Idealstor offers you the best of disk and tape by using Serial ATA (SATA) disks as the target for backup data and as removable media for offsite storage. Each Idealstor bay can accommodate up a 1TB SATA disk giving backup administrators a faster, more reliable and larger alternative to any tape that is on the market today.

In today’s world of increasing data and decreasing backup windows many companies are looking for ways to speed up the backup/restore process for data created by corporate applications and held in databases. A primary solution for speeding up this process is the implementation of disk based backup devices (D2D). According to a survey of end users by the Enterprise Storage Group, 58 percent of respondents said that they had already implemented some form of D2D backup and another 25 percent plan to purchase a D2D solution within the next 2 years. Backing up to disk is a vast improvement from the traditional method of tape backup because of the random access nature of disk. This allows data to be streamed to disk at a much faster rate thus drastically reducing the time it takes to backup and restore data.

Disk to disk backup in the form of NAS, SAN, iSCSI and VTL have all been developed in recent years as a way to increase storage space and improve upon backup speeds. The problem with these solutions however, is that you still need some other technology to take the data offsite for backup and disaster recovery. Most companies end up implementing tape as their offsite media which in essence brings them back to square one with the same reliability and speed issues that disk backup was designed to solve.

Disk to Disk to Tape (D2D2T) or the enhanced backup method does not truly address the needs of SMB’s and larger businesses that need a fast and simple backup solution. To fully understand the differences between traditional, enhanced backup and Idealstor solution, let's review each different technology.

DISK	TAPE
Disks are random access devices making them fast.	Tapes are sequential in nature, slow compared to disk.
Seek time is in milliseconds provides instant access.	Seek time is slow; \"time to data\" is two minutes.
Enclosed casing does not require cleaning.	Tape drive heads need to be cleaned periodically.
Offers larger capacity, currently available 1TB disk can backup 2TB of data on a single disk using compression.	Largest tape capacity available is LTO4 800GB native and 1.6TB compressed.
Does not require multiplexing.	Requires multiplexing to achieve rated speeds.
It is more reliable since there are no robotic arms. Disk drives with current technology have a failure rate of less than 0.8%.	Autoloaders use robotic arms that need calibration, tapes get stuck and further destroy the drive. Magnetic tapes are susceptible to the oxide flaking off after a period of time.
Data is available online for access (based on backup software used).	Data need to be restored to disk before it can be accessed.
Does not require re-tensioning	Tape media periodically needs re-tensioning

Traditional Backup (Disk-to-Tape)
Consists of a tape or tape library attached to a backup server. In this solution the backup application which resides on the server manages the tape device and the backup process. Challenges faced with this solution using Tape Drives and Autoloaders:

• Backup window (tapes are sequential in nature and are slow)
• Calibration Issues with robotic arms in tape libraries
• Tape drive head require periodic cleaning
• Tape head alignment
• Tape reliability (oxide flaking after a period of time)
• Climate sensitive (tapes snap in dry climate)
• Slow restores
• Capacity limitation

To overcome the challenges faced by tape technology the industry has moved to the Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape backup model that is also referred to as enhanced backup. Enhanced Backup introduces a temporary storage or staging of your backup data before it is moved to tape. This addresses most of the issues with tape technology. However, it presents the following challenges:

Idealstor offers all the benefits of enhanced backup at the same time allowing you to swap disks like tape media so that the disk can be taken off-site for archival purposes. Idealstor offers a backup platform that for the first time outperforms tape drives and libraries in performance, reliability, scalability, ease of use and functionality. Idealstor can be easily deployed and is compatible with all existing major backup software. It takes away the headaches, pain and expenses normally associated with tape based backup systems and offers you peace of mind.