Imation Makes Disk Play Nicely With Tape

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Imation hopes to make it easier for storage users to get into disk backup with a new disk cartridge that fits into standard tape libraries.

Imation’s new Ulysses technology is a Serial ATA (SATA) 2.5-inch disk drive in an LTO Ultrium cartridge form factor. Used with the Ulysses tape drive emulator, the removable media accelerates backup and restore performance within an existing tape library. The emulator fits in any standard tape drive bay and is recognized by the host, backup software and storage management software as a standard tape drive.

The emulators are expected to cost $5,000 to $7,000, and Imation says the cartridges will be comparable to the cost of tape cartridges.

Imation is targeting the new offering at tape users who want to a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) solution to improve restore time without having to adopt a complex new system or invest in hardware or software modifications. A Ulysses-equipped library can restore files up to 10 times faster than a tape-only library, Imation says.

“Users want to shrink their backup windows and quickly recover critical data when they want it, without a lot of complexity or additional expense,” said Dianne McAdam, senior analyst and partner at the Data Mobility Group. “Ulysses is the first technology to combine the benefits of tape — low cost and portability — with the backup and recovery speeds of disk.”

The technology lets users adopt virtual tape technology a little at a time without a huge up-front investment. Backups can be written to a Ulysses drive and then migrated to tape later for long-term storage.

Because the Ulysses tape drive emulator emulates an LTO drive and the Ulysses media has the same form factor as LTO Ultrium cartridges, users can simply drop the Ulysses cartridge into the existing automated tape environment with no changes to floor space, wiring, cooling or other infrastructure challenges.

“We believe the Ulysses solution enhances the performance of tape by allowing businesses to realize the high speed performance benefits of disk without experiencing the high costs of forklift disk-to-disk upgrades,” said James Ellis, Imation’s general manager for global product strategy. “The removability, portability and unlimited storage capacity of the Ulysses technology, combined with the benefit of high-speed backup and restores, makes it a truly groundbreaking technology for small to mid-sized businesses.”

McAdam sees Ulysses helping users with existing tape libraries that want to speed up the performance of backup and restores for small files. “They can put in a Ulysses drive in the tape library and write small backups to Ulysses rather than, say, an LTO cartridge,” she said. “After a few days, the backup can be migrated from Ulysses to regular tape.”

She also said Ulysses “can be used in autoloaders in remote offices where customers, for whatever reason, do not want to deal with tape.”

The Ulysses cartridges — expected to start out at 100GB/200GB compressed — “do not have the capacity of LTO cartridges, but are not designed to replace LTO cartridges,” said McAdam. “They are designed to specifically handle some of the backups, not all. I expect to see the capacities of Ulysses increase in the future.”

Imation’s Ulysses technology is available for OEM evaluation and is expected to be generally available in early 2006. Product pricing and additional information is expected to be released in the fourth quarter.

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Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

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