Diskers Enjoying Tape Woes

Recent mishaps involving backup tapes have emboldened vendors that push their products and services as tape replacements.

In the wake of several high-profile snafus involving tape, Data Domain Inc., Unitrends Corp., and Asigra Inc. are launching disk-based backup alternatives (see Unitrends Intros Protection Appliance and Asigra Bolsters Televaulting).

Data Domain announced an enterprise version of its disk backup appliance today, while Unitrends added an appliance for SMBs, and Asigra added features to its Televaulting backup-and-recovery software for service providers.

All companies say they can eliminate the kinds of news-making foul-ups that have plagued Ameritrade, Bank of America, and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX). Since February, all those firms have had tapes lost while being transported (see A Tale of Lost Tapes).

We’re definitely seeing more interest in people getting rid of tapes and going completely tapeless,” says Data Domain marketing director Bart Bartlett, pointing to recent news stories.“It’s almost comical that trucks are getting lost,” Asigra executive VP Eran Farajun says. “Those guys keep tripping over themselves, and it’s good for us!”

Data Domain is looking to expand to the enterprise with a new version of the midrange appliance it started shipping two years ago, for which it now claims 80 customers (see Data Domain Gets Compressed). The newly unveiled DD400 family has an upgraded operating system that supports Raid 6, higher compression rates, and faster replication. It comes in three versions: a 15-Tbyte model that's priced from $19,000; a 40-Tbyte model at $45,000; and an 85-Tbyte model at $75,000. This fall, Data Domain plans to add a gateway that connects to external arrays.

Unitrends today launched the DPU2000-1500, which stores up to 2.5 Tbytes and features bare metal recovery, for $9,995. Three of the appliance’s six SATA disks can be hot swapped, so a company can move data offsite without tape.

Asigra added billing and monitoring features to its Televaulting for Backup Service Providers (see Asigra's Path Forks and Asigra Lines Up Televaulting Resellers). New features include service-level agreement (SLA) monitoring, billing enhancements, and a Web portal that allows service providers to create multiple brands of their services. For instance, a wholesale carrier could have several resellers offering services under their own brands.

Asigra's Farajun says the idea is to let service providers give customers a backup option that does not involve transporting tapes.Clearly, the disk backup companies are gleeful about the humiliation of certain tape backup suppliers. But there's some evidence that tape's days are numbered regardless of the headlines. A survey released by Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in March (before the recent spate of lost tapes) found that 60 percent of IT professionals believe more than 40 percent of their currently tape-based backup will move to disk within three years. Only 24 percent said they would not consider replacing enterprise-class tape libraries with disk arrays.

Don’t expect tape to become extinct, though. Only 10 percent of those ESG surveyed said they anticipate moving 80 to 100 percent of their data from tape to disk.

One thing: Vendors pushing disk backup face tough competition to grab whatever business the tape vendors lose. Data Domain only had a handful of disk-based competitors when it first shipped its midrange DD200 in June 2003. Since then there has been a rise in virtual tape, content addressed storage (CAS), and other ATA-based backup appliances.

Most of the major storage vendors, as well as tape library vendors Advanced Digital Information Corp. (Nasdaq: ADIC), Overland Storage Inc. (Nasdaq: OVRL), Quantum Corp. (NYSE: DSS), and Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) (NYSE: STK), as well as startups Archivas Inc., Avamar Inc., Copan Systems Inc., Diligent Technologies Corp., Diligent Technologies Corp., Permabit Inc., and Sepaton Inc. sell disk backup products.

Disk backup services have picked up, too. IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) jumped into the game in March with its Electronic Data Management Services. Startups AmeriVault Corp., Arsenal Digital Solutions Worldwide Inc., EVault Inc., IPR International LLC, and LiveVaultCorp.also offer disk-based backup services (see Online Backup Booming and Storage Services Surge).— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch