Crossroads to Ship StrongBox On December 5, 2011

Crossroads Systems, Inc. will begin shipping StrongBox, an online all-the-time, non-proprietary and portable data vault for long-term data retention, on December 5, 2011.

StrongBox is an enterprise archive solution that leverages the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) as its storage medium. It incorporates disk for fast file storage and retrieval, and physical tape for cost effective, reliable and long-term storage.

As a cost-effective, vendor neutral and future-proof data vault, StrongBox presents itself as a standard NAS target with the ability to mount CIFS/NFS shares. It’s non-proprietary and allows for portable data management. No agents, backup software or application modifications are required, and organizations gain a persistent view for all files on tapes stored in the library.

In an October 6th report written by David Reine, Senior Contributing Analyst at The Clipper Group, he praised StrongBox for its transformative approach to long-term data preservation. "The Crossroads StrongBox presents a paradigm shift in the use of tape that is cost effective and energy efficient, lowering the TCO of the storage infrastructure for the enterprise," said Reine. "It separates tape from its legacy relationship with backup applications. By using LTO-5 and LTFS, StrongBox has the capacity, scalability and flexibility required for use as an active archive. If you have a need for a Tier-3 data repository, now is the time to investigate the value of StrongBox."

Supporting both HP and IBM, providers of LTO-5 tape drives and libraries, StrongBox can be deployed throughout industries that rely on long-term data preservation, including government, healthcare imaging, media and entertainment, and research/science sectors. LTO drives and libraries from other manufacturers are currently being qualified as well.

StrongBox’s benefits:

• Online All-the-Time: Tape is transformed into an online all-the-time accessible file system. Multiple access points can engage StrongBox simultaneously and will be presented with a unified, persistent view of the data vault. StrongBox minimizes IT dependency and allows users to experience real-time, online access.
• Vendor Neutral: Vendor lock-in is eliminated, allowing organizations to take back control of their data with this non-proprietary archive solution. Tape media written by StrongBox is readable in any LTFS compatible drive or system. No agents, no applications, and no proprietary software means controlling data today and future-proof it for tomorrow.
• Data Mobility: Data is shared with affiliates, moved to a secondary site, or accessed from any LTFS supported vendor system. Due to the open standard of LTFS, terabytes of information can be moved and managed via tape cartridge – freeing up expensive network bandwidth while retaining online accessibility to the data.
• Self Healing: StrongBox ensures data is available to meet critical business requirements by proactively monitoring and reporting on the health of data and drives. It automatically detects media/drive degradation and copies files, healing archive and preserving data policies. StrongBox also auto-migrates files to newer drive technology and media without sacrificing the files’ online accessibility.
• Performance: StrongBox harnesses the reliability and economy of tape with the accessibility of disk to achieve up to a 90 percent cost reduction for file-based storage. Disk caching and buffering expedites the data archive and retrieval process on low cost, reliable tape media. Flexible policies and configurations provide optimized access to data and minimize TCO for an online all-the-time data archive.
• Scalability: Organizations can now invest in a cost-effective solution that scales as their archive grows from 500,000 files to 5 billion. New devices will be automatically detected and organically integrated, scaling to high capacities while keeping TCO low. The complexity of traditional tape-based solutions is replaced with the simplicity of file-based NAS storage.

Rob Sims, president and CEO of Crossroads Systems, commented: "StrongBox shatters the perception that an archive infrastructure will forever remain proprietary, inflexible, high maintenance and expensive. It unlocks the possibilities of how to manage long-term data, and does so while dramatically reducing archive costs and arming organizations with the power to make their own data archive decisions. Proprietary archive systems and vendor lock-ins can be a thing of the past. With StrongBox, your data can now be alive in the archive. That’s something that nearly all organizations can welcome with open arms."

Read also:
Crossroads Launches StrongBox Early Adopter Program
For NAS to selected members of Customer Advisory Board