Tiered Storage

Sunstar company would like to make you aware that we can carry a line of storage that supports both SATA and SAS drives within the same chassis.

NexSAN recently released Tiered Storage in both their 14 Bay and 42 Bay chassis. Many of our clinets see absolute value in tiering their storage. In the recent past they had no option but to add another shelf of storage. This is no longer the case. NexSAN has thoroughly tested their solutions with 15K and 7.2K disk drives and they run just fine. Speed and heat is not an issue.
Consider adding a second controller within the chassis supporting mixed drives and your performance will jump.

For additional information contact us directly: 800.663.5523 info@sunstarco.com
Thank You
Gavin

Tape Speed and Capacity comparrison

There are many manufacturers and models of new and existing tape drives and sometimes it is much easier to make a decision or solve a naging questions when you see the data, simplified in a format that you can easily read.

Well we at Sunstar have done just that.

The msot common drives are listed on a specific page on our web site. Just follow the link below and you will be amazed how fast you will find the drive and manufacturer in question.
Drive Comparison Chart
We inventory (where possible) and support these drives.
If you have addition questions - contact us directly.
800.663.5233 info@sunstarco.com

Many Thanks
Sunstar Compnay, Inc.
Inglewood, Ca

Sun StorageTke Tape Drives

Sunstar Company supports the following Sun StorageTek tape drives. We carry a significant inventory of drives for stand alone purposes or for an existing tape library. Units are available with the appropriate shelves. Models available:

STORAGETEK T9840A ULTRA SCSI, ESCON, FIBRE CHANNEL 20GB Native, Transfer Rate 10MB/sec

STORAGETEK T9840B FICON, ESCON, FIBRE CHANNEL 20GB Native, Transfer Rate 19MB/sec

STORAGETEK T9840C FICON, ESCON, FIBRE CHANNEL 20GB Native, Transfer Rate 30MB/sec

STORAGETEK T9840D FICON, ESCON, FIBRE CHANNEL 75GB Native, Transfer Rate 16.5MB/sec

STORAGETEK T9940A ULTRA SCSI, ESCON, FIBRE CHANNEL 60GB Native, Transfer Rate 10MB/sec

STORAGETEK T9940B FICON, ESCON, FIBRE CHANNEL 200GB Native, Transfer Rate 30MB/sec

STORAGETEK T10000 FICON, FIBRE CHANNEL 500GB Native, Transfer Rate 120MB/sec

STORAGETEK T10000B FICON, FIBRE CHANNEL 1TGB Native, Transfer Rate 120MB/sec

Please do contact us and we will gladly answer all your questions.
800.663.5523 or info@sunstarco.com
Gavin

Tandem 5285ACL

Sunstar Company will will receiving a shipment o a number of Compaq Tandem 5285ACL. These are rare to find and will not last long.

The 5285ACL tape drive is a high performance, high capacity, streaming cartridge tape product designed for use on midrange and high-end computing systems. The 5285ACL tape drive features 10 cartridges, with 1.1 TB of native storage capacity (2.2 TB compressed), and transfer speeds of 11 MB/second.

If you have an interest in these units, please call us at 800.663.523

NexSAN Storage offered by Sunstar Company

Sunstar Company would like to make you aware that we offer the following NexSAN Technologies storage solutions.

All units are available with a choice of single or dual controllers, redundant power supplies, fans and offer significant energy savings.
AutoMAID™ allows NexSAN storage to place its disk drives to an idle state to conserve energy yet provide near-instantaneous access to data.

SATABeast Up to 42TB in a single chassis, SATA Drives
42 Bay, 4U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host

SASBeast Up to 12.6TB in a single chassis, SAS Drives
42 Bay, 4U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host

Tiered Storage - Mix of SAS & SATA Drives
42 Bay, 4U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host

SATABeast Xi Up to 42TB in a single chassis Mac environments SATA Drives
42 Bay, 4U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host

SATABoy Up to 14TB in a single chassis, SATA Drives
14 Bay, 3U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host

SASBoy Up to 4.2TB in a single chassis, SAS Drives
14 Bay, 3U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host

SATABoy (STH) Up to 14TB in a single chassis, SATA Drives
14 Bay, 3U, SAS & iSCSI to host

SASBoy (STH) Up to 4.2TB in a single chassis, SATA Drives
14 Bay, 3U, SAS & iSCSI to host

DATABeast Highly managed solution that can grow to several Petabytes - SAS & SATA Drives
Scalable SATA/SAS solution in a high density, low profile form factor

To learn more about NexSAN storage, please do contact us a Sunstar.
800.663.5523 or info@sunstarco.com

Thank You
Gavin

Management of fixed content

NexSAN's Assureon has been designed to to address the long term storage and management of fixed content and compliance information. Sunstar Company would like to introduce the Assureon to you and your company.

The Assureon does the following:

• Compliant-level privacy, integrity and longevity
• Self-auditing, self-healing file management technology
• Enterprise class manageability, scalability and energy efficiency
• Affordable: enterprise class archive to meet your needs at a price to meet your budget

Most storage systems provide you "hope" - hope about your data privacy, integrity and longevity. But there is some data that demands guarantees.Can you guarantee a file. . . has not been tampered with? is safe from prying eyes? is not corrupted over time?

Nexsan’s Assureon online disk storage archive provides the privacy, integrity and longevity of a digital safe deposit box with the high speed access of disk drive technology. Assureon assures Privacy Assureon ensures the privacy of data with innovative security features
Data Separation and Security

Every user or department can have their files in their own virtual safe deposit box. Assureon establishes an unalterable audit trail for the life of an archived file. Every time a file is accessed, a record is kept of who accessed it and when it was accessed. Assureon ensures the integrity of data with next generation self-auditing and self-healing technology.

In a new world of regulatory compliance, you need to guarantee the retention and deletion of files. With automated integrity management and file immutability technology, Assureon protects against accidental or unauthorized file deletion and ensures you can retain files for compliant or flexible time periods as well as delete them when their retention period is over.

Ideal Markets
Healthcare, Banking, Brokerage, Law, Compliance Officers, Legal Counsel etc.

Do contact us at info@sunstarco.com or call us 800.663.5523 if you would like to learn more about the NexSAN Assureon.
Gavin

NexSAN SATA and SAS Storage Solutions

Sunstar Company continues top promote the NexSAN SATA and SAS storage solutions as we have found over the years that the performance, quality, reliability, support, functionality and pricing offered by NexSAN overshadows all the competitors in this tier.

NexSAN Technologies has expanded its line of storage solution over the last couple of months, and there is more to follow.

Let's look at the line:

3U Chassis supporting a choice of 14 SATA or SAS drives
SATABoy Up to 14TB in a single chassis, SATA Drives - 14 Bay, 3U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host, - Single or Dual controller, active - active, AutoMaid - Green Technology
SASBoy Up to 4.2TB in a single chassis, SAS Drives - 14 Bay, 3U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host, - Single or Dual controller, active - active, AutoMaid - Green Technology
SATABoy(STH) Up to 14TB in a single chassis, SATA Drives - 14 Bay, 3U, SAS & iSCSI to host - Single or Dual controller, active - active, AutoMaid - Green Technology
SASBoy(STH) Up to 4.2TB in a single chassis, SAS Drives - 14 Bay, 3U, SAS & iSCSI to host - Single or Dual controller, active - active, AutoMaid - Green Technology

4U Chassis supporting a choice of 42 SATA or SAS drives
SATABeast Up to 42TB in a single chassis, SATA Drives - 42 Bay, 4U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host - Single or Dual controller, active - active, AutoMaid - Green Technology
SASBeast Up to 12.6TB in a single chassis, SAS Drives - 42 Bay, 4U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host - Single or Dual controller, active - active, AutoMaid - Green Technology
Tiered Storage - Mix of SAS & SATA Drives - 42 Bay, 4U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host - Single or Dual controller, active - active, AutoMaid - Green Technology
SATABeast Xi Up to 42TB in a single chassis Mac environments SATA Drives - 42 Bay, 4U, Fibre Channel & iSCSI to host - Single or Dual controller, active - active, AutoMaid - Green Technology

Network Attached Storage
The Edge - NAS for SMB, FC connected RAID storage, capacity and density - up to 84TB, Green Storage - Consolidates file and block into a single solution with CIFS, NFS and iSCSI
The Big One - grow with new or existing NexSAN Storage to several Petabytes - secure and highly managed

DATABeast Highly managed solution that can grow to several Petabytes - SAS & SATA Drives - Scalable SATA/SAS solution in a high density, low profile form factor

Assureon - Secure Storage. Encryption, Compliance, De-Duplication, Archiving, e-Discovery.

Green Storage - Intelligent, disk-based archiving appliances - complete hardware/software systems that give users powerful and cost-effective choices for the protection, retention and long term care of their information assets

If you have a need or an interest in purchasing some additional RAID storage, please contact us at Sunstar Company. info@sunstarco.com or (800) 663.5523
Gavin
http://www.sunstarco.com/

Quantum Scalar 50 and Scalar 500 Tape Libraries

Scalable, Simple to Operate and Easy to Service are some of the features that drive many companies to purchase tape libraries from Quantum.

Today I am going to focus on two of their libraries in particular.
The Scalar 50 and the Scalar i500

The Scalar 50 start with 38 slots and scale up to 76 slots. The user-friendly interface enables simple installation, operation and maintenance. Functionality, includes partitioning, multiple drive type support and connectivity choices: SCSI, iSCSI, SAS and Fibre Channel all from Quantum. The scalar 50 supports the following tape drives: LTO-4, DLT-S4, LTO-3, or LTO-3HH. Bottom line Quantum has released a great library and for the most part this unit will support most small to medium sized companies for some time to come.

The Scalar i500 like the scalar 50 was originally engineered by Adic and once again we have a hit. The Scalar i500 combines modular design with continuous robotics to provide industry-leading scalability, performance, and reliability. Supporting up to 18 LTO tape drives, starting with 36 slots and the ability to grow to 400 slots this modular library has the potential to support enterprise corporations. Standard warranty is for one year with uplifts available.

If you would like to learn more about these libraries do contact info@sunsatrco.com or call (800) 663-5523 for immediate help.

Many Thanks

Gavin
www.sunstarco.com

Healthcare - Archiving your data

NexSAN's Assureon has been designed to to address the long term storage and management of fixed content and compliance information. For the medical industry, this is good news. The PACS just keep growing and we know we can't go back to the "old" hard copy that we used for decades.

The biggest problems faced by this medical market are compliance and yes the files tend to grow significantly and there is an associated cost as these images need to be kept for a predetermined period of time.

The NexSAN Assureon can be your savior.

