Tape RAID or Tape Striping

The TS Tape-Striping system is designed to speed up your writing to tape and lets you write to a maximum of five simultaneous tape-drives including 4mm, 8mm, AIT, DLT, SDLT, LTO, etc... People will also refer to this as Tape RAID-0 or Tape RAID level 0 or more accurately as RAIT (Redundant Array of Independent Tapes).

Striping mode provides faster backup by striping or writing the data across two (or more) tapes at the same time. Writing to two tape drives effectively doubles the effective drive transfer rate. Striping across more than 2 drives is also available (for 3, 4 and 5 drives) and naturally will speed-up writing to tape even more.

It provides "one button" intuitive menuing with an easy to read multi-line LCD control panel.

The TS tape-striping system can be used with any system platform such as UNIX, NT, MAC, or other platform and is completely transparent to the host system. The TS tape-striping system will make perfect copies every time. It doesn't matter to the TS tape-striping system what kind of backup software is being used, what type of system or OS the unit is attached-to, etc... the TS tape-striping system's job is to make sure all the data is transfered accurately onto the 2 to 5 tape drives of the unit.

Two Tape Striping

The TS tape-striping system must be connected to the host system via one 'connection'. All data is automatically striped to the various tape-drives via the internal striping controller.

The TS tape-striping system has features that make writing to multipe tape-drives simple and bullet proof: it can also write parity information on a parity drive (when more than 3 striping drives are utilized) - which is used to recover data if one of the tapes containing data cannot be read. In the event of a drive or media failure, Read and write operations continue without interruption. This is also knows as Tape-RAID or RAIT where redundant data is written to an additional tape-drive providing protection in case of single drive failure.

Want to know more about Tape Striping and Tape RAID/ RAIT? Click here: What is Tape RAID/RAIT or Tape Striping?

Features

Increased Performance
Data is striped across five independent parallel array channels. Data transfer rate, as well as search speed, is increased by as much as four times the speed of a single tape drive.

Increase Data Availability
Parity information stored on a parity drive is used to recover data if a tape containing data cannot be read. Read and write operations continue in the event of a drive or media failure.

Data Reconstruction
Recreates data previously written to a failed drive or bad media.

Data Scrambling
A high speed programmable switch matrix allows the insertion of the "stripe set tape cartridges" in any order for ease of tape management.

Graphical User Interface
The GUI (Optional) incorporates full, on-line and off-line controller configuration and diagnostics under Wind95 and NT operating systems..

Plug Compatibility
The striping tape array controller is presented to the host as a single SCSI tape drive providing "plug and play" with host systems supporting SCSI-1 and SCSI-2 tape protocols.

Robotics Support
Compatible with existing autoloader and library software in both striping and mirroring modes of operation.

Up to five Tape Striping

Operating Modes Include:

• Data Striping - across 2 or 4 drives with or without an additional parity drive. Data transfer rate is increased by a factor of two or four respectively.
• Mirroring - simplifies Disaster Recovery Plans by writing the "data" to up to five separate drives simultaneously.
• Pass-thru - allows direct accessing of individual drives within the array.
• Offline Diagnostics - performs drive read and write tests initiated from the GUI or front panel.

Specifications

Supported RAIT Levels

Level 0:    Striping two drives (2+0) or four drives (4 + 0)
Level 3:    Striping two drives or four drives plus a parity drive (2+1 or 4 +1)

Host and Array Interface

The host interface provides connection between the array controller and SCSI host system.
The array interface provides connection between the array controller and SCSI tape drives.

Model:   TS4
Creates two to five tape copies at speeds up to 80MB per second.

Host Interface:  ULTRA2 LVD Wide synchronous transfer provides 80 MB/sec sustained data transfer rate.

Array Interface:  Five independent parallel ULTRA LVD/SE Wide SCSI channels provide 40 MB/sec sustained data transfer rate for each array channel.

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Model:   TS3
Creates two to five tape copies at speeds up to 40MB per second.

Host Interface:  High Voltage Differential (HVD) / Low Voltage Differential (LVD/SE) Interface
It conforms to the SCSI-3 protocol while maintaining compatibility with SCSI-1 and SCSI-2, 8/16 bit SCSI. Fast ULTRA synchronous transfers combined with wide transfers allows for a maximum of 40 MB/sec sustained data transfer rate.

Array Interface:  Single-Ended (SE) / High Voltage Differential (HVD) Interface
Consists of five independent parallel wide SCSI channels, up to four channels are used for data and 1 channel is optionally used for parity, 8/16 bit SCSI. The fast synchronous transfers combined with wide transfers allows for a maximum of 40 MB/sec sustained data transfer rate.

Packagings for Striping systems and controller

Our striping systems are available in a variety of formats including Completely Integrated systems which consists of 2-5 tape-drives in a single enclosure with the striping controller integrated, Integrated-Drive solution with external controller, Completely External solution including the tape drives and the controller. In this last solution, the striping controllers can be delivered in a variety of formats shown below.


5 1/4" Internal Half Height	Low Profile Table Top	Rackmount