The majority of business data is only used once. But, it seems that we never throw anything away, including digital data. When that data needs to be protected, it becomes lodged in backup cycles, draining network, computing and storage resources. It’s expensive, it pushes backups past allotted windows, and it isn’t scalable for today’s rapidly growing data volumes.

There is a better way to beat backup challenges, shorten the backup window and reduce data protection costs – StrongBox.

StrongBox is a network-attached storage (NAS) appliance that is purpose-built to provide online data access, massive scalability, and reliable protection for unstructured, fixed data.

StrongBox solves backup challenges associated with high costs, long backup windows and data accessibility. This unique solution provides protected storage where data is always online and available without the hassle of manual retrieval.

“Backup-free” storage that is always protected

Eliminate the need for backups of fixed content by storing it in StrongBox. StrongBox data never has to be backed up. That’s because it’s automatically protected. With StrongBox’s embedded policy engine you can:

• Create copies of data on multiple, separate pieces of tape media.
• Export LTO media from the library for offsite vaulting.
• Replicate data over a WAN for multi-site access.

Faster backup windows and efficient data center performance

Improve operational efficiency of your entire infrastructure by reducing data volumes on high performance storage tiers and removing it from backup.

Up to 50-80% of corporate data can be moved from high performance storage to StrongBox, freeing up disk space and lowering the cost for disk resources needed to meet storage growth.

With far less data requiring backup and more efficiently used disk, your backup window shrinks and network resources are available for other business-critical operations.

Access data online, all the time

Unlike offline backups, StrongBox data is available online, all the time. StrongBox enables client-level connectivity, thus there is no need for a storage administrator to manually retrieve offline data. Tunable performance of the disk cache allows you to eliminate tape latency while customizing accessibility according to specific business needs.

How does it work?

StrongBox seamlessly fits into your solution architecture as a NAS interface to an external LTO/LTFS library. Data can be moved into StrongBox via manual drag-and-drop or by a data moving application like the StrongBox FileStor-HSM.Files are always protected on tape, yet online and accessible all the time.

Watch your total costs for data storage and protection decrease as your environment operates without the latencies and complexities of overburdened backups.

StrongBox technical highlights:

• Flexible plug-and-play deployment
• Vendor-neutral – requires no specific software or hardware
• Supports LTO 6, LTO 5 and IBM TS1140 drives
• Supports CIFS or NFS file shares
• Supports up to 1.6 billion files across more than 35 petabytes of usable capacity
• Connects to an LTFS library using SAS or Fibre Channel
• Purpose-built for large-format files, fixed content and unstructured data such as audio, video, imaging, scientific data, educational records, government, HPC datasets and more