The NexSAN Assureon is fast, manages itself, self auditing and healing, is very reliable, is secure, offers longevity, easy to grow and is very simple to own and use.

Nexsan Assureon adds value in many different ways:

• Securely archives PACS images to meet long-term retention policies
• Meets mandatory HIPAA requirements
• WORM storage ensures image immutability
• Continual auditing to ensure image integrity and authenticity
• Provides audit trail of user access
• Archived images can be encrypted to ensure patient security and privacy
• At the end of an image’s retention period, either the retention period can be extended or the images can be permanently deleted
• Provides local or remote replication for Business Continuity
• In remote replication: when primary site is down, applications transparently fail over to secondary site.
• When primary site is back up and active, Assureon’s automatic self-healing replication re-synchronizes the two sites.
• Solution in place for satellite offices, local or worldwide.

This is not the easiest solution to explain in written words. Basically it will adapt to your environment.

Assureon has been certified or is compatible with:
PACS Certified: GE, AGFA, Plasmon.
PACS Certification in process: Siemens, Cerner and McKesson

Bottom line it works and is significantly less expensive than the competition and offers additional features.

Please contact me at Sunstar Company and rather quickly we can determine if the Assureon is a match.

Gavin@sunstarco.com 800.663.5523

Thanks

Gavin
www.sunstarco.com

42TB in a single chassis

Sunstar Company is proud to introduce to you the NexSAN SATABeast. No just like any other SAN, the SATABeast will save you money.

Interested in going green, save power.

The SATABeast employs Nexsan's revolutionary AutoMAID™ energy saving technology. AutoMAID transparently places SATABeast disk drives in an idle state reducing power consumption and operational costs. AutoMAID delivers the cost-saving benefits of MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) without the limitations of slow access times and special host software. Nexsan's AutoMAID is granular to an individual drive or RAID set and enables users to determine the level of access speed and energy savings desired. AutoMAID is the first MAID architecture that supports VTL (Virtual Tape Libraries), full file format D2D and standard RAID implementations.

NexSAN's award-winning Performance SATAT RAID controller architecture utilizes dual RAID engines on each SATABeast controller to provide extremely high throughput performance across 42 spindles. SATABeast's 42 high capacity drives can be segmented into multiple RAID sets or a single large storage pool. LUN Mapping allows users to easily configure the massive disk capacity for dozens of servers or one.

• Highest storage density in the industry - up to 42 TB in only 4U
• NexSAN's revolutionary AutoMAID™ energy saving technology greatly reduces power consumption and operating costs.
• Full Enterprise class performance and reliability
• Dual function Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity with wire-speed performance. Flexible, scalable and completely OS independent, SATABeast easily supports a broad range of storage infrastructures.
• High performance – over 700 MB/s sustained throughput
• Integrated Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity for flexible implementation
• Reduced energy consumption and costs through AutoMAID™ technology.
• All active components are redundant and individually hot-swappable
• Highest density per rack inch
• Completely OS independent. No special software drivers or server-based management applications required.
• Supports RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5 and 6 & supports multiple RAID sets and multiple volumes per set.
• Up to 2GB cache per controller and supports up to 32 LUNS per controller.
• Online SATABeast delivers access to data up to 500 times faster than tape libraries and 20x faster than other MAID systems.
• Embedded web-browsable GUI over 10/100/1000 port, supports email alerts and SNMP traps
• Horizontal midplane design promotes superior airflow and alleviates insertion stress points
• Anti-Accumulative Rotational Vibration design enables maximum drive reliability.
• WorldView™ - Provides ability to manage and configure multiple Nexsan units from a single GUI
• Warranty - three years
• Reliable - YES

Looking for more than 42TB, look at the DataBeast, in essence, multiple SATABeasts and more.

More spped, well the SASBeast (not confirmed) is not yet on the market, consider the NexSAN SASBoy, very similar to the 14 drive SATABoy , however SAS drives and very fast.

Interested, contact me at Sunstar. (800) 663.5523 or info@sunstarco.com

Cheers

Gavin

iSCSI Storage here to stay

It's easy to install - almost as fast as Fibre attached storage and yes reliable. So why not purchase an iSCSI SAN?

Actually many companies are going the iSCSI root, however it is not the ideal solution for all. If you need very fast storage and are working with large databases - perhaps it will be best to stay with Fibre attached storage. Not all vendors agree and some vehemently state - "ours is fast enough". This might indeed be the case, however most primary storage in enterprise accounts tend to stick with a particular manufacturer and Fibre has worked in the past so why not continue.

We at Sunstar Company do recommend iSCSI Attached Storage for many many of our clients. For the most part they are easy to install, reliable and yes fast. Most manufacturers that do offer an iSCSi solution have in the past paired the unit with SATA drives, thus good but not great performance. Now with the new SAS drives, we are looking at a higher performing solution.

We tend to offer the following solutions when we have a client looking to purchase iSCSI:

• NexSAN - Their line of storage supports a choice of Fibre and iSCSI ports or SAS and iSCSI ports. In conjunction with The Edge that SATABeast or SATABoy will now supports NAS with a choice of SATA or SAS drives.
• iQstor - iSCSI storage with software functionality, choice of Fibre or SATA drives.
• RELDATA - iSCSI Gateway (use your existing storage) or purchase the head with storage. iSCSI - add NAS, replication and more.
• Arena- basic box - add drives and you are ready to go.
• StoreVault from NetApp - Twelve drive solution - SATA drives - NAS options and software.

