its prior dependency on bridge cards which should result in improved tape library reliability as well as new flexibility in providing network connections since enterprise may now have as many different interfaces (FC, SAS, SCSI) as they have tape drive slots.

The NEO 8000e also embeds partitioning at the software level. This is usually available only as a hardware add-on feature or as a firmware option that is turned on via licensing. The NEO 8000e eliminates the need for more hardware as well as the upfront firmware licensing cost by making it a standard feature that every organization can use at no charge for up to four (4) partitions.

This feature takes on added significance since more enterprise organizations are looking to consolidate archive data from multiple business units onto one device while still keeping the data from each business unit logically separate. Using this freely available partitioning feature enables enterprises to configure the NEO 8000e so it appears as a separate physical library to each business unit.

The NEO 8000e has also beefed up its reliability. In tape libraries reliability is measured in terms of MCBF (mean cycles between failures) with most tape libraries in this class averaging about two million MCBF. But due to the improvements Overland Storage has made in its NEO 8000e it has been able to increase its MCBF to four (4) million, resulting in a lower cost of ownership and improved performance.

Possibly most important to enterprises during continued times of economic strain is NEO 8000e's price: the base configuration with 100 cartridges is currently available for $47,999 MSRP. In addition, between now and the end of September 2010, end users who purchase a 100 slot configuration can upgrade to a total of 500 slots at no additional charge, representing a savings of up to $36,000. This promotion gives end users the opportunity to use the capacity they need now and not have to pay for a capacity upgrade when their storage needs increase.

Disk may be taking over the role as the primary backup target but the focus of enterprise organizations is shifting from solely solving their enterprise backup problems to solving their larger enterprise data management issues. As they do, tape and tape libraries are clearly staying in the enterprise conversation because of the new role that tape is anticipated to play in archiving.

Overland Storage is well positioned to address the end-to-end data protection issues of customers in this class. With an extensive background in storage, Overland understands what is needed to make products such as the NEO 8000e well-suited to address the long-term backup, archive and disaster recovery needs of the most complex data center.

The Overland Storage N2000 Goes Rich in Features but Stays Sensitive in Price

2010-08-16T10:00:00Z

It is no secret that small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are still keeping their belts tight in the face of the economic slowdown that has occurred. This is forcing them to change how they do business which means bringing in the right technologies to make sure their employees can still get their work done. As they do, more are bound to find the Overland Storage SnapServer N2000 the right technology to help them meet this objective.

A survey produced by RingCentral, a self-described Internet phone service for small business, reports what most SMBs already know: it is becoming increasingly rare to have all of their employees in a single office.

Many SMBs are cutting back on office space and instead encouraging their employees to work offsite in their home or shared offices. In addition, many are leveraging part-time employees or contractors to do specialized or non-business critical tasks.

The challenge in this environment is that it becomes difficult to identify the right technology to accommodate the needs of this increasingly diverse and distributed workforce. One such challenge is identifying a storage solution that can securely store and share information between all of these different individuals so they can do their respective jobs but that does not break the budget of the SMB.

The common technology response to meeting this challenge is to use Network Attached Storage (NAS). However the trouble with using NAS in this new environment is that most NAS solutions that SMBs can afford are not really designed to meet these enterprise requirements.

Most NAS devices in their price range are consumer-grade in feature functionality. They have been primarily developed and marketed to individuals who are more concerned with storing the most recent iTune download or pictures from Aunt Suzie's birthday.

The type of NAS features that SMBs need - availability, flexibility, reliability, and scalability - are available but lack the one feature that they do need: affordability. To get enterprise features means they need to spend enterprise like dollars and most do not have $40K in their budget to purchase an enterprise caliber NAS solution that meet their higher end requirements. As a result they often settle for a sub $10K NAS solution that is more appropriately labeled as a consumer grade device.

The good news for SMBs is that they now have a new option. New to the sub $10K NAS market is the Overland Storage's SnapServer N2000. In addition to rounding out Overland Storage's own range of NAS solutions, it more importantly provides these SMBs the extra functionality that they have been looking for at a price point amenable to their budget.

The SnapServer N2000 offers:

A storage-optimized Linux platform. This is a feature an SMB is not apt to see on any other NAS appliances in this price range. The OS on the N2000 is GuardianOS is a 6th generation NAS operating system that is well beyond basic OSes found on other NAS appliances.

GuardianOS includes wizard driven menus that help guide SMBs through the installation and creation of storage volumes as well as offers a web-based management console to assist them in managing it.

By providing its own optimized operating system Overland is able to contain its costs and maintain complete control over the feature set on its NAS offerings. Other NAS platforms in this price range usually have pre-packaged OSes so they are subject to more limited feature sets plus they are forced to wait for the providing operating system vendor, such as Microsoft, to add desired or needed features, if they become available at all.

Storage flexibility and scalability. The base SnapServer N2000 unit comes with 4 drives though SMBs are not locked into a specific drive type. The N2000 gives SMBs the freedom to choose between either desktop or enterprise SATA drives in 1 and 2 TB capacities.

Further those SMBs that have performance sensitive applications such as Exchange or SharePoint can opt for lower capacity 300 or 600 GB SAS drives that support higher 15K RPM speeds. The N2000 also gives SMBs the flexibility to expand to a 12-drive system that can scale to as much as 144TB utilizing SnapServer E2000 expansion units if storage capacity is a concern.

Because SMBs are bound to have some applications that need both capacity (archiving or backups)and performance (Exchange Server, SQL Server, VMware) SMBs may mix both high performing SAS drives and higher capacity SATA drives in the same base system to meet these different application requirements.

Enterprise level system availability. The N2000 comes with the type of high availability features typically only found on enterprise NAS systems. It includes hot swappable drives, redundant power supplies and variable hot-swappable fans.

Complete integration with either Microsoft Windows or UNIX environments. A Linux based platform is sometimes a red flag to SMB users. But unlike other NAS solutions in this price range that use Linux, GuardianOS does not use kludgy workarounds to integrate with Microsoft environments.

It is fully compatible with Microsoft Active Directory Services (ADS) as well as UNIX Network Information Service (NIS) so it can be managed as other network devices and information securely shared using accepted and understood network security standards.

Centralized management and DR. SMBs have the same needs for instant backup and recovery as well as disaster recovery that enterprises have. The SnapServer N2000 has a robust feature set to deliver on these requirements to include replication, snapshot functionality at both the file and block levels, and the ability to manage multiple SnapServer devices from its integrated SnapServer Manager console.

Priced right for SMBs. The SnapServer N2000 is available immediately with configurations starting at $4,999 MSRP. Also, for a limited time, Overland is offering a "Double Your Capacity" promotion that enables companies to purchase a 4TB N2000 and receive a free upgrade to an 8TB solution.

No one disputes that times are tough but necessity is the mother of invention and the continuing tough economic climate is spurring needed innovation in this entry level of the storage market. The SnapServer N2000 is one such example.

Overland Storage brings forward its already mature GuardianOS software, adds in enterprise storage system features like multiple tiers of storage, high availability and support for mixed workloads, and stays price sensitive in the process. This means that SMBs that have developed enterprise-like storage requirements but thought they needed to purchase a consumer grade storage system now have a storage solution that is built and priced specifically for them.

Overland Storage Makes HA for Storage a Snap for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V Environments

2010-06-28T10:00:00Z

Mid-sized enterprises (MSEs) are leading the charge in corporate Green IT initiatives with server virtualization and storage consolidation but, as they do, are discovering a new need for high availability (HA). Yet MSEs have neither the time nor the staff to deploy and manage complex HA solutions, especially as it pertains to storage. This is why solutions such as the Overland Storage SnapServer SAN S2000 that automate and centralize the implementation and ongoing management of HA storage configurations are becoming critical to the success of these Green IT initiatives.

The focus of a 2009 report, Green IT: Why Mid-size Companies are Investing Now, put out by the Info-Tech Research Group examined the impact and adoption rates of 11 Green IT initiatives in mid-sized organizations around the world. Among the 1047 IT and business group professionals and decision-makers it contacted in organizations with 100 - 1000 employees, it found:

25% of those surveyed already had already implemented some form of server virtualization or storage consolidation
50% planned to proceed with one of both these initiatives in the coming 12 months
Over 70% of the implementations decreased future investment needed for storage and server devices while at the same time increasing storage and computing utilization

These types of results are motivating mid-sized enterprises to deploy server virtualization and storage consolidation but these solutions still have their issues. Dan Kuznetsky, VP of Research Operations at The 451 Group, says, "The more you think about it - the more workloads that you stack on a single machine - when something does go wrong, the more pain an organization is going to feel because all of those applications dropped on the floor."

This is making HA for these environments a prerequisite but centralizing HA for both virtual servers and storage is not as simple as it sounds. While both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V include a live migration feature that facilitates the live failover of virtual machines (VMs) from one physical machine to another, managing HA for storage systems from the same console is a rarity.

It is this HA challenge in storage environments that the Overland Storage SnapServer SAN S2000 addresses as it offers plug-ins for both the VMware and Microsoft Windows 2008 platforms. Using these plug-ins, storage on the SnapServer SAN S2000 may be discovered and managed by vCenter Server in VMware environments or Server Manager in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 environments. In this manner VMware and/or Windows administrators can use familiar central consoles to manage both their server and storage environments.

