Tolis Partners With Small Tree

Providing a robust server solution driving larger system counts than a normal 1GbE environment can handle, TOLIS Group, manufacturer of data backup and restore solutions for end-users and OEMs, improved its server performance with Small Tree Communications, LLC‘s 10GbE solution.
 
Using the 24 port 10GbE copper video switch – ST10G-28Cat6 – and 10GbE network cards from Small Tree in tandem with its BRU Server, the TOLIS team witnessed data throughput allowing streaming three LTO-5 drives simultaneously at a sustained rate of 140MB/sec per drive.

According to Tim Jones, president and CTO of TOLIS, a 1GbE environment is lucky to achieve 90MB/sec to a single LTO-5 tape drive, thereby demonstrating the performance of the BRU Server when connected to Small Tree’s 10GbE solution.
 
"One of the biggest backup bottlenecks that an IT staff faces with client server backup installations like our BRU Server solution in an environment with more than a few client systems is the available network bandwidth," Jones said. "As soon as we tested the Small Tree 10GbE solution, we were floored. In fact, we ran out of test tape drives before we ran out of bandwidth."
 
BRU Server provides client/server-based data backup and recovery services across networks of any size. Delivering reliability, functionality and flexibility to meet an organization’s backup needs, it offers new graphical interfaces and numerous client-side options.
 
ST10G-28Cat6 offers post-production facilities the ability to support 10GbE networks without needing expensive optics and cabling. With this new switch, which includes Small Tree’s proprietary network engineering, video editors can edit Pro Res 4444, uncompressed and 2k over affordable, ubiquitous Ethernet.
 
"In a 1GbE lab environment where we could normally only backup four client systems simultaneously to BRU Server’s disk stage environment, the Small Tree 10GbE solution allowed us to expand that to handle 20 concurrent systems," Jones continued. "This translates to a 5:1 reduction of the backup window meaning that either more systems can be backed up in a given period, or fewer servers need to be assigned to handle the same number of client systems. Either translates to a huge potential ROI of the updated network infrastructure in a very short period."