How ALTO solutions work?
ALTO has a unique architecture designed specifically to securely store large volumes of infrequently accessed storage. ALTO provides you with the best of both worlds - the security of physical removable media and the multi-user access and fast content restore of non-linear disk storage. How does it do this? On this page, we provide a brief overview of the fundamental replication approach executed by ALTO.
HOW
Data Replication and Removable Media = ultimate security
RAID based storage technology, whether on-premise or in the cloud, has unacceptable vulnerabilities when used with high-capacity disk drives. The risk of losing your valuable media and data is tangible as drives start to fail.
In an era where disk drive technologies and capacities are evolving rapidly, RAID also locks the user into a single disk drive size and type throughout the system. This means that in an on-premise RAID all the disks must be purchased as part of the initial capital project, from a single vendor and with identical capacity and performance.
ALTO offers better protection than a RAID array by writing complete data files to multiple locations on different disks, allowing disks to be spun-down safely and offering the additional benefit of removable media. This REPLICATION technique used in ALTO offers superior user-configurable protection, removable media, and inherent disaster recovery capability by storing non-segmented files that do not happen with alto storage.
With ALTO drives can be purchased 'as you go' from multiple leading suppliers, in any available capacity, as part of your operational expenses, as your business needs to extra archiving capacity. Click here to learn more about the disk drives you can use in ALTO.
Fine-Tuned Replication
ALTO-III can be fine-tuned for maximum storage efficiency by establishing Replication Rules based on the following principles
Replication factor 1 is most frequently used for Backup purposes, which by definition means there is a second copy of each file on another storage system. Using Replication Factor 1 offers the most cost effective storage solution for Incremental Backups
Replication factor 2 is the default replication for an Archive. Two copies of every file are created and stored on different Disks for protection. The two disks may be in the same chassis in a single chassis system or different chassis for additional resilience. Since ALTO uses Replication NOT mirroring, the two Replicas may be in geographically separated locations.
Replication factor 3 is typically used to create a Disaster Recovery Archive in a different building or in a different Geographical area. Increasingly Customers are taking advantage of this unique ALTO Capability to create a simple physical Shelf Archive as a copy of last resort