Storage Guardian Launches 'Dust-Off Your Tapes' Online Backup Campaign for Small and Medium-Size Businesses

Toronto, Canada (PRWEB) October 28, 2009

Storage Guardian aims to help hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses transition from antiquated and unreliable magnetic tape backup systems to the latest online and cloud backup technology. The company, which specializes in offering SMBs enterprise-grade online backup, has launched a 'Dust-Off Your Tapes' campaign to help drive awareness of the perils of relying on vulnerable magnetic tapes as a long-term archival medium.

"We've seen tapes stacked in basements and hidden in dusty storage closets, and it makes you wonder what will happen when someone needs to restore that information," says Dave Minns, client services manager at Storage Guardian. "What we're telling small-business owners, and the resellers and managed service companies that work with them, is that the time is right to migrate that information from those dodgy tapes to the safety of online backup. The economics make sense, and they're assured that they conform to best practices in data storage."

Migrating from tape to Storage Guardian's Asigra-based online backup service is easy. Storage Guardian's software recognizes Symantec Backup Exec and VERITAS Backup Exec in Microsoft Tape Format and converts them into a Backup Lifecycle Management archive package that can be integrated into an online, tiered-storage system. Storage Guardian's tiered-storage approach automatically selects the most cost-effective online storage strategy, and makes all data instantly accessible.

With more than ten years of experience and hundreds of satisfied customers, Storage Guardian's remote data backup service has established itself as a dependable provider of enterprise-grade online backup technology for smaller companies. What sets it apart from the many low-cost alternatives in the market are online data backup features optimized for businesses that depend on servers (nowadays, that's most SMBs):

Its tiered-storage backup model includes a) a local backup of first-generation data; b) a highly available second tier of online backup; c) a third tier of near-line backups of mature data (typically backups that have aged past 90 days).
Convenience and flexibility are two crucial considerations when a major data restore is needed after a catastrophic server failure. Storage Guardian offers the ability to perform a "bare metal restore" to a completely different computer.
To save time, the initial backup is performed on an external drive that is shipped to the Storage Guardian. Similarly, if a major restore of a large amount of data is needed, Storage Guardian can overnight an external drive containing the restore data.
Storage Guardian's ultra-secure online backup technology uses AES 256-bit encryption PLUS hardware authentication. Information to be backed up is de-duplicated (deduped), compressed and encrypted before transmission to Storage Guardian's SAS-70 compliant datacenter.
Storage Guardian can also backup and restore individual mailboxes and contacts from MS Exchange and Outlook.

Useful links

Storage Guardian's blog

YouTube video tiered storage and remote data backup

Twitter: @StorageGuardian

About Storage Guardian

Storage Guardian delivers business continuity protection and information lifecycle management. Storage Guardian is used by small and midsize businesses, enterprises, and multiple-platform LAN computing environments that want to safeguard their critical business data in a secure, off-site location. Its remote backup service is the culmination of a decade of intense research and software development and represents a superior alternative to tape-based data recovery systems. All Storage Guardian's solutions are based on Televaulting technology from Asigra, a recognized leader in enterprise online backup. The company is also developing a select network of authorized VARs to service the off-site backup and fast data recovery needs of companies located throughout North America.

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Digistore Solutions Develops Prototype Network-Attached Storage (NAS) With Enhanced Storage Architecture

Singapore (PRWEB) December 07, 2011

Digistore Solutions, an internationally known supplier of data and information management products and solutions, announced the construction of a next-generation hybrid network-attached storage (NAS), Centurion iServe, that is the world's first able to connect seamlessly with optical technology for keeping frequently accessed data such as documents, images and media files always accessible on the network and automatically transfer aging content to Blu-ray optical media as archives - for future reference or to satisfy compliance regulations. It protects important archived information from accidental erasure, unauthorized modification, data corruption, or viruses - for 50 years or more.

Current Issues

Many companies have long wrestled with the issues of rapid increase of data and the challenges that come with storing and managing it. The answer for most businesses is to simply buy more servers or more hard disk - which is not economically feasible. An explosive volume of crucial data, less frequently accessed data and aging content are stored on the servers or on hard disk. As a result, it affects the performance of the servers and lifespan of the hard disk.

Leading analysts estimate up to 80 percent of enterprise data is fixed content and corporations are holding onto that data for longer retention periods; accordance to corporate policies for litigation and regulatory compliance.

As a rule, newer data, and data that must be accessed more frequently, is stored on faster, but more expensive storage, while less critical data is stored on less expensive albeit safer and more reliable media.

Newly Developed Technology

Digistore Solutions has developed a NAS that has capability to connect with Blu-ray storage library, Centurion iHub. This marked success in building the world's first next-generation NAS prototype that can be configured either as a standard NAS or as a NAS host system with enhanced Blu-ray optical storage capabilities.

By pooling high-capacity Blu-ray (BDXL) storage, the Centurion iHub creates highly reliable storage up to 10TB per system. The Centurion iHub incorporates groundbreaking features and enterprise scalability - making it an ideal choice for corporation struggling to find a cost effective, long-term storage solution for growing volumes of persistent data. By leveraging on a distributed processing architecture that efficiently sales both capacity and performance, the Centurion iHub uses less than 10 percent of the power consumption required for a disk-based archive solution.

"Optical has the advantage over tape of random versus sequential access. That is very important in retrieving information that is indexed," said Victor Foo, Chief Executive Officer of Digistore Solutions.

"Optical has the advantages over disk in that it can be natively WORM (which means that you have hardware-based immutability rather than software or firmware-based immutability of disk) and can be removable (in case you wish to move optical media to another site). Blu-ray including other optical storage might survive a flood, like in Thailand, whereas water will damage magnetic tape and disk. Optical is still the best form of storage for preserving valuable records and historical data. It provides best protection against virus threats," added Victor Foo.

A preview of our products and innovation will be on display during the Storage Visions 2012 Conference, Booth 11, held at Rivera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada from January 8 - 9, 2012.

Availability

Digistore Solutions anticipates to commercially launching the Centurion iServe and Centurion iHub during fiscal 2012.

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