Idealstor Channel Partner Takes The Tape Out Of Backup

Value Added Reseller Uses Idealstor Ejectable Disk Backup to Completely Replace Tape and Slash Recovery Time in Data Center Environment

Gaithersburg, MD - Idealstor, a leading manufacturer of removable disk to disk backup solutions, announced that CONNECT Computer, a Value Added Reseller (VAR) based in Fairfield, CT, has implemented the Idealstor 4 Bay Backup Appliance to slash their backup and restore time. The 4 Bay, which replaces 3 DLT tape libraries, is being used to streamline backup and restore for their ASP (Application Service Provider) and MSP (Managed Services) divisions that offer hosting for client applications and servers in their Connecticut data center.

Idealstor manufactures removable/ejectable disk backup systems that are designed to augment or completely replace tape as backup and offsite storage media. The Idealstor Backup Appliance has been on the market for over 4 years offering a fast, reliable and portable alternative to tape based backup systems. Each Idealstor system uses industry standard SATA disk as the target for backup data and as offsite media. Systems range from 1 removable drive up to 8 and can be used by SMB's or corporate data centers. Disk capacities mirror that of the major SATA manufacturers. Uncompressed capacities of 120GB, 200GB, 300GB, 400GB, 500GB, 750GB and 1TB are currently available.

"We recently had one of our DLT tape libraries fail for the third time", said Alan Wittstein, President of Connect Computer. "We had been in discussions with Idealstor as they were looking to partner with us to help them deliver their ejectable disk products here in Connecticut and New York. Rather than seeing our tape failure as a disaster, I viewed it as an opportunity. Idealstor was willing to ship us one of their 4 Bay backup systems to prove how the solution could help us in our data center. Their product is a Windows 2003 Server and offered us the ability to backup to 4 removable drive bays using any capacity SATA disk available. We bought a few of the new terabyte Hitachi disks to use with their removable drive caddies. We were able to quickly hook the 4 Bay up to the network via our GB backbone and even install our existing Backup Exec software on the 4 Bay and configure it as our backup server."

"We had the system set up quickly and easily configured our software to backup to the 4 Bay drives. Our backup times were cut in half and the removable disk media seemed to be a reliable alternative to sending tapes offsite. What really sold us though was the first time we had a client call to ask us to do a restore. As we are a data center, we host client applications, data and servers at our facility and were using the 4 Bay to backup client data. In the past if a client called, we would have to retrieve their backup tapes, catalog the tapes, get the data off the tape and finally restore the file for the client. This could take up to a few hours depending on the age of the data needing recovery. As we offer this as a managed service, there was an expense that we have to cover every time we had to do this. With Idealstor, the entire restore process only took a matter of minutes. The multi-bay configuration of the Idealstor not only allows us to do our nightly backups, but allows us to copy them to ejectable disks for our off-site rotation and lets us retain a live online copy here at CONNECT for immediate data recovery. That was when it hit me what a valuable tool this new backup system was. Reducing the total time spent recovering data from 2 hours to 5 minutes immediately showed me the ROI that this device provided. The Idealstor is also now the center of our managed off-site backup solution as ejectable disk has proven to be an easy to use and affordable offsite storage solution for our clients. We don't plan on pushing tape out to clients anytime soon."

About Idealstor
Idealstor is the leading manufacturer of removable disk to disk backup solutions. Each Idealstor solution offers the speed of disk backup coupled with the portability of tape. Idealstor is also the developer of iBac Data Protection Software. iBac is designed to backup to disk and disk only. iBac is ideal for any environment and backups up data quickly in its native format. Idealstor's aim is to take away the headaches, pain and expenses normally associated with tape based backup systems.

About CONNECT

CONNECT Computer is a leading full service provider of IT solutions. Established in 1985, CONNECT specializes in network integration from small business to the enterprise, ASP hosting, and disaster recovery & business continuation solutions.

SOURCE: Idealstor LLC