However the real power of the Overland Storage plug-ins is that they go beyond simply providing a common management console for both servers and storage. They also include wizards that automate the setup of HA across SnapServer SAN S2000s.

Take VMware for example. When setting up HA on storage systems without these plug-ins administrators have to:

Open up the management console associated with each storage system
Create a LUN on each of them
Decide on the RAID configuration of each LUN
Set up the mirror between the two LUNs
Assign each LUN the necessary security permissions so the ESX servers can access them via iSCSI.

Once those storage-related tasks are done, they still have to go into the vCenter Server console to enable the ESX server to access the individual LUNs on each storage system and then assign the correct data store to the VM.

New wizards included within the Overland Storage VMware plug-in that is freely available (as is the Microsoft plug-in) with every SnapServer SAN S2000 do much of this work as they eliminate the need for multiple management interfaces. Administrators may now just go to a tab within vCenter that displays one (or more) SnapServer SAN S2000s so they can:

Create a LUN on each SnapServer SAN S2000
Mirror the LUNs between the two SnapServer SAN S2000s
Present the LUN on each SAN S2000 to the ESX Servers
Create the VMware data store for the VM on each ESX Server.

Now in just a few screens from a central management console an administrator can go through the entire process of setting up an HA configuration for either a server (Live Migration) or storage (mirrored LUNs) perspective. Even if there was only one VMware ESX server with no redundancy, administrators can still mirror the LUN between the two SAN S2000s so the application can be configured for HA from a storage perspective.

MSEs see the value of Green IT as is being reflected by their adoption of server virtualization and storage consolidation but they also see its risk, the greatest of which may now be how their operations can grind to a halt should server or storage hardware fail. While simplified HA solutions for server virtualization operating systems like VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V have been available for a while, a gap for simplified HA still exists on the storage side.

It is this gap the Overland Storage with its new VMware and Microsoft plug-ins helps to close. Now administrators may easily setup and administer HA for their VMs as well as their SnapServer SAN S2000s to which these VMs are attached from a central console. In so doing, MSEs gain the benefits of server virtualization and storage consolidation and the added security of HA for both their servers and storage without experiencing the complexity and overhead that HA can introduce.

I've Changed My Mind About Tape

2010-06-16T10:30:00Z

I have to admit that once upon a time, I was on the "I hate tape" bandwagon. In the past, I spent too many days, nights and weekends as an administrator troubleshooting failed backups and then doing slow recoveries from a media I barely understood (or wanted to understand). But more recently I have found myself breaking through my "I hate tape" mentality in large part because of the way LTO technology has revolutionized tape backup and the fact that tape is doing a good job of carving out a new niche in today's disk-centric world.

Don't get me wrong - I never saw tape as an "evil" technology or that tape was dead as it is far too widely adopted and there will always be organizations that use it for one purpose or another. It just seemingly had some challenges that that made me believe it's better days were behind it.

So what made me change my mind about tape? I first suspected that some of my perceptions about tape were incorrect during a recent briefing that I had with CommVault regarding its Remote Operations Management Service (ROMS). CommVault was doing a live demonstration of how ROMS enables third parties to manage CommVault's data management software. But what caught my eye during the demo was that it was showing a near 100% success rate backing up to tape!

The demo was based on a live feed from an undisclosed CommVault customer and the statistic immediately called into question other statistics that cite tape backups only succeed 60 - 80% of the time. While my own experience had been that the success rates of tape backups were somewhat erratic, this demo suggested to me that part of the reason backup to tape may have received a bad rap in the past is because the backups were not properly configured or managed.

Shortly after that demo, I had the opportunity to speak with Overland Storage's Director of Product Marketing, Peri Grover. While our conversation was originally intended to focus on the NEO S-Series' new support for LTO-5, we also had a chance to discuss why, in the past, some people may have been left with a bad taste in their mouth when it came to tape-based backup. She said there were a number of factors that probably contributed to those perceptions:

Tape formats were proprietary. 8mm, 9840, 9940, AIT and DLT/SDLT were just a few of the tape formats that were released and supported by single storage providers. While each technology offered advancements at the time, in each case it created a monopoly for each tape format. Tape drives and cartridges of each format could only be bought from a single provider which often left the end user with limited choices, higher prices and a market where less competition tended to result in lower standards of quality and customer service.
Slow retrieval times. Because tape is a serial device, retrieving specific files or chunks of data from a tape cartridge meant that the tape drive had to read through (in some cases) the entire length of a tape and could not go to the specific location where the file or chunk of data was located. In the early days of tape backup, when tape drives could only access data at rates of 1-2 MB/second (or less), this meant access to your data was a time consuming process.
Unreliable. The introduction of tape technologies such as 8mm opened the door for use of tape backup to the masses because for the first time users had access to lots of storage capacity on a small, affordable form factor. However, some technologies that had originally been adapted from consumer-based platforms were suddenly thrust into enterprise-class mission critical data environments for which they really were not designed.

It was this combination of variables that resulted in tape leaving a bad impression with many in small and mid-sized enterprises. However the introduction of the LTO format, and most recently LTO-5, has addressed many of the negative connotations that people historically made when they thought of tape.

Faster retrieval times. With the introduction of LTO-5, tape-based backup and archive now operates at speeds of 140 MB/sec or 504 GB/hour uncompressed, which means that unless you need the near-instantaneous recoveries that disk provides tape can now give you a lot of data back in a very short time.
Better access methods. The recent introduction of LTO-5 also includes a hidden jewel: tape partitioning. This feature is one which allows the tape cartridge to look like a hard drive, CD, DVD or memory stick to the operating system, and allows you to "drag & drop" data to and from the tape. In effect, an LTO5 tape can look like a huge portable hard drive.
Lower cost of ownership. LTO is an open and standardized format that allows multiple manufacturers to provide tape drives, tape libraries and data cartridges. This competitive environment encourages vendors to produce high quality products at competitive prices, ultimately providing a lower overall cost of ownership for end users.
More tools in the data protection toolbox. With complete data protection solutions that include a disk-based front-end for instantaneous access to short-term data and a tape-based back-end for high-capacity storage of long-term data, and improved data management software that accommodates these disk-to-tape solutions, tape really shines by doing what it does best ... affordably storing large amounts of data.

In the last decade the maturation and stabilization of the tape market has addressed many of the concerns that led some users to dislike tape. The "I hate tape" and "I want tape out of here" attitudes that I sometimes encounter are residual emotional backlashes to previous negative experiences with tape -- some of which were the result of improperly implemented archive and backup configurations and tape formats being used in settings where they really did not belong.

I have come to understand that many of the problems that people perceive tape to have either no longer exist; can be mitigated with proper data management techniques; or, can be overcome with the use of reliable tape libraries such as those provided by Overland Storage. So, not only is it premature for anyone to assume that tape is unreliable or impractical for use in today's world, it might be that tape's best days lie yet ahead.

Two Tips to Help Businesses Meet Their Forecasted 260 GB per Person Needs of 2011

2010-04-22T10:00:00Z

Businesses that think they are sheltered from data growth better think again. Recent statistical evidence suggests that by 2011 every man, woman and child on the globe will each consume over 260 GBs of data. While this has many implications, it clearly illustrates that businesses better be prepared to continue to identify and implement more cost-effective data storage solutions such as the NEO S-Series with its new LTO-5 tape drives from Overland Storage.

To arrive at the 260 GB per person number, one only needs to look at two recent pieces of statistical data. First, IDC predicted last month (March 2010) that the amount of data stored in the world will reach 1.8 zettabytes by 2011. This is 10 times the amount of data that was stored in 2006.

Second, one next needs to look at the U.S. Census Bureau website (as of April 15, 2010) that estimates that there are about 6.8 billion people on the planet. So dividing 1.8 zettabytes by 6.8 billion gives you about 260 GB/person.

Granted, that is just a rough estimate and maybe even sounds high. But consider how the business world has changed. Rich media (audio, graphics, photos, video, etc.) is becoming omnipresent in business documents regardless of the form they take - spreadsheets, Word documents, PowerPoints or email.

Further, the advent of devices like Blackberries, iPods, iPads, digital cameras, digital video recorders and smart phones have only made it that much easier to create more data which adds to the data growth. If anything, the 260 GB/person may even be LOW for a developed nation like the US that has ready access to all of these types of technology and people who are not afraid to use.

The bad news is that businesses are not immune to these trends and maybe are even more susceptible to them. So what can businesses, irrespective of their size, do with this number to help them forecast and prepare for the future storage capacity and data protection needs of their business? Two things:

First, make sure you pick storage platforms that can scale. Assume that the 260 GB/person number for 2011 is correct. That means that if you have 50 employees in your organization, you better put in place a production storage system that can scale to at least 13 TBs (50 x 260 GB) by 2011 and even higher in the years to come. New solutions such as the Overland Storage SnapServer SAN S2000 that start out as small as 7.2 TBs and can scale to 120 TBs are good options for environments with these needs.
Second, make sure you select a data protection platform that can scale to match this production data growth. If data growth on production storage is escalating, then the capacity requirements to protect this data are EXPLODING. Requirements for data protection can easily be 5x or greater of the storage capacity that is used in production. This is why tape and solutions like the Overland Storage NEO S Series with its new LTO-5 tape drive support remains relevant.

