Last summer HP began shipping a mid-range to high-end virtual tape library OEM’ed from start-up Sepaton Inc, which tops out at 70TB. The new VTL is much smaller and much cheaper, with just 1.5TB of usable native capacity – around 3TB compressed – and a list price of just $6,099.
Called the VLS 1002i, the 1U rack-mountable device is based on OEM technology, but HP will not say who the OEM source is – other than that it is not Sepaton, or FalconStor Software Corp.
In a sign of the times, the VLS1002i is shipping with an iSCSI interface only. That’s what we saw when looked at this market. A lot of small businesses and remote offices don’t have Fibre Channel, and many of them never will, said Adam Thew, marketing director at HP.
The mid-range library is also an OEM’ed product, and again HP would not name the source. The $11,300 list-priced device is called the MSL4048, and it features 48 cartridge slots. When fitted with LTO3 drives, it will hold up to 19TB of data, which HP says makes it the highest density library in the industry.
An update to HP’s Data Protector Express backup management software introduces server agents that protect the replica copies of data created by Microsoft Corp’s CDP-like Data Protection Manager software.
DPE is also now integrated with HP’s One-Button Disaster Recovery feature, which allows bare-metal booting from tapes made with HP drives. Previously this could only be done using tapes made with big selling backup tools such as those from Symantec Corp or IBM Corp. Now it can be down using tapes made with DPE.
