February 1998

TAPE OFFER EASY ACCESS

Tape has never been more exciting... or confusing. Knowing which solution is right for you is anything but easy. There's more data to store and more tape solutions to choose from. The differences between them will surprise you.

Imaging users are no stranger to this dilemma. A lot of what's stored in imaging is database data. Imaging users will embrace tape more than ever. Database data takes well to compression. Using tape to store imaging data makes sense because you can take full advantage of the 2:1 compression most drives offer.

Compression is available through hardware and software. You can use one, not both. Tape drives with built-in compression mean you don't need special software to decompress your data. It's done in the tape drive.

Hardware compression is becoming more relevant in the entry-level NT server market. More drives and technologies are using ALDC compression. ALDC stands for Adaptive Lossless Data Compression. It's an industry standard and it's reliable. If you're looking for a drive that offers hardware compression be sure it's ALDC. A lot of the higher-end tape drives offer ALDC.

One market segment demanding hardware compression is the network server market. NT servers are all over the place. The typical tape drive that can backup a small NT server offers eight to 10 GB of compressed capacity.

Typically the solution for the network server user was a 4 GB native DDS-2 drive or an Exabyte 8mm tape drive with 5 GB of native capacity. DAT has typically been an expensive solution. The good news is you're no longer limited to these two technologies.

DAT drives offer hardware compression with DCLZ standard DDS compression and read-while-write. Read-while-write lets you store more data faster. It takes less time to backup because you no longer need to verify pass after backup. Data reliability improves because marginal data blocks that could become unrecoverable during data restore are rewritten.

DDS-2 drives transfer data at between 366 Kbyte/s to 1.5 Mbyte/s. Prices for internal DAT drives start at $800. You can get a DDS-2 drive from many vendors. Sony (San Jose, CA 408-432-1600) offers a variety of software solutions bundled with their Nice series of DAT drives. For workgroups and single-server LANs they have the LANBacker ($1,130+) series that comes with their DDS-2 drive and Cheyenne's ARCserve 6 for Windows NT and NetWare software.

For enterprise solutions Sony sells the WANBacker ($2,000+) series. It comes with their quad-speed DDS-2 drive which has a data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbyte/s using compression and an MTBF of 200,000. It's bundled with Cheyenne's ARCserve 6 for Windows NT and NetWare Enterprise Edition.

Seagate (Costa Mesa, CA 714-641-1230) sells TapeStor DAT 8 package with their Scorpion DDS-2 8 GB drive. It's bundled with Seagate Backup Exec Single Server Edition for Windows NT or NetWare and two DDS-2 cartridges. It has a transfer rate of up to 1.1 Mbyte/s with compression and an MTBF of 320,000 hours. QIC's answer to the NT server market was originally the TR-4 drive. This drive also stores 8 GB of compressed data. Only you get the compressed data from software. That changed towards the end of last year when vendors introduced Travan NS 8. This drive stores 4 GB native, 8 GB compressed. It was created for the NT server market. NS even stands for Network Series.

The NS 8 drive has on-board ALDC and employs read-while-write technology. An NS 8 drive backs up the same amount of data as a TR-4 drive in less time. This reduces your backup window.

There are a few vendors that sell an NS 8 drive. Tecmar Technologies (Longmont, CO 303-682-3700) was the first company to release one. Their TS420 ($450) is an 8 GB tape drive. It has a data transfer rate of 1.2 Mbyte/s.

Seagate has the Hornet NS 8 ($500). The drive comes with Seagate's FastSense feature. This drive uses the PC's systems resources to keep the drive's speed in sync with the system. The drive always works at optimum performance.

There are still vendors selling Travan drives. This is a worthwhile drive if you don't need hardware compression. Aiwa's (Irvine, CA 714-862-0200) TD8000 TR-4 drive ($400) has a data transfer rate of 770 Kbyte/s in native mode. This drive has read-while-write for faster backups.

There are more choices besides Travan, NS, DAT and 8mm. Compaq is shipping an entirely different tape technology installed in their NT servers. They're including the 4/8 GB SLR (Single-channel Linear Recording) tape drive from Tandberg (Simi Valley, CA 805-579-1000) in their server machine. You don't have to hook up a separate device to the network. No more dealing with creating drive letters for an add-on tape device.

It's the first time they'll be shipping a server with an installed tape drive. Compaq is selling a complete turnkey solution with an installed tape drive. That makes finding a total tape solution easy for the network server market.

Tandberg calls the 5 1/4" form factor 4/8 GB SLR drive the SLR 5. The drive comes with onboard ALDC compression and stores 4 GB of data in native capacity. It has a data transfer rate of 400 Kbyte/s in native mode. This drive competes directly with DDS-2 and NS drives that also store 4 GB.

The SLR 5 costs $650. It's more affordable than DDS-2 drives which start at $800 and more expensive than an NS 8 drive that costs about $450. The search algorithms are faster in the SLR 5 drive. So while you can backup data faster in an NS 8 drive, you can retrieve it faster with an SLR 5. Decide which is more important to you.

The SLR 5 offers upward growth. NS, DAT and Travan technology don't have next generation products available yet. The next product in the SLR series is a migration to the MLR 1 drive with a native capacity of 13 GB from Tandberg. If your needs grow more, stay with MLR technology and upgrade to the latest MLR 3 drive that stores 25 GB native. You can read all SLR cartridges in an MLR drive.

MLR stands for Multi-channel Linear Recording. The first product in the MLR series, the MLR 1, has a native capacity of 13 GB and costs $3,000. It has a data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbyte/s using hardware compression.

MLR 1 started shipping last year. Its main competitors are DDS-3, DLT 2000XT and now the NS 20. DDS-3 drives store 12 GB native and offer a data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbyte/s. DAT drives start at $2,000. You can get a DDS-3 product bundle that includes backup software from Sony, Seagate and Tecmar Technologies among others.

The DLT 2000XT drive has a native capacity of 15 GB and a data transfer rate using compression of 2 Mbyte/s. DLT drives are often found in tape libraries to meet the needs of higher-end enterprise-wide storage. The most recent announcement on the DLT front is the 35 GB native DLT 7000 drive that started shipping last year. It stores 70 GB using compression.

To get more performance from DLT among other linear technologies Overland Data (San Diego, CA 619-571-5555)has come up with a new chip called VR2. It's a Variable Rate Randomizer encoding technology that can increase the native capacity and performance of linear tape formats without changing existing tape path design, recording heads and/or media.

NS 20 falls a little short in the capacity arena with just 10 GB native and 20 GB compressed. If you haven't figured it out yet, the number following the NS is the compressed capacity the drive supports. NS 20 has a data transfer rate of about 2 1/2 Mbyte/s and costs about $600. That's fairly inexpensive for a drive that stores 20 GB of compressed data.

If you're still unsure of which technology to buy, check out Exabyte's (Denver, CO 303-516-3000) Eagle Nest. The Nest installs into a computer bay. Plug in the Eagle tape drive of your choice. Pick between Travan, NS 8 and other storage drives.