While organizations may use disk as a primary backup target, it can get more difficult for them to affordably scale it or get the full range of management options (data immutability, energy savings, portability and cost-effective archive) that tape provides.

This is where a solution like the NEO S Series with its new support for LTO-5 technology comes into play. LTO-5 media scales to 1.5 TB of native storage capacity and can achieve up to 140 MB/sec or 500 GB/hour of throughput. Further, because LTO-5 media starts at around $110/cartridge, organizations can get tens of TBs of storage capacity for their data protection needs at a fraction of the price of what it cost them to purchase comparable disk solution.

One of the overwhelming advantages of using NEO as your long-term storage solution is its cost-effectiveness. Overland Storage is taking that affordability advantage one step further with their Upgrade and Save Cash Back Program. With cash rebates of up to $12,000, Overland is offering great incentives for users to upgrade their storage technology.

Businesses contemplating an upgrade should do so now, even if they do not necessarily need the extra capacity that LTO-5 technology provide. By upgrading now, they can save on some of the upfront costs associated with the cost the LTO-5 drive and then they can continue to save by writing to their existing LTO-4 cartridges until such a time that either the prices of LTO-5 media declines or until they need the storage capacity that LTO-5 cartridges provide.

From the smallest business to the largest enterprise, no business is immune to the massive data growth that is taking place worldwide today. And with the amount of data is anticipated to reach 260 GB/person by next year, they need to put in solutions that can scale.

Storage providers like Overland Storage are doing exactly that by delivering complementary storage solutions that meet a variety of data protection needs in both their production and data protection environments. The SnapServer SAN 2000 used in conjunction with the NEO S Series and its newly announced LTO-5 technologies give IT managers new options to cost-effectively deploy storage solutions that meet today's needs while giving them the ability to scale to meet the forecasted storage demands of tomorrow.

SnapServer SAN S2000 Gives SMBs Affordable Way to Scale into and Protect Virtual Server Environments

2010-02-22T11:00:00Z

Numerous surveys show that the adoption of server virtualization is poised to take off in small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). But what can get overlooked in this trend is that greater than 70% of these virtual server deployments that occur in SMB environments will use external storage. This is where SMBs can run into problems. Identifying an affordable, scalable external storage system that can meet their short and long term needs is sometimes easier said than done but that is exactly what the newly announced SnapServer SAN S2000 is designed to deliver.

A recent blog by Bernd Harzog, an Analyst with The Virtualization Practice and CEO of APM Experts, included some statistics shared during the Fall 2009 Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. Gartner forecasts that by the end of 2010 SMBs with 100 - 199 will have a higher penetration of virtual machines (VMs) than the Global 500 and by the end of 2012, 50% of x86 architectures will run on VMs.

This forecasted growth in server virtualization correlates to an increased adoption of external storage among SMBs. An Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) study found that from 2007 to 2009 the percentage of SMBs that will adopt virtual servers and will use networked storage will grow from 53% to 71%. A similar report that IDC prepared for Overland Storage forecasts that the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for iSCSI storage systems from 2007 to 2012 will increase significantly with iSCSI storage systems that are priced from $15,000 to 50,000 would grow about 35% annually.

These forecasts for the increased adoption rates for external storage in general and iSCSI storage systems specifically are in part what led to the introduction of the SnapServer SAN S2000. While Overland Storage had previously added iSCSI support to its SnapServer line of products, the S2000 addresses key concerns that SMBs are bound to have as they look to use external storage in conjunction with their virtual server environments. For instance:

Affordable scalability. The base unit SnapServer SAN S2000 is available in either 12 TB or 24 TB configurations using SATA drives and may even optionally be configured with higher performing SAS drives. This configuration may then be expanded to up to 120 TBs with its SnapServer Expansion E2000 expansion units. But maybe more impressive is its price. The base SnapServer SAN S2000 is available for a list price of $14,995 with its expansion units available for $2,995.
Virtual server integration. As the adoption of virtual servers is one of the primary drivers behind the growth of network storage in SMBs, the need to integrate with virtual servers is needed out of the box. The SnapServer SAN S2000 delivers on this requirement. It directly integrates with the VMware vCenter management console and includes a Microsoft VSS provider so that application consistent snapshots of Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server instances may be taken.
High availability. As SMBs adopt server virtualization, their needs for high availability also increase which the SnapServer SAN S2000 can now address. Its new active-active failover capability enables SMBs to mirror data between two S2000 systems. These can then be configured for failover so that should one unit fail or be taken offline for maintenance, application processing can continue uninterrupted.
More business continuity, data protection and disaster recovery options. In addition to its new mirroring functionality, faster application recoveries can now be achieved using the S2000's snapshot and replication features. SMBs can recover applications locally using its snapshot feature or use its replication feature to schedule the movement of data offsite.

Overland Storage has been in the business of data protection for years with a specific focus on providing data protection for SMBs. But as these recent analyst reports and trends indicate, SMBs are about to begin rapidly moving to data protection solutions that leverage disk so they can recover application data at the speed that today's virtualized server environments expect and demand.

This is what makes the SnapServer SAN S2000 so valuable and more than just another iSCSI SAN offering. The SnapServer SAN S2000 certainly meets today's new requirements of SMBs plus it gives small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) a new options. It provides SMBs and SMEs with an iSCSI SAN solution that is cost-effective, scalable, highly available and includes the advanced data protection and recoverability options that today's emerging SMB and SME virtual server environments now need.

However these size organizations also may need a complete data protection plan that gives them other options to include both disk and tape. The fact that the SAN S2000 is part of a larger portfolio of products from Overland Storage gives both SMBs and SMEs the flexibility and choice to select from any of a number of products that ensure that their data is protected in the best and most affordable way possible for that application.

New NEO Tape Libraries Satisfy Continued SME Cravings for Cost-Effective Backup and Archive

2009-10-15T18:00:00Z

Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) face some tough choices right now. Disk-based backup is definitely on the rise and has many appealing features, but it can come with a price tag that these organizations simply cannot afford and may not meet all levels of data protection needs. Many SMEs are using tape as a primary backup target or leveraging tape as an archive in a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) scenario. It is these requirements that the new NEO ® 200s and NEO® 400s entry-level tape libraries announced this week from Overland Storage are designed to address.

There is no doubt that the price of disk-based backup has dropped dramatically over the last few years, even as its acceptance as a backup target has risen. But in small IT shops, tape still has appeal. It is portable, available in a small form factors and its upfront and ongoing costs are minimal, especially if needed to back up only a few hundred gigabytes (GBs) or up to one terabyte (TB) nightly. It is for reasons like these IT offices with budget, space and resource constraints are still purchasing entry-level tape libraries.

But as they look for new entry-level options, their appetite for more capacity and more features is increasing. Growing data centers and few or no IT personnel to manage backups means that hardware and software features once only found in midrange and enterprise tape libraries need to find their way into entry-level tape libraries.

To satisfy this growing hunger, Overland elected to leverage its proven NEO tape library family with the addition of an entry-level offering. The NEO 200s and NEO 400s entry-level tape libraries are the first products in this new line. While they do not possess all the features one will find in the NEOe product line, end users find the following features appealing for backup and archive applications:

Web-based remote management and diagnostics
Integrated bar code readers
Choice of SCSI, SAS or native FC interfaces
Easy rack installation
Removable magazines with user-configurable mail slots

Of these features, Overland's decision to continue to support SCSI is notable because many of its competitors are moving to entry level tape libraries that only offer SAS or FC. While SAS interfaces certainly appear to the be wave of the future and are supported on these new Overland systems, continuing to offer a SCSI interface option still makes sense for SMEs since for now SCSI is still more prevalent and standardized than SAS and can provide sufficient throughput for smaller environments.

The NEO 200s and NEO 400s also diverge in a number of ways. The NEO 400s is a larger capacity, more full featured tape library while the NEO 200s more cleanly fits the definition of an autoloader/small library. Some other ways in which the NEO 200S and NEO 400s differ include:

The NEO 200s supports both LTO-3 and LTO-4 tape drives while the NEO 400s only supports LTO-4 tape drives. Smaller organizations are less likely to have a need for the higher capacities and faster throughput that LTO-4 tape offers plus LTO-3 tapes are, on a per cartridge basis, lower cost than LTO-4 tapes.
Redundant power supply option on the NEO400s. Overland has learned over the years that SMEs and data-intensive environments have a heightened need for data availability. The ability to add redundant power ensures a "backup" power source and ongoing access to data in the event of a primary power supply failure.
Planned future options for the NEO 400s. For organizations faced with rapidly changing environments requiring an extra degree of flexibility, Overland is planning to provide a scalability solution that allows them to start with a NEO 400s with 48 slots and add capacity at a later date as needed. An encryption option also is planned to accommodate additional data security and compliance requirements.

Tape is no longer growing by leaps and bounds, but it is far from dead. These new tape libraries from Overland Storage give SMEs yet another way to deal with their budget, data growth and IT staffing issues. By extending the NEO product family in this fashion, Overland provides smaller IT offices with a viable entry-level solution for affordable tape backup and archive.

