With data volumes increasing exponentially year-on-year and information becoming more critical to organisations as the pressure mounts for customers to be capable of transacting 24 hours a day, so increasing demands are being placed on backup solutions and the resellers that provide them.
"Backup windows are shrinking, the volume of data to be backed up is increasing and should data loss take place in the organisation, it needs to be assured of the safety of their data," says Helen Vermij, storage product manager at Storgate Africa.
"In line with this, we're seeing products such as the Quantum PX500 series, which was launched locally three months ago, coming to the fore. These solutions promise a high-level of performance, ultra-reliable backups and the headroom to protect the customer's investment as the organisation and its data increases," she continues.
"These are commonly the things keeping IT managers, backup administrators and some board level executives awake at night," Vermij opines.
"Thankfully, the old analogy about backups only mattering when the data is gone is beginning to fade. We've seen a marked increase in backup solutions, disaster recovery and business continuity over the past year. It shows the market is taking backup and restore seriously," she adds.
Vermij says the PX500 range is perfectly suited to most organisations. "With backward read compatibility for LTO-2 and DLT technology, these LTO-3 and Super DLT libraries are also perfect for organisations considering an upgrade in order to future-proof their backup strategies. They also enter the market at a competitive price point, ensuring cost-effective protection that doesn't skimp on reliability. "
Looking more closely at the technical details of the PX500 range, Vermij says the three distinct systems in the range are designed to meet the needs of a wide variety of clients.
"With Quantum's unique 'FlexLink' technology, customers can scale and de-scale their solution on demand, at no additional cost and without additional equipment or cabling," Vermij continues. "This is imperative to ensure business agility.
"The PX500 range also offers the highest density in any tape library available today. This means maximum capacity and performance in the smallest amount of rack space. For data centres, this is an absolute necessity, since of late real estate space has become a major consideration.
"Despite the small package, the PX500 truly proves that dynamite comes in small packages. The units in the range all feature hot-swappable tape drives, hot-swappable power supplies and redundant componentry, which ensures that maximum uptime is maintained.
"This redundancy extends to the robotics in the solution," she adds. "Each PX500 series unit has its own robotic and power system, so it will continue operating even if another module is down.
"On top of this, all units across the PX500 range make use of common components. This means training is simplified and spares availability is never an issue. It also ensures that administrators are familiar with all three units in the range and are able to continue administering the solution as it grows with the organisation."
Rounding the feature list out, Vermij says the units support the two leading tape technologies in existence. "The units can furthermore also support any combination of LTO or SDLT media and drives, allowing these to be mixed and matched in a single library. This, once again is an important benefit, since numerous data centres and operations can be safely consolidated onto a single solution such as this, foregoing additional costs.
"All in all, there's not a more versatile, flexible and cost-effective solution available today," Vermij says. "And with backup and restore functionality becoming more critical to businesses of all size, companies cannot afford to rely on sub-standard solutions that don't meet their exact requirements.
"With the Quantum brand, customers are not only guaranteed of solid service and support, but of a solutions set that has earned its stripes at the coalface," she concludes.
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Storgate Africa, a member of the MB Technologies group, is the country's largest supplier of data storage products, including hard disk drives, tape drives, tape libraries, disk storage subsystems, data management software, storage media and components. Based on an ability to work with and support the world's premier vendors of storage technology, Storgate Africa has been positioned as a development-driven company that adds value to "best-of-breed" brands and solutions in the data storage market.
The company operates from a head office in Johannesburg with branches in Cape Town and Durban with its nationwide business partner network including more than 3 500 registered resellers who benefit from Storgate Africa's ability to address market demand for both PC commodity and high-end storage products.
The company has built and maintains strategic partnerships with the following leading international vendors: Seagate Technology, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Symantec, StorageTek, Adaptec, LSI, Engenio, Sony, Quantum including the Certance range, AMD, Imation, SMC, Iomega, Business Objects, Promise, Targus, Xyratex and Exabyte.
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