Sun Microsystems Inc is stepping up its activity in the storage market and has gone to Irvine, California-based ATL Products Inc for additions to its family of multi-terabyte tape libraries. Designed for use by companies operating high-storage applications in mission critical environments, the Sun Enterprise Tape Library ETL 7/3500 and 4/1800 are aimed at customers requiring high capacity, high reliability and Java-enabled Web browser based storage management functionality. Using up to seven digital linear tape drives running in parallel, the libraries offer up to seven Tb of capacity, using 2:1 compression, and a data transfer rate of up to 70 Mb/sec. A single ETL 7/3500 library can back up one terabyte of data in around eight hours, native mode. The libraries include the company’s Enterprise NetBackup and Solstice Backup storage management software and 40 other software applications, as well as Enterprise Library Monitor software. Last month Sun struck a reseller agreement with Veritas Software Inc for storage utility software (CI No 3,176), and the new tape libraries are supported by the Veritas software Prices start at $72,000 for the 4/1800, or $85,000 for the 7/3500, both available now. Sun signed an OEM agreement with ATL, a $60m revenue subsidiary of Anaheim, California-based storage veteran Odetics Inc, back in January, and has a joint agreement to develop library software. OEM sales make up 30% of the companies revenues. Meanwhile, Sun is still in negotiations with Encore Computer Corp, for which it has offered $185m to purchase the assets of its storage management business (CI No 3,170). All parties are currently keeping tight lipped about that deal, however.
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