Tape Libraries and NAS Devices Covered under New 'Cash for Junkers' Program

2009-09-29T10:00:00Z

We have all heard of the pressures that the current economic downturn is having on companies. Since the beginning of the year, Wall Street Journal, Forrester Research and others have told us that spending on information-technology goods and services for this year is declining or will be declining. But these same outlets are also predicting the current bad economic times are coming to an end and that technology spending will increase again in 2010 across various categories to the degree of 7-10 percent.

Despite this forecasted turnaround, some small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can't sit idle that long. SMBs still must manage data growth and protect more information regardless of economic conditions. So while many parts of a company can limp along through tough economic times, not continually updating the technology in their corporate data centers puts them at a decided disadvantage in supporting their business.

As we enter into the fourth quarter of 2009, it seems that some companies are starting to loosen their IT budgets. Companies are still scrutinizing every dollar they spend, however, so they are trying to figure out how to get more for less and still solve their current data growth problems.

In that vein, Overland Storage is doing its part to assure companies make every dollar that they spend count, at least in the area of data protection. In a "Cash for Junkers" program that Overland announced last week, the company is offering trade-in allowances for tape libraries and NAS devices when customers purchase a new NEO® E-Series tape library or Snap Server® NAS storage device. This program is available now until November 15, 2009, through Overland's channel partners in North America.

The program is fairly straightforward. Any customer, whether or not a current Overland customer, can work through one of the company's many resellers. To qualify for the credit, the customer only has to let Overland know which product it wants to trade-in for a credit toward the purchase of a new Overland system. The reseller then will take care of the rest by validating the eligibility of the trade-in, and once approved, will pass on the savings to the customer.

One aspect of the program that Overland is emphasizing is its intent to make this easy for both customers and resellers. Initially, Overland had considered constructing a matrix of which products would be eligible for "Cash for Junkers" program but quickly realized that this would become too complex to implement and administer.

So to avoid the same headaches that the Federal government ran into with its recent "Cash for Clunkers" program, Overland elected to make this an "honor" system. While the intent is to be flexible in the administration of the program, not every device will qualify.

One of the main prerequisites for trade-in is it must be of an equal type. For instance, if a company wants to trade-up to a new tape library, then it must trade in a tape library. The same principle holds for a disk storage device. In other words, customers should not expect to trade in a tape drive or an externally attached hard disk drive and receive a large trade-in credit.

For customers who have legacy tape libraries or disk storage devices, however, the savings offered is generous. Customers can see savings of up to $7,000 off the purchase of Overland's next-generation NEO4000E tape library and up to a $500 credit toward the purchase of any of Snap Server rack-mountable 1U products. A complete list of the available savings can be found in a FAQ document on the Overland website.

Companies are still struggling with purchasing decisions as economic uncertainty continues to pervade, so it's nice to see storage providers such as Overland Storage have not forgotten about these challenges. Overland's "Cash for Junkers" program makes it easier for SMBs to justify the replacement of their tape or disk storage devices now, so they do not have to worry about putting their steadily growing pools of data at risk. The fact that Overland has made this trade-in program about as easy as it possible for customers is an attractive benefit.

New REO BCA Simplifies Backup and Automates Recovery in Virtualized Environments

2009-07-21T10:00:00Z

The impact of virtualization on the IT Infrastructure has shaken IT at its core. Virtualization is changing the current model of assigning one physical server for each application by effectively consolidating multiple servers onto one piece of server hardware and then optimizing its resources. Despite these benefits, virtualization initiatives can prove challenging. For example, deploying certain components of the IT infrastructure with backup and recovery is one area where there can be unanticipated challenges in the support of virtual infrastructures.

According to the article, Virtualization Shakes Up Backup Strategy, traditional backup systems provide "tried and trued support for storage-area networks (SANs), fibre optics, and the latest operating system and server hardware updates." However, "they are not geared specifically for the complex world of virtualization, which involves multiple guest operating systems on the same box." In the same article, Dave Russell, vice president of research for servers and storage at Gartner, outlines three of the most popular strategies for virtualization backups:

Put software agents on each virtual machine (VM) and then use traditional enterprise backup software;
Create an image of the VM and either use a storage service hosted elsewhere or take daily snapshots of the logical unit number (LUN);
Use VMware consolidated backup (VCB) that incrementally archives the VM by copying what has changed since the last backup.

These traditional backup solutions may accomplish the task at hand; namely backup and recovery by bringing over multiple backup solutions to a virtual environment (one for databases, one for Exchange, one for SAP, etc.). But they degrade performance on the VMs and create significant overhead on the underlying server hardware. This undermines the very reason that organizations adopted virtualization in the first place, which was to consolidate and simplify management of heterogeneous environments.

To circumvent the shortcomings of these backup scenarios in virtualized environments, Overland Storage has specifically developed the REO Business Continuity Appliance (BCA).

The REO BCA takes a solutions-centric approach to address the multiple requirements that organizations have surrounding Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR). This means organizations can use a single solution to protect servers in their main data center as well as in remote and branch offices (ROBOs). This comprehensive, singular approach to backup and recovery, regardless of where the VM and its application reside, resolves problems on two levels in virtualized environments.

First, the REO BCA provides an environmental profiler to analyze existing applications, data, network, storage resources and utilization. This gives administrators a powerful reporting tool to understand how changes to application data on individual VMs impact the host server and the network. It also serves as an invaluable tool to help optimize resources to better meet BC and DR requirements for applications on each VM. This reporting across the virtual environment is key to building sound BC plans, optimizing traffic over LAN/WAN connections as well as meeting RTOs and RPOs for both local and offsite recoveries.

On a secondary, deeper level, the REO BCA provides lightweight drivers on VMs that may be located either locally or remotely. These are the same agents previously used to analyze the environment but are now repurposed for replication. They streamline the data replication process by continuously monitoring the application on that VM and then replicating every data change at the block-level back to the BCA. By replicating all changes, normal backup windows are eliminated and the risk of data loss that can occur between each backup is minimized or eliminated.

What is most notable about the BCA is that it supports granular recoveries down to the application level. Because it integrates with today's mission-critical applications (e.g., Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Oracle), BCA can understand the state of these applications as replication occurs so application consistent restorations can be performed if needed. Administrators can simply tag an "event" to create a form of bookmark that then can be used later to perform a fast recovery or failover operations. What makes this functionality unique is that it gives organizations a high level of assurance that the application will come up correctly.

The beauty of the BCA is that recoveries are both application and crash-consistent to any past point in time, so organizations can leverage the BCA to first protect their data and then leverage it to achieve near-zero recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).

It has been reported that backup success rates are improving even as recovery remains a major concern with only 28 percent of respondents feeling comfortable in their backup/recovery strategy. Migrating to a virtual environment will only contribute to continued erosion in these already low comfort levels unless organizations begin to change how they protect and recover their data. Consolidating machines, applications and databases within virtual environments make sense, but bringing existing and antiquated backup strategies along only serves to strain host servers and produce large amounts of uncontrolled data traffic across the corporate LAN/WAN.

The good news is Overland Storage has stepped up and developed a solution that incorporates application awareness, local backup and remote DR into a single solution for virtualized environments. Overland recognizes the pitfalls of traditional backup methods in virtual environments and now offers organizations an important new way to counteract these downfalls. The new BCA is a solution that solves current backup problems in virtualized environments while simultaneously resolving emerging business continuity and disaster recovery challenges as well.

Release of new Business Continuity Appliance Perfectly Timed to Coincide with Increasing Executive Interest in DR

2009-07-07T11:30:00Z

"Disaster recovery (DR) may not be hot among our executive management team but they have definitely turned up the heat around DR." That statement, from a storage administrator at a university in the Pittsburgh area, is reflective of the new view that executives in all sizes of organizations are adopting right now in regards to disaster recovery. As the economy continues to slow and management has more time to focus on internal processes that need fixing, organizations are seeing definite gaps in their ability to protect and recover applications, which new solutions like Overland Storage's REO Business Continuity Appliance (BCA) can help resolve.

A study by Applied Research, released on June 30, revealed that executive involvement on internal corporate DR committees this year has increased by 50 percent in North America. Globally, Applied Research reports executive involvement in DR committees has more than doubled since 2008. While this study is limited to enterprise organizations, DCIG has learned from speaking to IT users in smaller organizations that a similar surge is occurring among their executive management teams as well.

In the case of the aforementioned university storage administrator, the interest of his executive management in a more comprehensive DR solution stems from the number of disparate data protection solutions that the school has in place. The university's database team, for example, may have its own data protection solution while the virtual infrastructure team has another for protecting virtualized servers and the backup team has a more generic backup software platform for protecting applications across the university.

Trouble creeps in when it comes time to hold someone accountable for recovering a specific application. If a database application is hosted on a virtualized server, who is responsible for making sure the data is recoverable: the database team, virtualized infrastructure team or main backup team? Finger pointing can ensue if and when data goes unprotected, but at the end of the day from a business perspective, all fingers point to the CIO.

These types of conflicts, coupled with lower tolerances for business discontinuity, are prompting this CIO and others in management to engage more directly in the DR activities. More specifically, CIOs need turnkey solutions that resolve the finger pointing while providing an easy and effective means to recover applications--even as environments become more complex with shorter recovery requirements.