All these manufacturers support iSCSI and you have a choice when connecting to your network. Download the Microsoft iSCSI drive (free) and install or purchase a TOE [network interface cards with TCP/IP offload engines] . Not absolutly necessary - however some folks tend to think that they do offer an advantage. Personally I have not see too much of a diiference in performance.

Contact us at Sunstar and let us steer youi to the solution that best fits your requirements and budget.

info@sunstarco.com (800) 663-5523

Thank You

Gavin

NAS with your existing Storage

So you have an existing SAN with excess storage or perhaps you need to look at some of the capacity as file based rather than block.

Sure you can purchase a new NAS with some storage. An alternative is to carve up some of your existing storage with the help of a RELDATA NAS Gateway.

Highly scalable, Clusterable and High Availability

By leveraging industry-standard Fibre Channel, SCSI, SAS or iSCSI storage arrays, the RELDATA 9240-enabled IP storage systems provide the performance and throughput of more expensive Fibre Channel or enterprise NAS solutions at a much lower cost.

• Its modular architecture lets organizations easily expand block and file-based storage capacity to meet demand, seamlessly consolidate underused storage assets, and ensure availability of data.

RELDATA Unified Storage Gateways feature vendor-agnostic storage resource interoperability and consolidation. They offer:

• Interoperability with industry-standard Fibre Channel, SCSI, SAS and iSCSI disk and tape storage resources
• Certification with disk arrays and tape libraries of leading storage vendors
• Software RAID levels 1, 4, 5 and 6
• Ability to use simple JBOD arrays for storage consolidation or expansion
• Seamless extension of existing Fibre Channel SAN
• Active-passive failover and load balancing features
• Unified SAN & NAS Storage Provisioning over IP

RELDATA solutions deliver scalable truly parallel iSCSI SAN and NAS storage from a single pool of shared storage. In today’s heterogeneous Windows, Linux or Unix environments, the RELDATA Universal IP Storage Gateways provide:

• Dedicated block-level iSCSI target volumes, or CIFS and NFS file systems
• Centrally managed virtualized storage volume pool
• Boot-over-IP capability eliminates any need for the direct attached storage.

The Gateway also provides:

• IP-based data replication features on block- and file-level
• Point-in-time volume snapshots including writable snapshots
• Snapshot-based incremental volume replication
• Local and remote volume mirroring
• Disk-to-disk and disk-to-tape backups of files
• IPsec encryption and CHAP authentication
• NAS that’s fully integrated with both Network Information Services (NIS) and Active Directory Services.

The RELDATA Gateway is available from Sunstar Company.

Also available is the RELATA Unified Storage solution, basically the Gateway with drives and fully configured.

Do contact us if we can be of assistance: info@sunstarco.com or 800.663.5523

Gavin

In bad econnomic times we still need to purchase storage

Today was not a good day for the US stock market. The Dow dropped 770 points and the Nasdq lost almost 200 points.

So why am I noting all this gloom on the Sunstar Blog Site - after all Sunstar Company is a data storage and backup company.

Quite simply - our data continues to grow and we need to ensure that the data we have is available be it on RAID storage or perhaps archived onto tape. Look at your home computer, yes we are adding more data all the time and backup up less frequently. This we knno is not good. The disk drive manufacturers are increasing the drive capacities for two basic reasons: Technology alows for larger capacity and secondly, the consumers demand more capacity. Bottom line our data will continue to grow and I believe we are near the bottom of the curve.

Data is there and we need to deal with it. The consumers of RAID storage have few choices. Sure we can archive more, tape is great but we all question reliability. Primary storage can be cost prohibitave. So we must look to secondary storage.

Sunstar works with storage manufacturers such as NexSAN, iQStoar and Arena and thes folks tend to fucus on primarily SATA II storage, thus the secondary tier of storage.

As for tape - LTO, IBM and the StorageTek line are still popular - but now for archive purposes.

Please conatc Sunstar if we can be of assistance.
800.663-5523 info@sunstarco.com
Gavin

iQstor with Fibre Drives

Fibre Disk drives are the standard for 3.5-inch 10K-RPM and 15K-RPM hard drives used in mission-critical server and storage solutions where system availability and reliability are of utmost importance.

If performance, reliability and innovation for enterprise applications is of importance to you, I would recommend that you looks at utilizing Fibre disk drives in your RAID. These drives tend to set the standard for e-business and real-time commerce infrastructure computing. Fibre drives are ideal for 3.5-inch mainstream and enterprise storage applications and is an excellent choice for demanding mission-critical network and server storage environments.

• Broad range of capacities—from 36 GB to 450 GB
• Serial Attached SCSI, Ultra320 SCSI, 2-Gb/s and 4-Gb/s Fibre Channel interfaces
• A 40 percent improvement in IOPS/watt performance.
• RoHS compliant
• Sustained data rates up to 125 MB/s
• Seek times as fast as 3.5 ms
• Highest reliability rating in the industry
• Generally - 5-year limited warranty

Sunstar Company offers the iQstor line of storage that utilize Fibre and SATA drives. Each shelf supports 15 drives and the two models that I would like to bring to you attention are:

Fibre to Fibre - iQ2880 4Gb Fibre to Fibre and iSCSI to Fibre - iQ2850 iSCSI to SATA or Fibre along with the JBOD that supports a choice of Fibre or SATA Drives. (240 Drives max)

Contact me and we discuss these options: 800.663.5523 info@sunstarco.com

Gavin

www.sunstarco.com

Advantages of SAS Drives

Sunstar Company and NexSAN Technologies would like to introduce you to their new SASBoy Storage Array.



Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), the follow-on to parallel SCSI, is designed for high performance enterprise requirements.



SAS provides significant benefits to external storage subsystems and offers users "one-stop-shopping" to satisfy their requirements for the following three main data types.

Throughput Data: High MB/s and large data intensive files; Large block, random read/writes; Video streaming; CAD; Transaction Data; Reference Data

Transaction Data: Maximum IOP, calculation intensive files; Small block, random read/writes; Reservation systems; Billing systems

Reference Data: Large block, sequential writes / reads

SAS based external storage arrays (such as the NexSAN SASBoy) provide benefits in four areas: performance, availability, flexibility, scalability and cost of ownership.

SASBoy: High capacity – up to 4.2 TB in only 3U and Data Transfer Rates: Fibre: Up to 50,000 random IOPS from cache.

Many Thanks

Gavin

(800) 663-5523 info@sunstarco.com

www.sunstarco.com

iSCSI RAID now VMware Certified

Sunstar Company, Inc is please to announce that the iQ2850 iSCSI storage system has been certified for use with VMware Infrastructure 3. Based on this completed interoperability testing, iQstor’s iQ2850 will now be included in the Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware ESX 3.5, a part of VMware Infrastructure 3, as a supported storage platform.

The iQstor iQ2850 iSCSI SAN is easily installed in under twenty minutes -- simplifying integration and accelerating migration into virtual environments. By deploying the iQ2850 with VMware Infrastructure 3, IT managers are able to leverage a simple, flexible virtual storage solution that can scale easily and affordably to meet changing business requirements.

iQstor’s iQ2850 iSCSI SAN includes:

• integrated data protection and management features such as storage virtualization
• snapshot
• volume-copy
• remote replication
• storage provisioning
• and policy-based capacity growth.

The iQ2850 provides simple storage consolidation, enabling virtual infrastructures to improve storage utilization and data protection methods, facilitate disaster recovery and optimize virtualized server availability and workload migration.

Every iQ2850 offers seamless and affordable online capacity expansion - up to 240 drives - and features eight iSCSI host ports for flexible, multi-host accessibility. iQstor’s fully redundant active-active architecture provides a complete and fault-tolerant SAN.

If this is iSCSI RAID solution is of interest to you please contact us:

800.663.5523 info@sunstarco.com

Gavin

www.sunstarco.com

Data Transcription and Migration Services

Are you in need to repair or replace an existing tape drive?

Sunstar Company, Inc has the ability ro repair and supply new or replacement tape drives to companies offering:

• Tape Media Copying
• Tape Transcribing
• Data Re-mastering
• Data Archiving
• Data Processing Services.
• Tape drives supported:

LTO (Ultrium)
LTO 4, 3, 2 and 1 - Internal External (FH & HH) and for specific tape libraries
T9840, T9940 and T10000
T9840A, B, C & D; T9940A & B and T10000- Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3480
All Manufacturers - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3490
All Manufacturers - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3490e
All Manufacturers - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3590
All Manufacturers - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3592 TS1120 TS1130
IBM, Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
DLT
DLT & SDLT drives - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
SLR 9 Track 4mm 8mm
Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
DIR & DTF Drives
Internal, External and for specific tape libraries

Do let us know if we can be of assistance?

(800) 663-5523 info@sunstarco.com

Many Thanks

Gavin

Storage and Backup: Email Management Appliances

Storage and Backup: Email Management Appliances
PivotStor Site
http://pivotstor.com/

Email Management Appliances

Do you have an need to find and old email? Ideally we want to conduct a search using a command very similar to that of what we expect when we search within Google.

This option is available from PivotStor when install one of their email management appliances. What's more it is definable and has centralized policies for total information protection.

Let's use Sunstar Company as an example. We send and receive email every day, and we need the email to be filtered. Email enters the system and is then subject to the centralized policies of the EP-Archive storage engine. Its customizable rules can be tuned to match Sunstar's business needs. If the email or its attachments are duplicates, EP-Archive automatically tags it as a “single instance”, which serves to reduce storage drain. The email is then fully indexed for easy search and retrieval by end users.

And thanks to the sophistication of the EP-Archive software, archived data can be retrieved in minutes, not hours or days. This feature is particularly important in cases with legal ramifications.

Models available from Sunstar Company, designed to manage to over 2500 mailboxes and 800,000 emails per day:

EP-1000™ SMB is designed to protect up to 1000 mailboxes in a small to medium-sized company. A 1U rack-mount, short-form design with a low power footprint makes it ideal for any SMB company, ISP or ASP provider.

EP-2500™ SME is designed to protect up to 2500 mailboxes in a small to medium-sized enterprise. A 1U rack-mount, short-form design with a low power footprint makes it ideal for any SME company, ISP or ASP provider.

EP-2500+™ Enterprise is designed to protect over 2500 mailboxes in an enterprise environment. A 2U rack-mount design with a low power footprint makes it ideal for any enterprise company, ISP or ASP provider. It can be customized to support over 50,000 users per node.

Please contact us and let Sunstar help you select the appropriate solutions that will safeguard you and your emails. (800) 663-5523 info@sunstarco.com

Gavin
www.sunstarco.com

NAS for the SMB Market

There are numerous manufacturers of NAS (Network Attached Storage) solutions that incorporate Microsoft's Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 (WUDSS) as their software engine.

