Dell Offers Next-Gen Tape-Based Storage

Dell today said it has become one of the first vendors to make available Linear Tape-Open, or so-called LTO-4, storage drives and media.

Although Dell says it is one of the first "major storage providers"--not that Dell is exactly synonymous with storage--to do this, other vendors such as Qualstar (click here (PDF) - http://pdfdownload.bofd.net/pdf2html.php?url=http://www.qualstar.com/Qualstar_Ships_LTO4_FINAL.pdf) have begun shipping LTO-4 devices as well in recent days.Many enterprises continue to rely on tape as their main backup media. Dell's PowerVault LTO-4-120 drives include a number of capabilities, most notably device-level encryption, that makes tape as a backup alternative better, Dell said.

Encryption is important because backup tapes are often stored off-site, behind a company's physical security control. Dell said its drives also offer double the capacity--800 GB native--and a 50 percent performance improvement over previous generation tape drives.

Dell's LTO-4-120 drives and media are backward read and write compatible with previous generations of tape products, Dell said.

The new drives are available today. Pricing for the external standalone Dell PowerVault LTO-4-120 drive starts at about $4,000. Media pricing begins at about $200.