Backup systems vendor Exabyte Corporation this week announced it has begun shipping the 430A AIT-2 tape library and will ship the 215A AIT-2 tape library within the next 30 days. The 430A and the 215A Exabyte tape libraries, featuring the second generation of Advanced Intelligent Tape(TM) (AIT-2) technology, are the first in a series of Exabyte AIT library offerings planned for release later this year. List prices start at $10,500.
“Exabyte is excited to add the AIT-2 technology to its line of multi- technology tape libraries. The 430A and 215A, the first two members of an entire family of Exabyte AIT automation products, combine the ease of use and cost of ownership advantages of Exabyte libraries with the capacity and performance advantages of the AIT-2 tape drive technology to bring users enterprise-class automation capability at an entry-level price point,” said Peri Grover, senior product marketing manager at Exabyte.
According to Exabyte, the 430a occupies two cubic feet and five units of rack space and is designed for data intensive environments. A scalable solution, the 430a enables users to start with two AIT-2 drives and add additional drives as their data storage needs increase. The Exabyte 430A accommodates up to four AIT-2 tape drives and 30 data cartridges, giving customers the ability to conduct unattended backup operations for over 15 hours. The 430A has a native capacity of 1.5 TB (3.9 TB compressed*) with a native data transfer rate of 86.4 GB per hour (225 GB/hour compressed*).
Designed for entry-level applications experiencing increasing data storage needs, the 215A provides is aimed at small to medium business that has chosen AIT technology and is ready to automate their backup. Exabyte’s 215A mini-tape library takes up only one cubic foot and five units of rack space in a half-rack width, allowing two libraries to fit side by side or one library to fit on a desktop server. With library capability in an autoloader form factor, the 215A has a native capacity of 750 GB (1.9 TB compressed*) and a native data transfer rate of 43.2 GB per hour (112 GB/hour compressed*). The 215A accommodates up to two AIT-2 tape drives and 15 data cartridges.