However, I would like to focus on NexSAN's -The Edge NAS solutions that differs from the competition even though that they all utilize WUDSS.

A little about The Edge.

• Greater capacity and density - Scale from a few TBs to14TBs to 46TBs to 84TBs
• 1U compact size with integrated FC storage ports and IP host and client ports
• More robust reliability with NexSAN enterprise class RAID storage - FC connected RAID storage for higher performance
• Quad core processor with 4GB of memory and two 80GB drives configured in a mirror
• RAID operations are separate and off-loaded from The Edge NAS server maximizing NAS server CPU and memory performance.
• Green benefits with Nexsan's energy saving AutoMAID technology
• Consolidates file and block into a single solution with CIFS, NFS and iSCSI

The competition tends to incorporate a server at the head with a RAID controller or perhaps software RAID. Here NexSAN is somewhat different. Sure the operating system resides on the head - but that's where we part from the competition. Every NexSAN storage array includes a choice of a single or dual RAID controller. As we add another RAID box, we add another RAID controller. Perhaps you add a:

• NexSAN SATABeast or
• NexSAN SASBoy or
• NexSAN SATABoy

Each NexSAN box has it's own fast controller and a choice of SATA or SAS drives, ensuring that the NAS will not chug along but rather performance will increase as you add more Fibre Channel connected storage.

Green technology is supported. When you install The Edge and incorporate any of the NexSAN Storage Arrays you have the ability to take advantage AutoMaid at no additional charge thus reducing power and cooling costs. When activated you will reduce your power consumption by at least 15% to 50+%.

Sunstar Company continues to offer NexSAN Storage solutions. Their track record is excellent and having seen The Edge in action I am confident that this NAS box will be a terrific solution.

For additional in formation - contact us at: (800) 663-5523 or info@sunstarco.com

Gavin

http://www.sunstarco.com/

Sun StorageTek T10000B Tape Drive

The Sun StorageTek T10000B tape drive delivers the industry’s highest capacity, making it ideal for 24x7 datacenter operations requiring high duty cycle data storage and retrieval.

Basic Facts:

• 1 TB native capacity and 120 MB/sec throughput drive datacenter efficiencies
• Protects your investment with T10000 media re-use and broad compatibility
• Supports demanding 24x7 business operations, minimizing risk
• Enhances security and ensures data protection

As a result of its 120 MB/sec throughput, the StorageTek T10000B lets you write a terabyte of data in less than 2.5 hours, shrinking backup windows and saving staff time and resources. Add optional sport cartridges to the mix and get 2x faster average access to data. The StorageTek T10000B is compatible with Sun StorageTek enterprise libraries and integrates seamlessly with leading third-party enterprise software libraries and business applications.

The T10000B utilizes the same physical tape drive for FICON and Fibre Channel, allowing you to easily transition between both open systems and mainframe environments.

A great feature of the The StorageTek T10000B, it comes with built-in encryption. This tape-encryption appliance provides a simple, centralized, scalable solution for managing the keys used to encrypt and decrypt data written by the tape drive, ensuring that only the right people have access to the data.

Contact us here at Sunstar Company for your new and re-certified T10000 tape drives.

info@sunstarco.com (800) 663-5523

Many Thanks

Gavin

Tandberg Data for the SMB

We all are aware that Tandberg Data purchased Exabyte and it seems that they have covered all the bases if you are looking for a small tape library or autoloader.

Yes they do focus in the SMB enviroment, however with some of their larger libraries I feel that some enterprise accounts could certainly purchase one of the Tandberg libaries.

Let's review them:

Tandberg Data's new or renamed Exabyte Libraries - certainly their flagships.
StorageLibrary 24 Supporting 1 - 2 LTO Drives with 24 Slots
StorageLibrary T40 Supporting 1 - 4 LTO Drives with 40 Slots
StorageLibrary T80 Supporting 1 - 8 LTO Drives with 77 Slots

The reason for stating "say 1 - 4 drives," Tandberg has designed these units to support full height and half height LTO drives. Note: Most of these units support a variety of LTO generations and models and please look at each unit as to connectivity.

Hold outs from Exabyte.
StorageLoader LTO-4 Supporting 1 drive with 8 slots
StorageLoader LTO-3 Supporting 1 drive with 8 slots
StorageLoader LTO-2 Supporting 1 drive with 8 slots
Magnum 1x7 LTO Autoloader Supporting 1 drive with 7 slots
Magnum 224 Library Supporting 1- 2 drives with 24 slots (see T40)
Magnum 448 Library Supporting 1-4 drives with 48 slots

All in all, well manufactured LTO Tape Libraries and these units are available from Sunstar Company, Inc.
Please contact us: (800) 663-5523 or info@sunstarco.com
Many Thanks

Gavin

HP Business Class Tape Libraries

Supporting up to 16 tape drives and 240 slots with a capacity to 96TB native. The Hewlett Packard (HP) Business Class Libraries are ideal for small to medium IT networks with or without a storage area network (SAN). Investment protection with both capacity and performance upgrades for environments with unpredictable data growth.


