Storage vendors turn up the volume

HP and Data Domain offer petabyte storage systems to help with firms' long term archiving

Storage vendors are lining up new systems designed to help information-intensive enterprises that need to store petabytes of data.

Data Domain’s DD690 Storage System features inline de-duplication technology and is targeted at large enterprises needing to store huge volumes of data for long periods.
The system is available as an appliance complete with Data Domain’s own disks, or as a “gateway” device, into which customers can install third-party disks.

The DD690 has a physical capacity of 35TB, with a rated throughput of 1.2TB per hour. But by using the vendor’s data de-duplication technology, which ensures only unique data instances get stored, customers can store much greater volumes of data, said Kevin Platz, sales vice president at Data Domain. “Based on our de-duplication rates of anywhere between 10x and 50x, you could get 350TB of data on there, but in some cases it could be as high as a petabyte,” he said. The DD690 is available now, with a basic model costing around £150,000.

Meanwhile, HP has unveiled a storage system capable of scaling to over 800 TB. Its StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System (ExDS9100) features a so-called performance block based on the HP BladeSystem chassis. The performance block can scale from the four blades each capable of 200MB/s available on the basic model, to 16 blades offering 3.2GB/s, while a capacity block can scale to a maximum 820TB. Both it and the performance block are managed through HP’s file clustering software, which uses a single graphical interface and wizards to make managing storage volumes easier – and potentially reducing the burden on storage administrators. The ExDS9100 system is expected to ship in quarter four of this year.