Benefits of a ContentAware Architecture in Protecting Enterprise Data

White Paper
SEPATON S2100:
ContentAware Architecture
There is no end in sight to the exponential growth of data that IT managers have to manage, store and protect. This problem is compounded by corporate business continuity programs, green initiatives, and increasingly stringent government regulations that require companies to have both long-term data retention, data encryption, and advanced disaster protection. As the volume of data and the complexity of data management continue to grow, companies face a variety of data protection challenges. This paper describes the ® ® ways that the ContentAwareT architecture of the SEPATON S2100 virtual tape library (VTL) is helping enterprises meet these challenges while reducing risk and saving money.


400 Nickerson Road, Marlborough, MA 01752 Phone: 866.SEPATON or 508.490.7900 | www.SEPATON.com
Table of Contents

Today's Data Protection Needs............................................................................... 1
Best-in-Class VTL Technology ................................................................................ 2
SEPATON S2100-ES2 Virtual Tape Library............................................................... 3
Designed for Performance...................................................................................... 4
High Availability Protection..................................................................................... 5
Modular Scalability of Performance and Capacity..................................................... 6
Plug and Play Simplicity ......................................................................................... 8
Software Applications for Advanced Functionality .................................................... 10
Addressing Today's Data Protection Needs.............................................................. 12


400 Nickerson Road, Marlborough, MA 01752 Phone: 866.SEPATON or 508.490.7900 | www.SEPATON.com S2100 ContentAware Architecture | page 1
Today's Data Protection Needs
To stay competitive in today's information economy, businesses need instantaneous, worldwide access to data generated by a wide variety of computer systems. As a result, there is no end in sight for the exponential growth of data that IT managers have to manage, store and protect. This problem is compounded by corporate business continuity programs, green initiatives, and increasingly stringent government regulations (SEC, HIPAA, SOX, etc.) that require companies to have long-term data retention, data encryption, and advanced disaster protection. As the volume of data and the complexity of data management continue to grow, companies face a variety of challenges, including:
. Backing up increasing volumes of data within ever-shortening backup windows . Meeting business continuity objectives and regulatory requirements by ensuring data availability through failures and site-wide disasters . Reducing floor space and power consumption to meet green initiatives . Cutting administration cost and streamlining data center complexity through virtualization and consolidation . Adding capacity and performance of backup/restore technology to meet current and future needs while staying within budget . Eliminating labor-intensive, repetitive media management tasks . Getting the maximum return on investments in data protection technology . Managing data in mixed environments (i.e., mainframe and open systems) . Protecting remote data in decentralized organizations The options available to meet these challenges were limited. Physical tape libraries are labor-intensive and prone to backup failures. Restoring data from tape is also slow. While disk-to-disk technologies solve some of the challenges posed by tape, they have perfor-mance issues, increased capacity requirements, and ongoing management complexity.
As a result, virtual tape library (VTL) technologies are becoming the industry standard. 1According to an Enterprise Strategy Group report , "Not only are users replacing tape libraries with new disk-based solutions, they are doing so on a significant scale: Sixty percent of users surveyed by ESG believe that more than 40% of their current tape-based capacity will reside on disk in just three years." The report also states, "Virtual t... [download for more]