Help/Systems Teams with DSI to Sell VTLs
December 4, 2013 Alex Woodie
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Help/Systems last week announced it formed a partnership with Dynamic Solutions International that will see DSI selling Help/Systems backup software for IBM i into its installed base. DSI is an Englewood, Colorado-based company that sells a range of storage solutions, including disk-based VTLs; LTO tape drives, autoloaders, and libraries; and storage management software. The company has close to 40 years of experience and counts about 2,000 organizations as customers. The IBM i market opportunity and the partnership with Help/Systems came about as a result of DSI’s work with IBM‘s System z mainframe customers, says Leo Salvaggio, vice president of sales for DSI.
“We identified the market need for an automated backup solution and knew we could leverage our many years of experience working with other mainframe environments and transfer that knowledge to the iSeries marketplace,” Salvaggio says in a press release. “Partnering with Help/Systems was critical in enabling us to bring this much needed storage solution to market.” DSI’s VTLs are geared toward different customer segments, including entry-level, midrange, and enterprise. In the entry-level category, the company offers three appliances including the DSI350-VV8, the DSI350-VEM, and the DSI350-BEM. The devices have from 4 TB to 8 TB in usable storage capacity, delivered across SAS drives in RAID-6 configuration. They can support up to 8,000 virtual cartridges across 128 virtual tape libraries and 1,024 virtual tape drives. The devices feature either two or four 8 GB Fibre Channel ports, with major options including compression, replication, encryption, a SCSI port, and backup to physical disk. In the midrange category, the company sells two appliances, including the DSI350-M16 and the DSI350-MEM. These devices sport 16 TB of native storage across 128 virtual tape libraries, 1,024 virtual tape drives, and 64,000 virtual cartridges, and feature four 8 GB FC ports. Major upgrade options include an additional 16 TB of usable storage, the addition of compression, replication, and encryption capabilities; and additional 8b FC ports. In the enterprise category, DSI sells one product: the DSI350-EV0. This appliance doesn’t offer any storage itself, but instead directs backups to a pair of storage appliances DSI offers, including the DSI5100-F16 and the DSI5100-FEM for encryption, over a dozen FC ports. Major optional features including the addition of compression, replication, and encryption capabilities, and the capability to configure DSI350-EV0s in pairs for high availability. DSI says that, as part of the channel partner agreement with Help/Systems, it will integrate Help/Systems’ Robot/SAVE software with its VTL offering “to provide iSeries customers with a virtualized storage solution.” Training and 24/7 service and support are also part of this agreement, DSI says. The deal does not involve selling VTLs into Help/Systems’ big IBM i installed base. However, Help/Systems says it may refer customers who are looking for a virtual tape library to DSI.
Editor’s Note: This article was corrected. Help/Systems and DSI are not selling VTLs into Help/Systems installed base. IT Jungle regrets the error.
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