Saving on storage in the cloud

Cheap storage, like a car, is measured not just by the low price you pay per gigabyte when you purchase it. It's how much it costs to own the system throughout its life. If all you do is keep a car in the garage for emergencies, you'll want one that is cheap to maintain. If all you do is keep unchanging documents on file, low maintenance expenses for the storage device is better than the cheapest system to buy.

That's how Kirk Dunn, CEO of PowerFile Inc. in Foster City, Calif., wants you to evaluate your long- and mid-term data storage requirements. He points to IDC research that reveals 80% of unstructured data, which makes up the majority of the files you have on disk and tape, "is fixed." That is, it doesn't change ever.

So Dunn sees no reason to keep those files, which may be in occasional use, but remain unchanging, on even low-cost, but high-maintenance SATA drives when you can use his modestly priced, easy to run Hybrid Storage Appliance. He claims that the PowerFile appliance uses between 5-10% of the power than your basic RAID system. And since he contends that mass storage systems consume as much as 40% of the power inside data centers, less power consumption will certainly drop a buck or two back into your budget. Dunn also says by mixing Blur-ray technology, with its projected 50-year lifetime of service, with traditional disks is another budget blessing in the long term.

Tomorrow PowerFile will offically announce updates to its HybridOS, including the ability to schedule the permanent deletion of WORM files even without the document owner's permission. This is ideal for companies with strict document retention policies that want to remove files on fixed dates. It will also increase its appliance's caching capabilities up to 48 TB and handle up 1.2 petabytes per appliance.

Shipping begins on May 15 and pricing starts at under $75,000.