This is exactly the situation the newly announced Overland Storage REO BCA is designed to address. It is also why executives in small organizations and those responsible for data protection in remote and branch offices (ROBOs) will find the REO BCA desirable. It provides the following capabilities that should immediately get their attention:

Turnkey appliance that is specifically sized for small environments. The REO BCA is available in two models, the REO BCA 100 and REO BCA 200. Both ship with the same software, although the BCA 200 has more capacity and performance so it can handle small organizations with more servers or larger workloads. As a rule, the BCA 100 is designed for locations with five or less application servers while the BCA 200 is intended for those with six or more. Both the REO BCA 100 and BCA 200 can optionally be scaled to support greater than 30 application servers with a simple software upgrade.
Fast recoveries and high availability for mission critical applications. Just because organizations are small does not mean they do not have the same need for application availability and recoverability that larger organizations do. Generally, they lack the budget or resources to put such a solution in place. The REO BCA starts at approximately $24,000, so smaller organizations can now afford to recover applications like Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, Windows and Linux File Servers or virtualized servers while getting the same levels of availability and recoverability once only reserved for enterprise organizations.
Application awareness with real-time data replication. Achieving near-zero recovery point and recovery time objectives means ensuring application and data consistency during service failovers. REO BCA filter drivers interact with protected applications to journal and time-stamp transactions, certifying that datasets can accurately be paired with their applications minimizing any risks of corruption or failed restorations.
Push button failover and failback for Microsoft Exchange and SQL. Among applications, Microsoft Exchange tends to stand alone because no matter what size a business is, if it loses its email and calendaring functions, business activity can grind to a halt. The same applies for structured data built using SQL Server. Protecting Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server environments using a REO BCA appliance, organizations can recover their Exchange application and SQL database instances in minutes or even seconds without data loss or sacrificing data integrity.
Environmental profiler to gather data of eight key application metrics. Accurately provisioning network bandwidth and data storage to meet desired recovery point objectives continues to be a challenge for any organization, regardless of size. Administrators using a REO BCA are provided a customizable reporting utility that records, profiles and trends environmental metrics, further enabling users to build sound business continuity plans to meet their Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives.

There are a number of other features the REO BCA provides, but these five are most likely to pique the interest of executive management in these size organizations. Knowing they can deploy an appliance that centralizes the protection and recovery of critical applications whether they are physical or virtualized, minimizes the infighting that can occur between different internal IT groups. In addition, it can be done in a way that does not break the budget while also taking all parties involved off the internal hot seat. This is bound to resonate with these individuals.

In an upcoming blog, DCIG will take a deeper look at how the REO BCA can address other concerns, such as measuring and quantifying data change rates as well as enabling the replication of data for offsite application recoveries.

Five Good Reasons to Keep Using Tape

2009-03-13T10:00:00Z

Hail, Hail, tape is dead! The wicked tape is dead! Just as Dorothy was dreaming, so are you if you think tape no longer has its place within the data center. Predictions that tape would die a slow death and give way to cheap disk and robust storage array features are still far from reality. Personally, the perceived move to disk was just way too sexy to resist as everyone liked the look and feel of disk. But tape still lingers and there are good reasons for keeping tape around as part of your overall data protection strategy. Consider the following:

Data Growth. Just as change is the only thing constant in this world, explosive data growth will continue. IDC recently announced in a white paper, entitled "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011," that the digital universe is bigger and growing more rapidly than originally estimated. The research stated that at the current annual growth rate of 60 percent, the digital universe is projected to grow to 1.8 zettabytes by 2011. (That's right, zettabytes.)

The question becomes how much data do we keep and how much do we need readily available? Marcellus Tabor, Manager of Data Protection at Yahoo, worries in a recent SearchDataBackup article about where all his data will end up. He says, "We need LTO-6 right now, in a big way." Notice he didn't say he needed disk drive technology, he said TAPE!

Cost Savings. Simply put, tape is less expensive than disk for long-term storage. In a recent Reuters article, "Clipper Group Reports Substantial Cost Advantages of Using Tape in Tiered Storage," the company reported that over a five-year period the total cost of ownership of disk-to-disk-to-tape vs. disk-to-disk-to-disk resulted in a 23 percent savings when tape was deployed as the end solution for archival. In times when IT dollars are hard to come by, this kind of savings is too appealing to resist.

No one, however, is negating the importance of disk in a backup solution, but there is a balance that points in the direction of using tape to provide additional cost savings. Of particular interest, the Clipper Group study pointed to the fact that a disk-only solution is not a replacement for tape when cost is involved. According to Dave Reine, Director of Enterprise Systems for The Clipper Group, disk should be used to complement tape. He concluded by saying, "Our findings show that there are substantial potential savings when using tape in tiered approaches, and even when you factor in deduplication, tape-based strategies still provide an estimated 5:1 cost advantage over deduped disk in archiving."

Long-Term Archival. It is true that companies are changing the way they perform backups. More and more are implementing disk-to-disk. But as economies continue to change and government regulations force companies to keep more and more data available long-term, backup of data is going to continue to grow out of control. This long-term storage requirement will, as mentioned in the Clipper Group study, solidify tape's roll in data protection. Will tape be the backup medium of choice? Probably not for short-term backups. But for long-term archival, where real-time access is not needed, tape may become the archival medium of choice.

Green Storage. The Clipper Group study also reported that energy costs for disk were up to 290 times that of tape. Let's face it, once data is on tape, that tape consumes zero power and generates zero heat. I don't know how much more economical you can get. Granted, you may need to load the tape in the future, but for long-term archival data that is infrequently or never accessed, that it is unlikely.

Virus and Data Corruption. A danger no one likes to talk about is the risks associated with keeping data accessible and available on disk, which makes it susceptible to viruses and data corruption. We are all aware that a worm or virus can quickly propagate between systems and infect every disk within an organization, if unprotected. Disk-to-disk backups and recoveries sometimes only aid in the spreading of a virus. Tape archives, on the other hand, can provide a different form of protection against viruses since they have little chance of spreading them. Even if a virus does make its way onto tape, it is impossible for that virus to corrupt other data sets on that tape or spread within the tape library.

The use of tape as a primary target for backup has changed over the years. The onslaught of low-cost, disk-to-disk based backup solutions coupled with the many problems associated with using tape as a primary target has rightfully enticed many data centers not to use tape in that capacity. But that does not mean there is no requirement to use tape within the data center, as the aforementioned five reasons point out. Further, there is still innovation in tape occurring at vendors like Overland Storage, which is continuing to move the ball forward in both disk and tape technologies.

New Tape Needs Call for Refreshes, not Overhauls, to Tape Libraries

2009-02-25T11:00:00Z

In looking at the tape market and what it needs to provide in tape libraries to meet today's organizational needs, it is refreshes, not overhauls, that are required to align with these needs. Because tape libraries are becoming a secondary, as opposed to a primary, backup target in customer environments, tape library providers need to re-prioritize and even scale back the number of changes they make because if users do not want or use specific features, they will not pay for them.

The recent announcement of the new NEO E-Series from Overland Storage reflects these reshaped customer priorities. In this iteration, Overland did not overhaul its NEO Series tape libraries, but instead performed what can be best described as a refresh. While the E-Series still brings forward new features, those it introduces are reflective of the less critical role that tape now plays in organizational backup processes and the fact that customers are less willing to pay for new tape libraries and features than they have been in the past.

Some of the main new features found on the NEO E-Series include:

Embedded features in new controller. In the original NEO Series tape libraries, to introduce network connectivity options, such as SAS or FC connectivity or library partitioning, required the introduction of a Virtual Interface Architecture (V.I.A.) card. The NEO E-Series now embeds these features in the tape library controller, which eliminates the need for this card and contributes to reducing the price of the E-Series by 15 percent.
Embedded SCSI, FC and SAS Connectivity. This level of integration streamlines installations and assures connectivity with future interface technologies.
Support for both full-height and half-height tape drives. The NEO E-Series continues to give organizations a choice between half-height and full-height tape drives. This permits companies to performance and affordabiloity that best meets their particular demands.
More flexible mail slot configurations. Administrators can configure NEO E-Series libraries with up to 30 mailslots, which provides more efficient data access for long-term storage and archive.

The new Overland Storage NEO E-Series affirms the company's commitment to tape automation. It wisely recognized that an overhaul was neither warranted nor needed since customer demands did not dictate them. Further, since most of the changes to the NEO E-Series are enhancements, this eliminates the need for organizations already using NEO tape libraries to re-qualify the E-Series with their existing backup infrastructure.

All indications are that tape has a long, stable life ahead, but those individuals responsible for making buying decisions about tape formats and libraries must exercise more discretion than in the past. Not only must they look into the future and pick a tape format that will age gracefully, but they must pick tape libraries from providers that understand and can support their data protection needs. The enhancements that Overland Storage has made to the NEO E-Series, coupled with its line of NAS and SAN data protection appliances, provide assurances that Overland Storage can meet the needs of those organizations who are looking to protect their data in the most efficient and affordable way possible.

