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request
an Optical RAID Quote |
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Optical
RAID |
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The DVD RAID option is available
for ASACA libraries configured with 2 to 192 DVD-RAM drives
and up to 11,600 double-sided 9.4GB DVD-RAM discs which
provide capacities ranging from 2.6TB to 130TB. Widely
recognized for its ultra-reliability, DVD-RAM media provides
more than 100,000 write/rewrite cycles and a data life of more
than 30 years, making the $.008/MB storage cost one of the
lowest in the industry.
These features combine with the
DVD RAID option to meet the requirements of organizations that
place a high priority on fault-tolerance, high data
throughput, extensibility and economy. Typical applications
range from high data rate video storage, managing large video
files or using a single DVD storage device for both near-line
storage and backup.
DVD-RAM technology also
provides media interchangeability--a single library can be
used to read both CD and DVD media. While this is true of
other DVD standards-compliant storage
libraries, only the ASACA DVLs
are capable of acting as four separate libraries within a
single cabinet. |
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Using this same capability and its
new DVD RAID controller the TeraCart provides its customers
with the flexibility to achieve the balance of performance and
data protection they need. Each RAID setup configuration is
optimized for different storage requirements.
With a RAID set of five drives, four drives are used for
the RAID set and the fifth drive is used as a checksum drive.
The four-drive set is written to in RAID level 3 and an
Exclusive Or of the four data sets is written to the fifth
drive. The controller effectively reduces the number of pieces
of media in the library by a factor of five; however, the
capacity of each piece of RAID media is 4x. This translates to
a capacity equal to 10.4 GB when single-sided 4.6GB DVD-RAM
discs are used. For example, document management software such
as OTG's DiskXtender would only see a TeraCart AM250 library
with 200 pieces of media as a 40-disc system. With this
capability, large files such as broadcast-quality videos can
be striped onto the RAID set without having to be concerned
about spanning media. This approach is ideal for TV stations
that want to implement automated programming.
When DVD RAID is configured as a RAID set, the DVD drives
also achieve faster data transfer rates--5.4Mbytes/sec for
write transfers and 11.1 Mbytes/sec for read transfers. For
even higher capacities and data transfer rates, the RAID
controller can be organized in a cascade format. In addition,
because the controller can handle multiple drives for each
RAID channel, multiple drives can be ganged into a set.
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