New Virtual Storage Engine Offers Hardware-assisted Compression, Media Catalog Consistency, Disaster Recovery, and Tape Media Security
Westborough, MA -- November 14, 2005 -- Neartek, Inc., a leading developer of enterprise-class virtual tape software solutions, today announced Virtual Storage Engine (VSE) version 3.0. The new, highly anticipated, next-generation virtual tape library and data management software solution has been designed specifically for open systems IT environments (Windows, Linux, UNIX), and offers unbounded bandwidth and capacity scalability coupled with seamless integration and ease of use.
VSE is architected for speed and scalability, employing a multiple data mover design that allows for high performance, easy bandwidth expansion and high availability. With each data mover component providing throughput of over 1 TB/hour and the ability to easily add on data mover components, VSE provides tens of TB/hour performance rates. Unlike closed-box VTL solutions that impose upper limit thresholds for bandwidth and capacity, disk capacity also easily expands in VSE to meet the growing needs of any size IT organization, without the need for “forklift upgrades” and without creating storage islands of data.
“Our tests have clearly demonstrated that deploying multiple VSE data mover units substantially increases bandwidth and performance,” noted Steve Bagby, CTO for Neartek. “We architected VSE to easily achieve linear scalability in performance as data mover units are added, with no upper limit to the quantity of data mover units in a configuration.”
Because IT organizations continue to invest time and resources in perfecting backup policies and processes, Neartek designed VSE to seamlessly integrate into existing backup environments. VSE supports popular open systems hosts, backup applications, and tape device emulations to minimize disruption to current backup and restore procedures. VSE also leverages existing backup applications and processes for physical media creation. VSE uses embedded media managers to ensure media catalog knowledge of the physical tapes' location -- without adding network or host traffic.
Virtual Storage Engine v3 Delivers:
Disk Capacity Optimization: VSE offers hardware-assisted compression to maximize disk capacity without degrading performance. VSE also provides an identical software compression to ensure no single point of hardware failure.
Disaster Recovery and Backup Consolidation: VSE’s remote vaulting over IP enables “truckless” tape backup to a disaster recovery or peer site. In addition, satellite or branch offices can eliminate local tape handling and tape hardware by replicating data over low-cost IP networks to the corporate data center, significantly reducing costs and providing centralized administration.
Physical Tape Creation with 100% Media Catalog Consistency: VSE maintains the backup media server’s knowledge and control of the physical tape’s location and status without affecting host or network performance. Data migration from virtual tape to physical tape is accomplished via an "on-board" media agent to eliminate any potential burden to backup servers during the migration process and achieve optimal performance. Copies of virtual media to physical media as well as ejection management are handled by the backup application. Data recovery occurs without the need for VSE.
Portable Tape Media Security: For IT organizations that have elevated the priority of security for portable tape media, VSE is fully encryption-enabled, and has been tested with encryption appliances from leading vendors, such as Decru, to ensure no performance degradation.
Pricing and Availability
Virtual Storage Engine version 3 is a software-only solution that is compatible with most popular third-party disk arrays. Neartek works with channel partners to deliver a turnkey solution to customers, which includes the VSE software license on a Linux-based appliance, and customer-specified disk array. MSRP for this turnkey solution begins at approximately US $25,000 for a 2TB solution (4TB if compression is enabled) and scales upward based on the customer’s specific performance and capacity requirements. VSE version 3 is scheduled to ship and will be generally available this quarter (Q4 2005).
About Neartek
Neartek’s Virtual Storage Engine (VSE) enterprise-class virtual tape software solution dramatically accelerates and enhances the reliability of backup and restore operations for open systems environments, while saving money through storage consolidation and improved efficiencies. For more information visit the Web site at http://www.neartek.com or call 866-NEARTEK or 508-475-3300.
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Neartek is a registered trademark and Virtual Storage Engine is a trademark of Neartek, Inc. All other product, trademark, company or service names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.