GST and InoStor Team up on Tandberg Data's
iSeries SLR Solutions

Tandberg Data's SLR tape technology has been a mainstay of IBM's iSeries internal backup. GST's partnership with InoStor extends the capability of SLR within the iSeries to dual-drive and autoloader solutions.

Highlights

• GST required strong partner with SLR experience.
• GST augmenting existing SLR tape solutions on the IBM iSeries.
• GST wanted their Mirrored Backup and Fault Tolerance on SLR.
• GST wanted an autoloader augmentation for SLR.
• InoStor is a North American subsidiary of Tandberg Data in Norway.

July 24, 2003 (Lake Forest, California) - GST, Inc. has entered into a technology alliance with InoStor, A Tandberg Data Company, to implement the Tandberg SLR tape technology with GST's advanced tape solutions on the IBM iSeries. IBM's internal tape backup solution for their iSeries servers uses SLR (Scalable Linear Recording) tape technology. GST has announced advanced external tape solutions for the iSeries, compatible with the IBM internal SLR solutions, using the technology alliance it has formed with InoStor.

GST engineers integrated Tandberg SLR drives with the company's dual-drive subsystems and the Tandberg SLR100 Autoloader. This enabled GST to provide mirrored backup and fault-tolerant backup using the dual-drive solution, and week-long backup with the autoloader. GST's Dual SLR Tape Subsystem supports the SLR60 and SLR100 technologies, and GST's Workgroup SLR Autoloader supports SLR100.

The full line of GST's tape subsystems and libraries supports the IBM eServer family: specifically the iSeries, pSeries and xSeries servers. While SLR runs on all platforms, the selection of the SLR technology by GST was based on its excellent fit with the iSeries install base.

SLR60 cartridges can hold 30GB native and operate at speeds of 4MB/second (14GB/hour). SLR100 cartridges hold 50GB native and operate at 5MB/second (18GB/hour). Compression doubles all these metrics.

Vendor requirements

GST's engineering design requirements that were met by InoStor include the following:

Strength - Locate a strong tape drive partner with solid financial record and secure roadmap showing innovation. As the original developer of SLR tape technology, Tandberg Data is in a unique position to assist GST engineers to determine how best to leverage its technology. The company is financially solid and has excellent OEM support technicians to work with GST's development and marketing staffs.

SLR Technology - Needed to augment the current internal SLR offering from IBM for the iSeries. Tandberg offers both the SLR60 and SLR100 technologies for matching current needs, and a roadmap to SLR140, SLR200 and SLR400 to handle future growth needs.

David Breisacher, CEO and Chairman for GST, Inc, reported, "We selected Tandberg SLR drives because the SLR technology has already has a long and successful track record as the internal drive on the iSeries. We wanted to augment the upgrade path for SLR on the iSeries. Our advanced functions for Mirrored Backup and Fault-Tolerant operation fit nicely with a dual-drive and an autoloader tape solution using SLR."

How GST Leverages Tandberg's Technology

GST uses Tandberg's SLR drives in the GST Dual SLR Tape Subsystem and in their Workgroup SLR Autoloader. Several of GST's unique capabilities were incorporated in these two tape solutions.

Mirrored Backup - GST's Mirrored Backup function on the Dual SLR Tape Subsystem is part of the company's Commander? tape controller that provides Server-Transparent Media Duplication (STMD)? delivering identical sets of backup tapes with software overhead or performance degradation. Duplicate backup sets permit safeguarding one set off-site for strengthened DR while retaining a second set on-site to speed restores.

Fault-Tolerant Backup and Restore - The use of GST's Mirrored Backup function enables a fault-tolerant capability: if one drive fails during a backup or restore, the second drive will continue the operation, ensuring its successful completion.

