EMC Tries To Improve RecoveryEMC Tries To Improve Recovery

EMC Corp., which has bad-mouthed tape since the 1990s while pushing its hard-disk-based storage systems, is finally willing to accept the tape libraries that most customers still use for backup and recovery. But with the storage system it's unveiling Monday, the company hopes to relegate tape storage to long-term archiving.

EMC's Clariion Disk Library comes with lower-cost ATA-based disk drives inside and tape emulation on board. The DL700 version is for customers using the new system as their primary backup-and-recovery platform; it moves data at a rate of 425 Mbytes per second and can store as much as 58 terabytes of data. The DL300 will perform at a rate of 225 Mbytes per second and store up to 12.5 terabytes. The starting price for a DL300 is $109,000.

One analyst says the new systems could improve recovery times over tape and make for an easier platform to manage. Meta Group's Phil Goodwin says the 70% of storage-management time that customers spend on backup and recovery could come down to as low as 15%. "Four out of five data requests are made within 72 hours of data getting stored," he says, "so disk-based recovery makes a lot of sense."