Overland Storage today added a new family of disk-based appliances to its product family in an effort to simplify moving data between disk and tape-based backup systems across the WAN.

The company announced the REO Compass, a line of appliances that move backup data between remote sites while integrating with existing backup software, policies, virtual tape libraries (VTLs), and physical tape libraries.

Overland’s plan is to ease the pains associated with consolidating backups from remote sites to a central location for global backups across all of an organization’s offices and data centers with the added benefits of policy-based data de-duplication, compression, and encryption features.

The REO Compass is available in two rack-mount configurations. The Compass 100 is a 1U appliance with four SATA drives, RAID 5, and iSCSI host connectivity. The Compass 500 is a 2U appliance with 12 SATA drives, iSCSI, and optional Fibre Channel host connectivity. Data de-duplication, compression, and encryption features come standard with both models.

The Compass combines block-based data de-duplication with compression and AES 128-bit encryption to transport data between locations. All REO Compass appliances can be managed from a central location through a single management interface.

An entry configuration of the REO Compass 100 has 2TB of raw capacity using 500GB drives, though with RAID 5 you lose a drive for a total usable capacity of 1.5TB at a starting price of approximately $5,107.

The Compass family will be available in November from Overland’s channel partners.

Kevin Wise, a senior product manager with Overland, says the Compass addresses a gap in the REO product line by streamlining data movement for VTL appliances. “Compass can move data between VTLs and physical libraries at different sites while keeping the backup catalogs intact,” says Wise.

The Compass family features initial support for Symantec Backup Exec users, which accounts for about 82% of Overland’s current installed customer base.

“We will be growing our compatibility matrix over time through continued CLI and API integration with popular backup packages,” says Wise. “Symantec NetBackup, CommVault Simpana, and CA ARCserve are all on the priority list.”

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