Simplified Weekly Backups - GST's Workgroup SLR Autoloader has a magazine with eight SLR100 cartridges providing unattended backup capacities of 400GB native (800GB compressed), designed to fully automate backups for an entire week. Remote sites can use the autoloader to simplify daily backups and store the magazine each week for safekeeping.

iSeries Connectivity - GST's Commander? controller is uniquely designed to interface directly with the IBM iSeries, interfacing with the OS/400 operating system. The longstanding experience of GST engineers working with the iSeries platform resulted in seamless connectivity of GST's SLR dual-drive and autoloader solutions for the iSeries. GST products connect natively with LVD (low voltage differential) and HVD (high voltage differential) SCSI connections, and with Fibre Channel (FC) through GST bridges and routers.

iSeries Experience - David Breisacher, founder, CEO and Chairman of GST, Inc., has built a team of storage specialists with extensive background on the iSeries platform. The GST Advisory Board and GST Engineering Panel provide significant experience and know-how about iSeries servers to GST. The result is a set of SLR technology-based storage solutions that run smoothly on the iSeries and its predecessor, the AS/400.

Ken Cruden, Vice-President of Sales & Marketing for InoStor said, "SLR is an important tape technology for the iSeries. We are very pleased to see GST provide additional SLR solutions to augment the existing SLR internal tape solution available with the iSeries. Having our drives in GST's dual-drive tape subsystem and having GST select our SLR100 Autoloader adds significant upward growth to the SLR technology available to the iSeries community."

Availability

All GST tape products using Tandberg Data's SLR tape technology are now available.

Service/Support

Full service, support and warranty coverage is available for all products.

More Information

Phone: 949.673.1248
Fax: 949.673.3163
Email/Web: info@gstinc.com ~ www.gstinc.com

About GST, Inc
GST Inc. engineers, manufactures, markets and sells a line of innovative storage products to meet the need for high-performance, continuous reliability and cost-effective data storage for the IBM eServer family. This family includes iSeries, pSeries and xSeries servers. GST’s storage products available today are tape solutions that focus on improved backup and disaster recovery. Products range from single and dual tape subsystems, autoloaders and midrange tape libraries, to modular enterprise-wide solutions. GST’s unique modular design enables field upgrades, scalability, investment protection for existing GST tape solutions, and lower life-cycle costs. GST’s product development is guided by advisory boards that closely track market needs and fully utilize the latest engineering developments in product design. Complete information about the company, its products and support can be found at the company’s website: www.gstinc.com.

About Inostor
Inostor, a Tandberg Data company, is a network storage technologies company providing high performance storage solutions including NAS (Network Attached Storage) products, tape-based automation and tape drive solutions.

InoStor markets entry-level to enterprise-level NAS solutions with the versatility of both disk and tape that deliver new standards of reliability and performance at an affordable cost. InoStor also sells the highly reliable line of Tandberg Data automation solutions, tape drives and media, including SLR, DLTtape? and LTO technologies.

InoStor's mission statement -Develop and sell innovative products that create a strong value proposition for the data storage networking markets - reflect how the company will address ever-changing data storage requirements with products that provide superior quality, reliability, performance and scalability.

InoStor company headquarters are located at 13000 Gregg Street, Poway, Calif. 92064, and can be reached at 858-726-0277. More information can be found at www.inostor.com.

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GST, Inc. Media Inquiries

Media Relations
media@gstinc.com
949.673.1248

For more on quotes from David Breisacher
david@gstinc.com
949.673.1248

Inostor Media Inquiries

Linda Davis - Sr. Manager, Marketing
ldavis@inostor.com
818.348.4955

Trademarks
GST, InternalDR, EntryDR, SafeDR, AutoDR, GrowthDR, ScalableDR, Commander, BridgeLink, SanMatrix, StorMount and Server-Transparent Media Duplication (STMD) are trademarks of GST, Inc. in the United States and other countries. IBM, eServer, iSeries, pSeries, xSeries, AS/400, OS/400, AIX, UNIX, Linux and Windows are the property of their respective owners.