PowerFile Pushes DVD Archiving

Could CD and DVD technologies be the answer to users' long-term archiving needs? Startup PowerFile thinks so, and it is touting CD- and DVD-based libraries as an alternative to traditional tape storage. (See PowerFile Unveils App, PowerFile Picks Xyratex, and StorageQuest, Powerfile Partner Up.)

"It's a new way to approach the market," explains Jonathan Buckley, PowerFile's vice president of marketing. "We're leveraging technologies from the consumer market." He did not reveal which suppliers are providing the CDs and DVDs.

The vendor, which started life back in 1999, initially targeted the high-end video management and desktop media space, although it has shifted its focus more and more towards storage in recent years.

Essentially, PowerFile offers libraries filled with industry standard DVDs and CDs. These libraries, which it calls Permanent Storage Appliances, sit behind a server running archiving software from the likes of C2C. Instead of archiving to a virtual tape library (VTL), users can instead store their data on the DVD and CDs via the server. "It acts as a caching front-end for the whole system," says Buckley.

The idea, according to the exec, is that users can bypass tape. "Any magnetic media is not really a permanent means to store," says Buckley. CDs can store data for up to 300 years and DVDs can handle data for up to 50 years."The typical lifetime of tape is probably somewhere between three to five years, so there is a problem worth solving here," explains John Webster, senior analyst at the Data Mobility Group. Compliance pressures, however, are forcing many firms to archive their data for a minimum of seven years.

This rationale appeals to at least one user, who has already opted for DVD storage. "As far as long term storage is concerned, you don't have to worry about the tape going bad, or the disks wearing out," says John Orbaugh, director of technology services at Tyler Independent School District, which oversees 31 schools in Texas.

Orbaugh told Byte and Switch that he deployed a 1.7-Tbyte Permanent Storage Appliance earlier this year, in an attempt to meet compliance pressures. (See School District Picks PowerFile.) "We have to keep email for 7 years," he explains. With the advent of the Public Information Act, he needed a long-term archive. "If we were to delete something before its' scheduled time, that would be a violation of the law."

The exec was won over by the small form factor of the DVDs. He can fit 200 within the 5 rack unit high appliance. "The tape cartridges are bulky," he explains. "You're gaining a lot of space with the DVDs that you won't get with a tape archive."

The district spent around $25,000 on the PowerFile hardware and archiving software from C2C, choosing the startups over an archiving product from Symantec. "We got better pricing through C2C and PowerFile."David Hill, principal of analyst firm Mesabi Group, agrees that DVDs and CDs are a good long-term preservation option, particularly for the likes of email, although he feels that tape still has plenty to offer. "You can store tape for quite a while too," he says, adding that firms with extensive tape infrastructures are unlikely to rip and replace with optical media.

Hill feels that smaller firms may offer ripe pickings for PowerFile. "If I am a small company then I may consider them, because I don't have a tape infrastructure already in place," he says.

But the analyst warns that for PowerFile, size will be an issue. "The big challenge is: Can they provide the capacity that companies need at a price that they can afford?"

The startup is already planning to scale up beyond the 30-Tbyte capacity of the Permanent Storage Appliances. "You will see much higher scale and dense systems," says Buckley. It will also unveil a new system in September. "We will be incorporating such new technologies as Blu-Ray." The exec, however, did not reveal any specifics.

James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch