Advanced Digital Information Corp. (ADIC) has announced a mid-level storage system that combines disk and tape in a single appliance, the Pathlight VX 2.0.

The Pathlight VX 2.0 uses policy-based data management technology to provide nearly 3,000TB of backup storage, said Scott Hamilton, director of disk based backup solutions at ADIC. The system fits into existing backup environments, presenting itself to applications as a virtual tape library. It includes disk drives for high performance and RAID fault tolerance and tape elements for capacity, economy, and disaster recovery, according to Hamilton.

"The Pathlight VX 2.0 is an integrated solution that IT departments can use to link directly to their current backup environment," he said.

Pathlight VX 2.0 provides throughput up to 2TB per hour and a combined native capacity of nearly 3 petabytes. Disk storage can range from 3.8TB to 46.8TB capacity, with tape storage provided by integrating ADIC Scalar and StorageTek (Profile, Products, Articles) L-Series libraries. Single-library configurations can reach 2,823TB native capacity and 5,599TB with normal compression.

For long-term data retention and disaster recovery applications, 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.

"Disk has great attributes for some parts of backup, but tape is a requirement too, not only for compliance with retention regulations but simply for economical scale," said Dianne McAdam, senior analyst and partner at Data Mobility Group. "In standard enterprise capacity ranges, the cost of tape storage will remain several times lower than disk for the foreseeable future."

A typical 43.6TB system consisting of 3.8TB of disk, with the remainder tape using an ADIC Scalar i2000, carries a list price of US$261,583.The new system will ship in January.