Category: Overland Storage

Numerous surveys show that the adoption of server virtualization is poised to take off in small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). But what can get overlooked in this trend is that greater than 70% of these virtual server deployments that occur in SMB environments will use external storage. This is where SMBs can run into problems. Identifying an affordable, scalable external storage system that can meet their short and long term needs is sometimes easier said than done but that is exactly what the newly announced SnapServer SAN S2000 is designed to deliver.

Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) face some tough choices right now. Disk-based backup is definitely on the rise and has many appealing features, but it can come with a price tag that these organizations simply cannot afford and may not meet all levels of data protection needs. Many SMEs are using tape as a primary backup target or leveraging tape as an archive in a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) scenario. It is these requirements that the new NEO® 200s and NEO® 400s entry-level tape libraries announced this week from Overland Storage are designed to address.

We have all heard of the pressures that the current economic downturn is having on companies. Since the beginning of the year, Wall Street Journal, Forrester Research and others have told us that spending on information-technology goods and services for this year is declining or will be declining. But these same outlets are also predicting the current bad economic times are coming to an end and that technology spending will increase again in 2010 across various categories to the degree of 7-10 percent.

The impact of virtualization on the IT Infrastructure has shaken IT at its core. Virtualization is changing the current model of assigning one physical server for each application by effectively consolidating multiple servers onto one piece of server hardware and then optimizing its resources. Despite these benefits, virtualization initiatives can prove challenging. For example, deploying certain components of the IT infrastructure with backup and recovery is one area where there can be unanticipated challenges in the support of virtual infrastructures.

“Disaster recovery (DR) may not be hot among our executive management team but they have definitely turned up the heat around DR.” That statement, from a storage administrator at a university in the Pittsburgh area, is reflective of the new view that executives in all sizes of organizations are adopting right now in regards to disaster recovery. As the economy continues to slow and management has more time to focus on internal processes that need fixing, organizations are seeing definite gaps in their ability to protect and recover applications, which new solutions like Overland Storage’s REO Business Continuity Appliance (BCA) can help resolve.

The use of tape as a primary target for backup has changed over the years. The onslaught of low-cost, disk-to-disk based backup solutions coupled with the many problems associated with using tape as a primary target has rightfully enticed many data centers not to use tape in that capacity. But that does not mean there is no requirement to use tape within the data center.

In looking at the tape market and what it needs to provide in tape libraries to meet today’s organizational needs, it is refreshes, not overhauls, that are required to align with these needs. Because tape libraries are becoming a secondary, as opposed to a primary, backup target in customer environments, tape library providers need to re-prioritize and even scale back the number of changes they make because if users do not want or use specific features, they will not pay for them.

Video surveillance is shaping up as the next big thing in enterprise security. IP-based cameras from Mobotix and the continued growth of high-capacity network attached storage systems from Overland Storage make it possible for almost any size and type of organization to inexpensively deploy a video surveillance solution. But what was still missing until recently was a comprehensive backend support structure for implementing these solutions and then supporting them long-term.

The use of tape as a primary target for backup has supposedly changed in large part due to the onslaught of new disk-based backup solutions with many features that are enticing data centers to change course. One could even say that vendors and analysts have abandoned tape for greener pastures by seeking to associate themselves with disk’s sexier features–all the while forgetting about tape’s evolving role within the data center.

Right now many companies are feeling a little despondent as they go into this holiday season and look to 2009. Many are looking at the possibility of or have already completed workforce reductions and now are trying to figure out how to reshape the company going forward. So while the near-term outlook appears grim, there are two ways companies can respond that are probably best summed up by two Chinese expressions. Companies can look at this situation and view it as hopelessly perilous or one that, if properly taken advantage of, can create new opportunities.