[October 21, 2014]

TOLIS Group, Inc. and HighPoint Technologies, Inc. Announce Tape Compatibility Certification Testing for Apple OS X and Linux Platforms

TOLIS Group, Inc. and HighPoint Technologies, Inc. announce the completion of development and testing of the HighPoint Technologies, Inc. RocketRAID 272X, 271X and RocketRAID 4500 Series PCIe host bus adapters (HBA), and the new Thunderbolt-based RocketStor 6328 SAS RAID connectivity solutions with tape drives and libraries from TOLIS Group, Inc., HP, IBM, Tandberg Data, Quantum (News - Alert), and others under Linux and Apple OS X systems.

"As more and more computer-based organizations recognize the importance of tape storage for both day to day backup and long-term archival of business assets, the need for connectivity options becomes more and more important," said Tim Jones, CTO of TOLIS Group, Inc. "While HighPoint's family of RocketRAID and RocketStor RAID adapters have long provided performance, reliability and cost-effectiveness for disk storage for Mac and Linux users, tape devices were not supported on those platforms. Our engineering team has worked with the HighPoint engineers to design, develop and test new drivers and firmware for their SAS (News - Alert)-based RAID HBAs. The result is a reliable, cost-effective and high-performance connectivity solution for Linux and Mac users for both disk and tape storage solutions."

"HighPoint has joined forces with TOLIS Group to bring our highly reliable, high-performance, yet affordable, tape aware Thunderbolt™ 2 RAID Adapter and SAS 6Gb/s PCIe RAID HBAs to the marketplace," said May Hwang, Director of Product Marketing for HighPoint Technologies, Inc. "TOLIS Group's expert engineering staff, extensive tape technology knowledge bas, and comprehensive testing lab, assured that these solutions are capable of supporting all tape technologies, and not limited to a handful of device types or manufacturers. Their BRU I/O engine allowed our Mac and Linux development teams to heavily stress the solutions on OS X platforms, and a wide variety of Linux systems running both 2.6 and 3.x kernels."

Tape technologies tested included LTO-4, LTO-5, and LTO-6, DAT72, and DAT320 devices from TOLIS Group, HP, IBM, Quantum, and Tandberg (News - Alert) Data, as well as library and automation solutions from TOLIS Group, HP, Quantum, and Tandberg Data. Performance testing of the LTO technologies easily met the native rated performance numbers of 80MB/sec to 160MB/sec using TOLIS Group's BRU I/O engine in a real world testing environment involving business data, database files, research data, and media assets ranging from a few 10s of GBs to over 140TBs. Filesystems tested included HFS+, XFS, ZFS, EXT3/4, NTFS and ExFAT. In addition to general platform compatibility testing, TOLIS Group also successfully tested with their BRU Server™, BRU Producer's Edition™, and BRU Workstation™ solutions.

"The most critical factor when dealing with tape devices versus disk arrays connected to a host bus adapter," continued Jones, "is primarily related to I/O buffering and heat management. While even the highest performance disk I/O is performed in bursts, properly managed I/O to tape is continuous and can very quickly illustrate heat-related operational issues in an I/O subsystem - especially if the disk volume being backed up and the tape device being written to are attached to the same HBA. The HighPoint solutions withstood 100s of terabytes of continuous I/O over many days with no issues."

Updates for HighPoint PCIe RocketRAID 272X, 271X and RocketRAID 4500 Series HBAs, and Thunderbolt-based RocketStor 6328 SAS adapter are available for download from the HighPoint, Ltd support site beginning Oct 23rd, 2014.

About TOLIS Group, Inc.

TOLIS Group is dedicated to provide leading edge native Unix, Linux and Apple (News - Alert) Mac OS X data backup, archival and restore software, tape drives and automation, and backup appliance solutions that deliver unparalleled reliability and excellent value to organizations and OEMs. The service marks of "Backup You Can Trust" and "BRU...Because it's the Restore That Matters" guide every aspect of TOLIS Group's business.

About HighPoint Technologies, Inc.

HighPoint Technologies, a pioneering force in the storage industry for nearly two decades, design, manufacture and deploy the industry's most comprehensive range of high-performance, versatile and cost effective storage solutions for Mac OS X, Window, Linux, and FreeBSD platforms. Our market-proven storage and RAID technology is deployed worldwide; from professional media applications, datacenters and enterprise class server solutions, to personal storage devices. We manufacture an extensive range of Thunderbolt™, SAS, SATA and USB 3.0 storage solutions, HBAs and I/O connectivity devices for Corporate, Professional and consumer applications.

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