HP StorageWorks MSL6000 Tape Library
Supports LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 and LTO-3 Ultrium 960

HP StorageWorks MSL8096 Tape Library
Supports LTO-4 Ultrium 1840; LTO-4 Ultrium 1760; LTO-3 Ultrium 960 and LTO-3 Ultrium 920

HP StorageWorks MSL4048 Tape Library
Supports LTO-4 Ultrium 1840; LTO-4 Ultrium 1760; LTO-3 Ultrium 960 and LTO-3 Ultrium 920

HP StorageWorks MSL2024 Tape Library
Supports LTO-4 Ultrium 1840; LTO-4 Ultrium 1760; LTO-3 Ultrium 960; LTO-3 Ultrium 920 and LTO-2 Ultrium 448.

Each library includes two removable 12-slot magazines, and one user-configurable mail slot dedicated for import/export of data cartridges. A barcode reader is part of the standard configuration for facilitating media management.

We at Sunstar sell new and refurbished LTO tape drives.
(800) 663-5523 info@sunstarco.com
Gavin at Sunstar

HP LTO Tape Drives

Looking for a new or used LTO tape drive manufactured by Hewlett Packard. HP has a plethora of models for you to choose from.

Questions to ask:

1. Connectivity - Fibre Channel, SCSI or SAS
2. Full Height or Half Height Drives
3. Capacity and speed. Choose from four generations of the Ultrium LTO drives: LTO1, LTO2, LTO3 or LTO4
4. Internal (System or library) or External

LTO4
HP Ultrium 1840 800GB at 120MB/s, 1.6TB at 240MB/s
HP Ultrium 1760 HH 800GB, 1.6TB at 576GB/hr

LTO3
HP Ultrium 960 400GB at 80MB/s, 800GB at 160MB/s
HP Ultrium 920 HH 400GB, 800GB at 432GB/hr

LTO2
HP Ultrium 460 200GB at 30MB/s, 400GB at 60MB/s
HP Ultrium 448 HH 200GB, 400GB at 173GB/hr

LTO1
HP Ultrium 232 HH 100GB, 200GB at 115GB/hr
HP Ultrium 230 100GB at 15MB/s, 200GB at 30MB/s

Do not be surprised if we at Sunstar have the model of your choice on hand.

info@sunstarco.com (800) 663-5523

Cheers

Gavin

www.sunstarco.com

Sun StorageTek T9840C Tape Drive

The StorageTek T9840C drive is ideal for applications that demand high data throughput and fast recall and stores up to 40 gigabytes native on a single cartridge. Available with two-gigabit Fibre Channel, two gigabit FICON and ESCON connectivity, these drives give you access to data at an average of just 12 seconds

With native data transfer rates of 30 megabytes per second, the T9840C drive allows you to store more data in less time to meet your shrinking backup windows.

The T9840C drive is backward compatible, can store up to 75 GB on a single, reusable cartridge and provides an average file access time of 8 seconds.

When outfitted with fast-access StorageTek T9840 tape drives and StorageTek 9840 data cartridges, tape libraries can serve as a high-volume source for a large-capacity storage device for fixed-content data. Sun StorageTek VolSafe secure media technology utilizes Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) technology to secure high-value, fixed-content data. Together, StorageTek T9840 tape drives and StorageTek 9840 tape cartridges comprise an ideal, active archive for regulated data that has been used worldwide since 2000 to meet compliance requirements.

Here at Sunstar Company, Inc we offer new and reconditioned StorageTek T9840C tape drives. We have an inventory of drives and spares on hand. Please consider contacting us at 800.663.5523 or via email info@sunstarco.com and perhaps we can be of assistance.

Many Thanks

Gavin
www.sunstarco.com

We purchase used media and services

Sunstar Company will purchase your media.

We buy storage media such as LTO, ½" 3480, 3490, 3590, 9840 and 9940 cartridges

Please contact us @ purchasing@sunstarco.com
(800) 663.5523
www.sunstarco.com

LTO2 Tape Drives

Linear Tape-Open (or LTO - Ultrium)) is a magnetic tape data storage technology developed as an open standards alternative to the proprietary magnetic tape formats.

LTO2 Tape drives were released in 2003 with a native capacity of 200GB and a Max Speed 40MB/s. Primary manufacturers of these LTO tape drives are: IBM, Quantum, Tandberg Data, Seagate and Certance.

Below is a list of the drives that we at Sunstar Company have sold and continue to offer as new or refurbished. Note that the half height drives have the same capacity but perform at a slower rate.
HP Ultrium 460 200GB at 30MB/s
IBM LTO-2 200GB at 35MB/s
Quantum LTO2 200GB at 123GB/hr
Quantum LTO2HH 200GB at 94GB/hr
Tandberg Data LTO2 HH 200GB at 24MB/s

• The HP, IBM and Quantum full height drives are available with a choice of a SCSI or a Fibre interface. Internal, external or for a specific tape library.
• Quantum LTO2 Half Height Drives deliver compressed capacities of 400GB and backup speeds of up to 187 GB/hr. They are read/write compatible to LTO-1. Available with Wide Ultra 160 SCSI connectivity.
• Tandberg Data internal and external LTO-2 Half Height SCSI tape drive with a compressed transferred rate of 48MBs.
• Tape Libraries that support LTO2 are shown on our web site at www.sunstarco.com

If you have an LTO tape drive that is not working at this time, contact us and perhaps we can repair the said unit.

For additional information please contact us: 800.663.5523 or info@sunstarco.com

RAID Levels

RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Discs.
A RAID system is a collection of hard drives joined together using a RAID level definition.

