SGI , Legato
, and three other storage vendors have shattered previous tape backup and restore records.
SGI and Legato, along with StorageTek , LSI Logic
, and Brocade
, announced tape backup and restore benchmarks three times faster than the highest previous marks.
The new benchmark of 10.1 terabytes per hour for disk-to-tape backup is 2.79 times faster than HP’s April mark, according to SGI’s Craig Schultz, and the tape-to-disk image restore mark of 7.9 terabytes is 3.59 times faster than Computer Associates’
October 2002 record. And those are just two of several new records the vendors are claiming.
Schultz maintains all the new benchmarks are actual — not extrapolated — and are repeatable. “Wall-clock” and peak sustained rates were measured using real custom data provided by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The solution is scalable — both up and down — according to Schultz, and could be used in industries such as manufacturing, government, defense, sciences, energy, and media.
“Large computing environments face relentless pressure to achieve faster backup and restore performance,” says Steve Kenniston, technology analyst at
Enterprise Storage Group. “These are significant milestones in meeting this challenge.”
The vendors also announced several other benchmarks, including file-level restore (4.52 TB/hour), image-level backup (7.2 TB/hour), file-level backup and restore for 1 TB (7:09 minutes backup and 15:29 minutes restore), and file-level backup and restore using a single 10 TB file system (6.26 TB/hour backup and 4.43 TB/hour restore).
The benchmarks were conducted with SGI’s Origin 3000 server and TP9500 RAID arrays; StorageTek’s T9940B tape drive and PowderHorn 9310 library; Brocade’s SilkWorm 2Gb Fibre Channel switches; and Legato NetWorker 7.0 file-level and image backup software.
The hardware and software used for the benchmarks is all commercially available and can be purchased from a single vendor, reports Schultz.
He estimates the price for a configuration of the type used in the benchmarks would be roughly $3M USD. “Of course, customers can purchase backup products using small libraries and NetWorker starting at about $30K and ranging all the way up to the price of this configuration, or more.”
Schultz also points out that the specific size and complexity, and hence pricing, of a configuration would depend on customer criteria and geography. As a final point, he adds, “The MSRP of this configuration is not [entirely] relevant since customers purchase products at negotiated prices.”
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