History 2002: Disk-to-Disk Backup

Disk-to-disk backup is really taking off, with all the major storage subsystems players jumping on the bandwagon.

The two most recent developments:

– LSI Logic Storage will launch in 2003 not just a product but an entire product line, with 3 units based on SATA drives.
– Quantum (quantum.com) expects to release a new version of its 3TB DX30 D2D backup system in 1H03, with the DX100 offering from 10 to 15TB, emulating SDLT and LTO drives and adding aggregation and compression to surpass a 100MB/s transfer rate. A depopulated version of the DX30 should follow in the next half. Currently, an enhanced version of the 3TB DX30 has just ben released (in a 3U rather than 2U rack, 120GB IBM HDDs replaced by 160GB Maxtor units, RAID-5 and RAID-10, transfer rate boosted to 280GB per hour or 78MB/s). It is available for $55,000, slightly higher than the preliminary price ($45,000), which translated to $18 per gigabyte.

This D2D backup technology is not entirely new. As early as 1998, the UC Berkeley initiated its “Tertiary Disk Project,” based on backup to 370x8GB disks. PC software such as Dantz Retrospect for D2D backup are legion. PC users furthermore didn’t wait before beginning to backup from disk to disk regularly. Certain NAS systems, specifically RAID subsystems, are also used for backup. Tape cartridge virtualization using a disk cache, as offered by Grau, IBM, Neartek or StorageTek, meanwhile, constitute the first front for enterprise backup on disk.

What follows is an updated list of the current enterprise hardware (all using ATA drives) and software offering for D2D backup:

Alacritus Software: software emulating tape library on disk (Hitachi OEM)
Atempo: Time Navigator for Quantum’s DX30 (eventually for NetApp NearStore)
Avamar Technologies: D2D with compression and object-oriented software
BakBone Software: Lifecycle Data Management solution to create pseudo tape libraries on disks
Bus-Tech: D2D for mainframes
Chaparral Network Storage: F-AT disk subsystem
Conduant: realtime recording on disk rather than tape for instrumentation applications backup hardware and software; start-up in stealth mode
EMC: coming soon with hardware partner
EVault: software for D2D backup and recovery using changes at the block level
Hewlett-Packard: likely has project based on Quantum’s DX30
Maxtor: ATA disk array modules for D2D subsystems
NetApp: NearStore (using Maxtor modules), 100 of which have been deployed WW
Nexsan Technologies: ATA-based disk arrays for D2D backup (IBM HDDs)
Raidtec: StorageCab, a D2D RAID (Tandberg Data reseller)
Software Pursuits: D2D backup software named SureSync
StorageTek: BladeStore with LSI controller, Maxtor HDDs and STK software
STORserver: D2D appliance using Nexsan hardware
Unitrends Software: D2D software (licensed by Nexsan), and DPU, a 2U D2D backup storage appliance.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 178 on November 2002 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.