Quantum acts to reduce NAS costs
Vendor to introduce 10TB-capable DLT library by 2009
Storage vendor Quantum is focusing on driving down the cost per gigabyte of its NAS products, and aims to introduce a digital linear tape (DLT)-based library capable of handling 10 terabyte (TB) cartridges by 2009.
Henrik Hansen, marketing director at Quantum EMEA, said the capacity of Quantum drives will double every two years.
The vendor has renamed its existing premium and value lines as DLT-S4 and DLT-V4 in an attempt to avoid confusion.
"A compressed capacity of 1.6TB will probably accommodate all the data that SMEs would want to backup. But once they start taking all the aspects of compliance with corporate governance into account, [archive] management will become a lot more important," said Hansen.
Claus Egge, analyst at IDC, pointed out that legislation on storage compliance is not here yet but will come eventually - and that it is likely to encourage firms to hold information initially on disk before archiving on tape after a specified period of time.
"Certain storage devices are quite expensive, but tape is cheap and cheerful," he said. "When it is understood what files need to be stored where, data will start off being stored on expensive media and then be migrated gradually onto cheaper devices."
An IDC poll of 150 European IT managers conducted in the summer found that 35 per cent of respondents were not sure they could restore backed-up data within 48 hours, and 11 per cent could not be certain they could retrieve it within a week.