Video Surveillance Moves Closer to Business Ready Solution

2009-02-18T11:00:00Z

Video surveillance is shaping up as the next big thing in enterprise security. IP-based cameras from Mobotix and the continued growth of high-capacity network attached storage systems from Overland Storage make it possible for almost any size and type of organization to inexpensively deploy a video surveillance solution. But what was still missing until recently was a comprehensive backend support structure for implementing these solutions and then supporting them long-term.

Configuring and attaching individual IP cameras or storage systems these days is almost a turnkey operation. Organizations only need to run network cables and power for these devices and then configure them for IP connectivity on their Ethernet networks. These are tasks that almost any network administrator working with an electrician has the skills to perform. Where it gets more complicated is when organizations need to design systems for their particular site, so they not only work in conjunction with one another but capture and retain the surveillance information that organizations expect.

As more and more organizations deploy video surveillance solutions, they are finding that there are a number of tough questions that need to be answered. Some examples include:

What type of camera should be deployed? Today's IP-based video surveillance cameras have more options than most people realize. For instance, the Mobotix M22 offers a choice of lenses (telescoping, wide angle and day/night), an integrated DVR with high resolution recording capabilities, digital zoom, pan and tilt, microphone and speaker while other models, such as the V12, are housed in a stainless steel casing for outdoor applications to protect against vandalism and even resist handgun attacks. While the price difference between an M22 and a V12 is nearly $2,400, you don't want to throw away money, but neither do you want to deploy a camera that can be disabled just when you most need the information it is capturing.
How much and what information do you want to capture and under what circumstances? Video surveillance cameras now can capture a tremendous amount of detail with some IP cameras achieving resolution levels as high as 2048x1536 pixels. While the higher resolution, the more data the camera captures, it also requires more storage. What may be ideal for heavily trafficked areas may not be for hallways and parking lots, which only see activity during certain times of the day. Organizations may want a high level of resolution for certain periods of time so they can clearly identify what is occurring, but they also may want the camera to store and capture some video during periods of inactivity. Furthermore, there may be a desire for the camera to have some sort of motion sensor so that it starts to capture more video after detecting some level of activity. Then there is the matter of proper lighting. If the light is insufficient, even if the camera is recording, it may not capture sufficient detail if it's too dark.
What size storage system is needed? Storing video to networked storage is easy, but sizing the backend storage system for all that video data, especially when it is coming from multiple cameras at the same time, becomes a little more difficult. Not only do organizations need to appropriately size the storage system with enough capacity to store all the video data, it's also important that the system is not too large so there's overspending on storage capacity.

It is these sorts of issues that Overland Storage's new Solutions Engineering Group was designed to address. Since most organizations are looking to purchase an integrated, turnkey video surveillance solution from providers and not individual cameras and storage systems, Overland Storage has created a specific engineering team tasked with delivering customized video solutions to meet customers' unique expectations. Specifically, this group will design which components (e.g., cameras, storage and software) should be part of a solution, integrate them, test them in different configurations, document them and deploy the solution.

According to Overland Storage's Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Ravi Pendekanti, this group will remain in place for the foreseeable future even after the initial video surveillance designs and configurations are built. This is because Overland's resellers are finding that even when they have standard configurations and designs to follow, when they enter accounts there are always challenges specific to that job since the environment in every organization is different. It is for those circumstances that resellers and customers can call upon this group for expert assistance in deploying the most appropriate solution for the environment.

Overland's recent decision to create a Solutions Engineering Group positions the company as one of the early leaders in the rapidly growing market. According to ABI Research, the need for video surveillance is estimated to expand to almost a $46 billion market by 2013 and enterprises will want providers that can deliver fully integrated solutions with end-to-end support. By investigating and understanding the hard questions that organizations are sure to have and ask during implementations and putting a specialized team in place now for the long haul, Overland Storage looks ready to ride this new technology wave.

Overland Re-Affirms Commitment to Tape; Midrange Tape Market Still a $1.3 Billion Industry

2009-01-29T19:00:00Z

The use of tape as a primary target for backup has supposedly changed in large part due to the onslaught of new disk-based backup solutions with many features that are enticing data centers to change course. One could even say that vendors and analysts have abandoned tape for greener pastures by seeking to associate themselves with disk's sexier features--all the while forgetting about tape's evolving role within the data center.

Interestingly enough, and food for thought, are the recent survey results from Fleishman-Hillard Research, which suggests that most companies surveyed are actually migrating to a tiered storage infrastructure of disk and tape. In fact, over two-thirds of the disk-only users in the survey are looking to add tape back into their storage infrastructure.

Cindy Grossman, Vice President of Tape Storage Systems for IBM, said it best in the report when she commented that the integration of tape storage into a tiered information infrastructure is highly strategic for customers, due to its low cost of ownership, low energy consumption and portability for data protection. She adds, "LTO tape technology is a perfect choice for enterprise and mid-sized customers with its proven reliability, high capacity, high performance and ability to address data security."

But that said, I was still slightly shocked when Overland Storage approached DCIG to give us an update on its commitment to tape. Like other vendors, Overland hasn't discussed its tape line in a while. When you look at the NEO family, it has not changed significantly in the last seven years. But after a few minutes, it was clear that Overland still had its finger on the pulse of this market.

Overland reminded me that IDC sees the mid-range tape market as a $1.3 billion market. Even if IDC is off by 30 percent, it's still a vibrant, healthy market and one that Overland intends to remain in.

To try to understand where it should take its tape line going forward, Overland talked to end-users, partners and analysts about the future for tape, which features they thought they needed, what was happening in their data centers as well as which server technologies and trends they were seeing that might translate into features for new tape products.

Overland also wanted to know about the value of tape's scalability and serviceability as well as extending its capabilities. After talking with end-users, partners and analysts, it was evident to Overland that the tape community was alive and well and wanted to see an ongoing commitment to tape. One message that did catch Overland's attention and came through in the feedback it received was that the company is still one of the top vendors that people think of when they think of tape storage.

No one should assume that just because they don't read about tape technologies or get solutions pushed from vendors that tape isn't still deeply ingrained within many data centers and that there is not still innovation going on. There is. Unfortunately, innovation in tape does not always capture front page headlines, which can make news hard to find.

Overland assured me it has neither lessened its commitment to tape storage nor forsaken the vast number of customers using tape in their environments. Overland did, however, firmly convey to me that it understands the importance of getting out there and showing innovation in this market to prove to people that tape is still very much alive and that the company intends to continue to have a story to tell in this area.

Companies Must Adapt a Zhuan Ji Attitude to Survive this Economic Downturn

2008-12-30T11:00:00Z

Right now many companies are feeling a little despondent as they go into this holiday season and look to 2009. Many are looking at the possibility of or have already completed workforce reductions and now are trying to figure out how to reshape the company going forward. So while the near-term outlook appears grim, there are two ways companies can respond that are probably best summed up by two Chinese expressions. Companies can look at this situation and view it as hopelessly perilous or one that, if properly taken advantage of, can create new opportunities.

The Chinese symbol above, pronounced wei ji (actually, it is two symbols), illustrates the danger that this current economic climate presents. This symbol describes a situation that has reached an extremely difficult or dangerous point, which pretty aptly describes today's economic environment.
However, another Chinese symbol, zhuan ji (shown above), is also used in times like these. It conveys a more positive meaning as it expresses the idea of how a dangerous situation can turn into an opportunity. The real question then becomes which of these two mindsets is your company adopting?

Overland Storage is one example of a company that is experiencing both wei ji and zhuan ji. It certainly recognizes the dangers that this current economy presents but it, in many respects, shares the view that the Chinese have in the sense that Overland is using this time to refocus internally and make qualitative improvements in its manufacturing processes.

These changes were recently put on display for a visiting Chinese delegation from Chongqing. This region of China has had its own troubles, ones that make Overland's--and most other American companies'--pale in comparison. In May 2008, Chongqing experienced a major (7.9- magnitude) earthquake that killed more than 10,000 individuals. So not only did this region have the emotion of lost loved ones and the task of rebuilding in front of them, they must deal with the current economic crunch as well. Talk about feelings of wei ji.

Yet the attitude displayed during the Chinese delegation's visit to Overland's manufacturing facility is more accurately described as zhuan ji. Rather than giving up, the Chinese viewed the destruction caused by the earthquake as an opportunity to rebuild their factories and manufacturing plants to a higher set of standards to meet tomorrow's manufacturing demands. This is what brought them to San Diego. They wanted to visit Overland and see what changes the company had made to its facilities and processes after it brought manufacturing back in-house. The delegation then plans to take the lessons that Overland learned and apply them when building their new manufacturing facilities in Chongqing.

In talking with Brett Carter, Overland's Director of Global Quality and President of the San Diego Chapter of American Society of Quality, he pointed to three major areas that Overland changed to improve the quality of its products.

Achieved ISO 9001 Certification. This reflects the enterprise commitment that Overland Storage has made to product quality. By achieving this standard, Overland demonstrates it is following proven business practices for development and manufacturing of its products.
Implemented Eyelit Enterprise Manufacturing Solutions (MES Software). This helped Overland identify inefficiencies on its production line as well as visually demonstrate adherence to new ISO 9001 standards in its current products.
Implemented a Six Sigma Green Belt. The impact of this program was felt almost immediately by focusing on continuous quality improvement as Overland saw 100 percent reduction in defective models coming off the production line while improving the reliability of products that went to customer sites.

