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STORServer backup beast heads list of top tools

Analyst's guide

STORServer's EBA 3100 has been named as the backup appliance king by analyst firm DCIG. The appliance examiner even created a new enterprise category in its Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide for the tool.

More than 60 backup appliances from 13 vendors were analysed and compared by DCIG and STORserver had four of its products take number 1 positions in different categories: the EBA 800, 1100, 2100 and top of the range 3100. The Colorado Springs-based storage and data protection biz's products use IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) software to function as disk-to-disk backup targets.

DCIG is a storage consultancy that creates buyer's guides for various storage product categories. Although it has paid relationships with certain suppliers, DCIG says it is not paid to produce its buyer's guides and that they are independent evaluations.

The guides mark products on around 80 aspects of their functionality, come up with a compound score and then assign the product to one of several ranked categories based upon its statistical distance from the central mark of the category. If a product score is more than two standard deviations from the core score for a category then it is placed in the category above or below – hence the creation of a new category for the EBA 3100 in the backup appliance guide.

The DCIG 2012 Backup Appliance top 10 products were:

  1. STORServer Enterprise Backup Appliance 3100 (Enterprise)
  2. Symantec's NetBackup 5220 Backup Appliance (Recommended)
  3. STORServer's EBA 2100 (Recommended)
  4. STORServer's EBA 1100 (Recommended)
  5. STORServer's EBA 800 (Recommended)
  6. Symantec's Backup Exec 3600 Appliance (Excellent)
  7. Unitrends' Recovery-823 (Excellent)
  8. RackTop's EBR-FE (Excellent)
  9. Unitrends' Recovery-833 (Excellent)
  10. Unitrends' Recovery-822 (Excellent)

DCIG said it separates backup appliances from deduplication products in its guides.

STORServer's EBA products can use global deduplication; virtual machine data protection management; block level incremental backup after the first full backup; and replication. The appliance features active-active controllers and can protect a 100TB or larger storage estate with a 10 per cent daily change rate.

The DCIG 2012 Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide is available immediately and may be downloaded here [160 pages], though you'll have to sign up. ®

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