Plasmon Enhanced UDO Archive Appliance

Plasmon, Inc. announced enhancements to its UDO Archive Appliance. With the release of Archive Appliance version 4.11, Plasmon Inc. is providing new capabilities that allow customers to more cost-effectively archive and manage their valuable business assets. New features, which include remote access and monitoring, UDO Guard and increased cache capacity, improve system performance, enhance data security and simplify management. This feature set further enhances the ability of customers to optimize storage resources by offloading archive data from expensive primary storage, and reduce the corresponding administration and cost of daily backup operations.

Archive Appliance system management has been enhanced with remote access and monitoring tools, a high-speed utility that allows Plasmon Inc. to remotely monitor and service an Archive Appliance installed on a customer site. This new capability provides proactive troubleshooting and diagnostics to facilitate timely maintenance and upgrades, ensuring uninterrupted operations. Remote management can only be performed when access is authorized by the customer and all communications are protected through secure SSL encryption.

The UDO Guard security feature has been integrated into the latest version of the Archive Appliance to protect data stored on offline or offsite media. UDO media removed from the Archive Appliance for capacity expansion or disaster recovery can be assigned a unique password that prevents data access outside the system. In combination with corporate security procedures and file level encryption, UDO Guard provides first line protection from unauthorized access to data on off site media or while in transit.

“Plasmon Inc. continues to deliver solutions that allow our customers to better utilize their storage assets,” said Patrick Dowling, VP of global marketing at Plasmon Inc. “We are 100% focused on helping customers address their data protection, compliance and disaster recovery requirements. An example is our partnership with leading medical imaging and hospital information application providers. Hospitals around the world rely on the Archive Appliance as a long-term repository for their PACS imaging and electronic medical records. Our new security and management features are a direct response to the evolving archive needs of these customers and their healthcare application vendors.”

In addition to remote monitoring and UDO Guard, Plasmon Inc. has also significantly increased the Archive Appliance’s RAID cache capacity so that more archived data can be accessed directly from disk cache while simultaneously being secured and protected on permanent UDO media. The Archive Appliance cache has been expanded from 2TB to a maximum of 4TB, providing an increase in overall system performance and more efficient handling of large files.

The Archive Appliance is certified with many of the industries leading archive and document management, medical imaging, and hospital information applications. Designed specifically for long-term data retention, it consumes up to 17 times less energy than an equivalent capacity disk array, offering a much greener archive alternative. The Archive Appliance is also a strategic component within Plasmon’s broader archive solution portfolio. These include the Enterprise Active Archive (EAA), Archive File Manager (AFM), and the recently announced NetArchive, which combines the performance of a NetApp filer with the longevity and authenticity of the Archive Appliance.