No company should downplay the gravity of the current economic situation, especially with many economists saying the worst is yet to come in the first half of 2009. But companies can learn something from this Chinese delegation that recently visited Overland Storage and its manufacturing facilities. Both groups are using the current crisis to take steps to lay the foundation for a better future and, by adopting a zhuan ji attitude, are making the best of a bad situation.

Legacy Video Surveillance Solutions are Giving Way to new IP Cameras that Use Networked Storage

2008-12-18T19:00:00Z

About 40 years ago, high-tech video surveillance consisted of closed-circuit television (CCTV) that had to be monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Then came the move to video cassette recorders (VCRs) with analog video capture, which helped bring about a revolution of video surveillance in the '70s. But just as all of us movie buffs have figured out, VCR tapes eventually wear out, tear or become unmanageable, and the same occurs with video surveillance tapes. While there are many new features in tape-based video recording, such as charged-coupled device (CCD), digital multiplexing as well as time-lapse and motion-only recording, the ability to digitally record data to network-attached storage is starting to takeoff and, as it does create a more scalable solution for video surveillance.

Recording data to disk accomplishes two highly attractive things for video surveillance. First, the burden of tape management is eliminated. Tapes can go bad after as few as 10 uses plus using disk eliminates the manual task of changing tapes. Second, digitally recording data to disk opens the possibilities for additional features, such as time-based retrieval, video enhancement and face recognition, to name a few. But to take advantage of these new capabilities, most companies need to overhaul their current video surveillance and backend storage infrastructure.

A prime example of using legacy surveillance system with limited effectiveness involves one of the largest financial institutions in Australia. This financial institution's video surveillance system, which consisted of analog cameras and a PC-based digital video recorder (DVR), was unable to scale without the purchase of another DVR. Making matters worse, the DVR was Windows-based and, for internal security reasons, was prohibited from being connected to the corporate network. This meant the surveillance system was separate and therefore excluded from normal administrative maintenance, such as patches, upgrades and backups. This created an island that became increasingly isolated and problematic over time.

Further, viewing the low-resolution images was time consuming and cumbersome since it required the use of low-bandwidth phone lines. The institution realized its current analog components were dramatically behind the times and that this gap would become more pronounced as video surveillance needs increased.

To bring its system up-to-date, the company selected Mobotix IP network cameras and Overland Snap Servers as complimentary technologies to address the issues. The Mobotix IP cameras can be directly attached to corporate networks and include sufficient network awareness so the company could point them directly at network-attached Overland Storage Snap Servers.

To better track activities on its premises, the company more than doubled its number of cameras, to 33 from the previous number of 16. The pixel images of these cameras offer 12 times more resolution than the financial institution's old analog cameras and capture two frames per second by default. If unusual movements are detected, the system can be configured to capture up to six frames per second while providing the flexibility to zoom on suspicious activity with true color and facial feature detail. Since each Mobotix IP camera can attach to and recognize network attached storage, the cameras were deployed in three groups of 11 with each group assigned to one of three network-attached Overland Storage Snap Server 110 storage systems. This was done to balance capacity and performance workloads.

Since Overland's Snap Server is a network fileserver, the Mobotix cameras can independently access them using either CIFS or NFS protocols over standard Ethernet networks. Further adding to the appeal of the Snap Server, its Linux-based file system is tuned and optimized for random writes. This is needed for multiple cameras to independently and concurrently write video data to them.

CCTV and tape-based video surveillance systems are completely out of date when considering the requirements that companies now have coupled with the recent advancements in camera, networking and storage technologies. As this Australian financial institution discovered, the combination of Overland Storage and Mobotix replaced out-of-date hardware with state-of-the-art technology. The new system connects directly to the corporate LAN, can be easily managed through intelligent Mobotix cameras, provides scalability with the Overland Snap Servers and allows for future growth.

The advancements in video technology coupled with heightened corporate concerns about security are spurring dramatic increases in the interest and adoption of IP cameras, which offer high resolution digital images far superior to their analog counterparts. This new, complimentary combination of Mobotix IP cameras and Overland Storage Snap Server storage systems offer companies for the first time a means to smoothly transition to this new world of digitally recorded data without requiring excessive expertise or IT staff to manage and maintain the process for the short- or long-term.

Mobotix-Overland Partnership Snaps into Place in Fast Growing Video Surveillance Market

2008-12-08T11:00:00Z

A picture is worth a thousand words, so even in a world with a great deal of economic uncertainty, the video surveillance market is still forecasted to grow 30 percent or more this year and beyond, according to Security Products magazine. This is mostly due to the fact that corporate security needs are growing more critical. Yet the reasons behind the explosion of video surveillance go well beyond just security; companies are finding that the sharp pictures possible with the new generation of digital IP cameras can help them better analyze shoppers' behaviors and buying patterns at their stores.

Analog cameras still dominate the world of video surveillance, but the rise in corporate adoption of digital cameras that are attached to IP networks is accelerating overall acceptance. Here are some key reasons:

Digital cameras offer better resolution than analog cameras. The fuzzy, grainy video streams produced by analog cameras cannot compare to the high resolution pictures from digital cameras. This especially comes into play when trying to identify suspects in a robbery or track customers' eyeball movements as they shop.

Digital cameras connect directly to Ethernet IP networks. Using analog devices, companies need to run cabling and place recording devices near the analog cameras. In contrast, digital cameras connect directly to standard Ethernet IP networks and remove distance limitations by enabling companies to place storage devices almost anywhere on the network.

Simplified installation. Analog cameras may require running power and installing an outlet to plug-in the camera. Digital IP cameras draw power directly from the Ethernet network, so companies avoid the need to run power to where IP cameras are installed, thus making them faster and easier to implement and configure.

This does not mean, however, that IP cameras are completely "plug-and-play," especially when they are being deployed in corporate settings. When installing and placing IP cameras, companies need to ensure there is adequate lighting near the cameras to capture sufficient detail of the surroundings.

Properly time stamping the video coming from the different IP cameras is critical to establishing when an event occurred. If the time varies on IP cameras on a network, it calls into question the validity of the recorded video, so the time stamp on all the IP cameras needs to remain consistent.

In addition, there is the important matter of determining the amount of storage needed. The amount of storage needed to retain all the video data will vary according to several key factors: image size & quality, capture rates (measured in frames per second,) and also the amount of movement happening in the viewing area, to name a few.

Just because IP cameras and network storage are now independently easy to set up, configuring them to work together and capture all the information that companies need is still not a given. To address this, Overland Storage and Mobotix Vision Systems recently formed an alliance that will ease the installation and configuration challenges associated with jointly deploying their independent products while also cutting down the number of components required to deploy a robust video surveillance system.

Mobotix, which is fourth worldwide and second in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Asia) in IP camera market share, has a strong track record for meeting customer demands for high-resolution digital images. As a pioneer in the development of IP cameras and software, Mobotix cameras record and push data directly to network storage over an Ethernet network via CIFS or NFS using their open MxPEG format. This efficient approach to video recording utilizes less bandwidth while storing high-resolution video images over the network directly to a file share.

Mobotix cameras control the writing of data by pushing it to a server rather than having the server pull it via http, which eliminates the need for an intermediate server while making the entire system more resilient. Mobotix cameras possess a local buffer that can store video data should a network interruption occur and the intelligence to detect if and when such a disruption occurs. If one is detected, the camera can then resume writing to the networked storage device when it becomes available According to Steve Rogers, Director of Solutions for Overland Storage, these are the features that caught the eye of Overland Storage and led to forging a partnership between the companies.

The partnership would not be complete without Overland Storage's Snap Server. According to Perter Mckee, International Director for Mobotix, the partnership with Overland creates an easy-to-use turnkey solution bundle that is both flexible and reliable. Since Overland's Snap Server is IP-based, Mobotix cameras can write directly and independently to a Snap Server network share without an intermediate server. Further, Snap Server is much more than just a generic NAS device that Mobotix cameras can use to store video.

Snap Server accommodates more cameras because of its expandable backend storage infrastructure and offers features such as Network Time Protocol (NTP), "restartability" of the system in the event of power outages, support for active directory, reliable enterprise drives and expandability as an appliance that does not require a build-out process.

Demand for video surveillance systems from organizations of all sizes is growing as companies find new applications, ranging from security and litigation protection to employee training and customer monitoring. As the number of companies deploying video surveillance systems continues to grow, many of these converts are also discovering that while IP cameras and network storage may be easy to install, deploying them together requires cooperation between the respective vendors. Thanks to the new partnership between Overland Storage and Mobotix, companies can now realize their dream of efficiently and skillfully deploying configurable and scalable video surveillance and networked storage solutions.

Despite Lack of Bailout Money for SMBs, Now is the Wrong Time to Stop Innovating in IT

2008-11-24T11:00:00Z

As small and midsize businesses (SMBs) take a look at the worsening economic crisis and begin to understand how it impacts them, reality is starting to set in. A recent survey reports that nearly 80 percent of SMBs are not convinced the U.S. government's $700 billion financial bailout will help them. Furthermore, SMBs' purchasing power is being drastically altered, which will undoubtedly cause ripple effects throughout the economy. Case in point, the reluctance and abrupt spending halt of SMBs has impacted SAP -- causing SAP's third-quarter earnings to tank. This has already prompted SAP to implement financial help and discounts on its software that is explicitly intended for SMBs.

