With its 2.0 release, Pathlight VX becomes the first open system backup product to combine the capacity and characteristics of disk and tape in a single, unified system, using advanced policy-based data management technology to provide total system capacities of nearly 3,000 terabytes. The combined system fits into existing backup environments, presenting itself to applications as a virtual tape library that transparently includes disk elements for high performance and RAID fault tolerance and tape elements for capacity, economy, and disaster recovery.
With Pathlight VX 2.0, IT managers can back up and restore critical data twice as fast as with conventional backup systems, support thousands of terabytes of data with a single system, and balance their data recovery service-level objectives against overall system costs. The policy-based management in Pathlight VX 2.0 offers the industry's first automated life cycle management for backup data, including the ability to create multiple copies on different media types to provide enhanced long-term data protection.
Pathlight VX 2.0 provides throughput up to 2 TB/hour and a combined native capacity of nearly 3 petabytes. Disk storage elements range from 3.8 to 46.8 TB capacity; tape storage is provided by integrating ADIC Scalar and StorageTek L-Series libraries. Single-library configurations can reach 2823 TB native capacity -- 5599 TB with normal compression. For compliance with long-term data retention and disaster recovery requirements, Pathlight VX 2.0 responds to backup software commands by exporting application-readable media that can be restored in any standard tape drive or library.
The Pathlight VX 2.0 data management policies, in addition to providing transparent access to expanded capacity, also provide enhanced data protection by managing the life cycle of backup data. Policies in the 2.0 release include the ability to retain key data on disk for faster recovery of historical information, automated creation of up to four copies of data for redundant protection, and retention of local copies of data after a copy has been exported.
ADIC's Pathlight VX 2.0 will be available January 2005.