• RAID can be used to stripe drives together to give more overall access speed (level 0).
• RAID can be used to mirror drives (level 1).
• RAID can be used to increase uptime of your overall storage by striping drives together and then keeping parity data, if a drive should fail the system keeps operating (level 5 or 6).

RAID levels 5 and 6 are most commonly used, primarily for uptime purposes and its ability to join together (say) 14 drives, giving a large storage block.

Read about RAID levels below and for more detailed information visit the specific RAID Education page on our site at Sunstar Company, Inc.

• Level 0
  Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance: Provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disk drives) but no redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance. If one drive fails then all data in the array is lost.
• Level 1
  Mirroring and Duplexing: Provides disk mirroring. Level 1 provides twice the read transaction rate of single disks and the same write transaction rate as single disks.
• Level 2
  Error-Correcting Coding: Rarely used, with data striped at the bit level rather than the block level.
• Level 3
  Bit-Interleaved Parity: Provides byte-level striping with a dedicated parity disk. Rarely used as it cannot service simultaneous multiple requests.
• Level 4
  Dedicated Parity Drive: A commonly used implementation of RAID, Level 4 provides block-level striping (like Level 0) with a parity disk. If a data disk fails, the parity data is used to create a replacement disk. A disadvantage to Level 4 is that the parity disk can create write bottlenecks.
• Level 5
  Block Interleaved Distributed Parity: Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction information. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance. Possibly the most popular implementations of RAID.
• Level 6
  Independent Data Disks with Double Parity: Provides block-level striping with parity data distributed across all disks. Very popular at this time.
• Level 0+1
  A Mirror of Stripes: Not one of the original RAID levels, two RAID 0 stripes are created, and a RAID 1 mirror is created over them. Used for both replicating and sharing data among disks.
• Level 10
  A Stripe of Mirrors: Not one of the original RAID levels, multiple RAID 1 mirrors are created, and a RAID 0 stripe is created over these.

Please feel free to contact us at Sunstar Company at: info@sunstarco.com or 800.663.5523

Many Thanks

Gavin

www.sunstarco.com

DLT Tape Drives is there still a market?

Look at the list below and it is rather easy to tell that Quantum sold millions of these drives over the last decade or so. The sad truth is that today Quantum is not so fortunate. In fact they are now a leading manufacturer of their one time ardent competitor - the Ultrium LTO.

Sunstar Company offers the DLT-S4 and SDLT 600 and 320 but the inquires are few. Other than Quantum, I am not aware of any tape library manufacturer including the DLT or SDLT as an option.

Quantum's tape division seems to be focusing on the LTO technology. There are so many SDLT and DLT drives out there and Sunmstar Co. is one of the few organizations that can repair or replace these drives. We carry an iventory of refurbished SDLT and DLT drives and yes we do have spare parts.

DLT-S4 800GB at 60MB/s 1600GB at 320MB/s
SDLT 600 300GB at 36MB/s 600GB at 72MB/s
SDLT 320 160GB at 16MB/s 320GB at 32MB/s
SDLT 220 110GB at 11MB/s 220GB at 22MB/s
DLT 8000 40GB at 6MB/s 80GB at 12MB/s
DLT V4 160GB at 10MB/s 320GB at 20MB/s
DLT1 40GB at 3MB/s 80GB at 12MB/s
DLT-VS160 80GB at 8MB/s 160GB at 16MB/s
DLT-VS80 40GB at 3MB/s 80GB at 6MB/s
DLT 7000 35GB at 5MB/s 70GB at 10MB/s
DLT 4000 20GB at 1.5MB/s 40GB at 3MB/s
DLT 2000XT 15GB at 1.25MB/s 30GB at 2.5MB/s

If you have any of the drives above and you need assistance, please contact and hopefully we will be able to help you.
info@sunstarco.com (800) 663.5523

Many Thanks
Gavin
www.sunstarco.com

Refurbish your IBM Tape Drives

We at Sunstar Company can refurbish your IBM Tape Drives.

Models that we work on daily.
3480 Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3490 Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3490e Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3590 Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3592 Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
TS1120 Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
TS1130 Internal, External and for specific tape libraries

LTO (Ultrium) Internal External (FH & HH) and for specific tape libraries

• LTO 4
• LTO 3
• LTO 2
• LTO 1

We offer:

• Repairs
• Recertification
• Advance Exchange
• Replacement

All drives are tested and retested before the drive is shipped.

Please call us in advance to receive a cost estimate and RMA no.

(800) 663-5523

Thank You

Sunstar Company, Inc.

www.sunstarco.com

We will repair your old tape drive

Sunstar Company repair specific tape drives. Sure we have the ability to repair many more models, however often spare are not readily available and due to the fact "sometimes" it might be cost prohibitive to repair a drive.

We repair primary the follow drives:

LTO (Ultrium)
LTO 4, 3, 2 and 1 - Internal External (FH & HH) and for specific tape libraries
9840 & 9940
9840A, B & C and 9940A & B - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3480
All Manufacturers - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3490
All Manufacturers - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3490e
All Manufacturers - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3590
All Manufacturers - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
3592 TS1120 TS1130
IBM, Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
DLT
DLT & SDLT drives - Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
SLR 9 Track 4mm 8mm
Internal, External and for specific tape libraries
DIR & DTF Drives
Internal, External and for specific tape libraries

Please do call us at 800.663.5523

Many Thanks

Gavin
www.sunstarco.com