A recent press release published by American Express provides another confirmation of what many SMBs already know to be true:

One-third of SMBs report that the economic crisis is their biggest challenge
One-quarter of SMBs are challenged by the high cost of doing business
Cash flow concerns are on the rise
Capital investment plans continue to plummet
SMBs are putting more focus on adapting to customer demand
There is a high level of concern to keep current business and sources of revenue
Three-quarters of SMBs still want to grow their business

Faced with a variety of conflicting goals, many SMBs feel they can't invest in IT. But now is not the time to ice spending in this crucial area. Actually, it's time to re-evaluate and remove inefficient solutions, people, licenses and technologies that only increase operational costs. Part of doing so includes examining your existing infrastructure and making adjustments so your IT infrastructure becomes more agile and ready to act when the economy begins its turnaround.

Changing infrastructure to make use of new technologies that can produce immediate results while helping curtail some out-of-control spending and operational inefficiencies. For instance, the high cost of IT support coupled with uncontrolled data growth is taking its toll on SMBs as much as on enterprise organizations. As a result, many SMBs are over time exposed to the same risk of data loss as larger entities because of partially or poorly implemented data protection solutions. It's not unusual for SMBs' IT staff to find themselves pursuing one or more of the following scenarios when trying to protect company's data:

Mission-critical and secondary data are given the same priority in backup schedules, resulting in excessive, unneeded and inefficient backup of data
Investment in WAN optimization and a dedicated backup server, disk farm or tape storage to hold backups result in creating a bottleneck because of explosive data growth or network limitations
Implementation of an off-site tape protection plan with tape rotation resulted in limited backup success, loss of tapes and reduced access to critical data

Remote backup challenges for SMBs are difficult but these challenges cannot be left unchecked. Overland Storage's SNAPserver family of network attached data protection appliances is designed to address these challenges and offers a cost-effective remote backup and disaster recovery solution. SNAPserver with Snap Enterprise Data Replicator (Snap EDR) distributes, protects, and reports on business-critical information throughout distributed enterprises. Snap EDR controls the movement of files between local and remote Snap Servers and Windows, Linux, and Solaris application servers from anywhere on the network. Further, with its integrated security, companies can transmit sensitive data across inexpensive Internet connections instead of procuring and putting in place expensive private networks.

The current economic crisis is prompting all size companies to re-evaluate and re-prioritize their IT spends but to altogether stop innovating in IT is a mistake. Rather companies need to identify solutions that allow them to meet their existing requirements while positioning them to meet tomorrow's needs. SNAPserver is one example of a product that gives companies the flexibility they need to build an efficient, secure, resilient and reliable backup and recovery infrastructure that accommodates both central and remote offices without forklift upgrades, massive IT investments or training people on new processes.

Breaking Open the Backup and Recovery WAN Bottleneck

2008-11-10T19:00:00Z

The statement that "data growth is continuing at an exponential rate" rarely ever conveys the exact location of the data that is growing so fast. But it just so happens that a consensus of industry analysts agree the majority of this rapidly growing pool of corporate data (up to 60 percent) now resides at remote corporate offices. While more companies now recognize that the data created and stored at remote sites is vital to their ongoing success, protecting it presents a unique set of challenges. Of these challenges, moving backup data over corporate WANs is one of greatest.

Companies now recognize that they need better ways to centralize the management and protection of this data. But this can be difficult to implement as moving data to a central location requires sufficient network bandwidth between the data center and each remote office along with the needed technical expertise for implementation and administration.

Complicating the process, network bandwidth is neither an infinite resource nor cheap. So when transmitting data from remote offices back to a central location for purposes such as backup and recovery, companies are very prudent in how they procure and utilize network bandwidth. Furthermore, all network transmissions between remote sites and a central location are susceptible to latencies caused by congestion and faulty connections.

So when looking for solutions, it is imperative that any option should include features that help minimize bandwidth issues. Scheduling, backup and recovery restart, throttling, compression and deduplication are just some of the features needed to successfully transmit backup data to and from remote sites.

Overland Storage's new REO Compass is specifically designed for moving backup data between an enterprise's geographically distributed offices. Using REO Compass, distributed enterprises can move backup data efficiently, securely and without manual intervention regardless of distance over WAN links. When sending data across a WAN, REO Compass uses capacity optimization techniques, such as deduplication, compression, and synchronization, to dramatically reduce the amount of backup data, which in turn reduces the amount of network bandwidth needed for data transmission. Here is how REO Compass utilizes these specific technologies:

Deduplication: REO Compass uses block deduplication technologies to "fingerprint" data based on content to accurately identify unique data structures across clients and locations. When the sending REO Compass pulls data from the remote office, it initiates a handshake between the sending and receiving REO Compasses to determine what new or changed data should be sent. If the receiving REO Compass has already seen the data, only a simple block pointer is sent.
Compression: Data is compressed before sending to the destination to reduce the amount of network bandwidth required. Once the data is received by the REO Compass at the destination site, it is decompressed and reconstructed in its original format.

Synchronization: As source locations transmit information to a central site, it is conceivable the central site will receive the same data from multiple remote sites. To prevent the creation of redundant data, the REO Compass at the central site synchronizes all data received, so the same data is not sent or stored multiple times.

The fact that REO Compass is an appliance allows companies to place it at remote offices and immediately begin protecting their data. REO Compass is designed to complement, as opposed to replace, current solutions. This makes it very attractive for companies with existing backup and recovery or archival solutions. Using REO Compass makes possible the creation of remote, centralized and disaster recovery sites that are configurable in a number of replication options including: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one or many-to-many. When properly designed, the flexibility to configure each REO Compass as a source, target or mixture enables an organization to direct the movement of data not only to meet business requirements but also control bandwidth traffic.

Companies often get caught up in managing the explosive data growth within their data centers while ignoring data growth that is equally dramatic at remote offices. In reality, this data oftentimes demands as much, if not more, attention from a backup and recovery perspective than data in the main office. With REO Compass, companies have the first solution that puts them in position to keep all their current backup and recovery hardware, software and processes in place while providing newfound flexibility to bring everything back to a central location over existing WAN links.

New REO Compass Removes the Need for 'Rip-and-Replace' in the Enterprise ROBO Data Protection Equation

2008-10-27T11:30:00Z

Too often one of the requirements in the enterprise data protection equation for corporate remote and branch offices (ROBOs) is "rip-and-replace." While this approach is fine for dealing with aging hardware and software, it ignores the majority of scenarios where ROBOs have hardware or software that they can't afford to replace but are being asked to rip out anyway in favor of OEMs' latest solution. ROBOs are just as apt to want a "bolt-on" solution that enables adding new technology to their environment while continuing to use what's already in place. The latter scenario is what Overland Storage's announcement of its REO Compass is designed to provide.

Backup and recovery of data in ROBOs is often the responsibility of each individual office. This turns into a huge challenge as these offices try to provide reliable data protection that complies with corporate standards while hampered by limited resources. ROBOs are often looked upon as the stepchildren of organizations--literally forgotten unless something goes wrong. But times have changed. The distributed workforce and the amount of corporate data stored at remote locations (as much as 60 percent) are growing, so more companies now are placing greater priority on protecting the data at these sites.

Data created and stored at ROBOs is vital to the organization, but there are challenges that must be overcome to protect it. While a quick-fix might be to deploy skilled IT technicians at each remote site, this would be quite expensive and impractical. Likewise, training non-IT staff to perform IT-related tasks does not guarantee a high percentage of successful backups and a newfound ability to detect or report problems. While remote administration sounds logical, the time spent by IT administrators becomes significant and often futile as they try to deploy pointed solutions for each remote site.

Compounding the challenges of administrating backup and recovery at remote locations is the fact that, because remote offices have acted autonomously in the past, each office is likely to have different backup software products, tape rotation schemes, schedules and procedures. With corporate IT already resource constrained, it is very possible that effective backup and disaster recovery processes will remain non-existent at most remote sites.

To counter this, companies are looking to centrally control and protect data while minimizing the costs and effort of putting such a plan in place. Much of the difficulty associated with backup and moving data to a central location revolves around the following:

Sufficient bandwidth between the data center and each remote site;
Technical expertise for implementation and administration, and;
Utilizing existing hardware and software at the remote sites to keep upfront costs low while avoiding a rip-and-replace scenario.

Today's release of Overland Storage's REO Compass fits neatly into that space. It is a disk-based appliance designed specifically for moving data between geographically distributed offices that natively integrates with existing backup software (just Symantec Backup Exec in its first release) and policies as well as virtual and physical tape libraries. Through its centralized management interface, corporate IT can create, monitor and manage a common set of policies across all REO Compass units in an enterprise. The result creates a form of global intelligence around all remote backup and recovery operations.

Enterprises are becoming well aware of the importance of managing and protecting data in their ROBOs and the number of solutions emerging to address this problem continues to increase. REO Compass, however, represents a first in terms of a solution that enables companies to keep and manage existing hardware and software while bringing it under the control of central IT. We'll get into more details in forthcoming blog entries about how REO Compass works and for which corporate environments it makes the most sense to deploy now.