Apple Mac Mini + Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 Library + BRU Server Network Edition

Larger organizations recognize the need to protect information assets and normally include data backup as a budgeted item. Not all organizations, although they recognize the need for backup, have a robust budget to achieve the necessary level of support.

Often lower cost options that include disk or network-based backups are implemented, yet their cost can eventually morph from affordable to expensive. Using these approached, data recovery issues can arise such as quiescent hard disk drives not spinning up when data needs to be restored, or the loss of network connectivity to a remote backup site that kills the backup process. All too often, the backup operation is excluded from the IT process in the hope that data loss will not occur.

Affordable backup is at hand...

With the introduction of Apple's new Mac Mini, a cost effective backup solution that includes client-server backup and tape automation is now affordable for even the smallest business.

TOLIS Group's BRU Server Network Edition for OS X ($599 SRP) provides support for 25 client systems (all system platforms & upgradeable) runs perfectly on the Mac Mini ($549 with 512MB RAM) as the server system. By adding Exabyte's FireWire VXA-2 1x10 PacketLoader ($2,600 est. street), you include full 10-slot tape automation delivering up to 800GB of native capacity. The entire system can be assembled for less than $3,500 - average street price

For those organizations that would like to implement a D2D2T strategy (writing to a disk stage prior to committing the data to a tape archive), the Exabyte 1X10 PacketLoader has a FireWire pass through. This means that an organization could implement a D2D2T strategy by writing to a disk stage first prior to committing the data to a tape archive. The disk stage could be a single FireWire hard drive, or a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) daisy-chained to the PacketLoader.

If this concept is intriguing, but you don't want to "brew" your own backup system, check out TOLIS' bruAPP.