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	PACKET POWER CHALLENGE To illustrate one of the principles behind packet technology, we created a little game for our web site -- learn something, have fun, and win prizes. Talk about your win-win situations. [Take the Challenge...]

VXAdata E-Mail Newsletter
March 2000

FEATURE STORIES

Command Line Junkie or GUI Guru?
In this issue we have an exclusive article from Marcel Gagné, president of Salmar Consulting Inc., and author of the upcoming book, Linux Guide for System Administrators (Addison Wesley).

His article takes us on a tour of the tools at your disposal, comparing freeware utilities and their commercial alternatives.

Marcel is a regular columnist with Linux Journal and SysAdmin Magazine. His weekly Sysadmin's Corner column, an ongoing system administration howto, can be found online at linuxjournal.com. [Read Marcel Gagné's Article...]
 

SPECIAL OFFER FOR FIRST-TIME U.S. BUYERS
Now you can evaluate the VXA drive -completely- free for 30 days. And, if you decide to keep it, get big savings. Internal Kit, only $399, External Kit, only $499. Offer good only in the US, until May 31, by going to:
http://www.ecrix.com/eval
 

Fibre Channel vs SCSI
Will SANs and Fibre Channel take over the storage world, or is the advent of Gigabit Ethernet going to keep SCSI on top for years to come?

The debate may not rank up there with the Linux vs Windows polarization, but it's been raging in the storage community for quite a while. Piper Jaffray analyst Ashok Kumar recently came out with a neat summation of the arguments on both sides. His conclusion? It may not be the technology that matters most, but rather the ability of IT staffs to implement it: "We see strong support in the IT community for easily installed Network-Attached Storage (NAS); one may wonder if the cost/performance/management advantages of this approach are resonating better with IT professionals than any claim that Fibre Channel is faster." [Get the PDF of this report...]
 

We LOVEU too!

Did you get slammed by the ILOVEU virus or its cousins? Obviously, everyone here at Ecrix recommends rigid adherence to a backup policy as a cost-effective insurance policy. In fact, we got hit by the virus here, but were able to recuperate quickly, easily and effectively. True life use of VXA, but perhaps we're not the most neutral case study.

This type of virus is especially bad, as it's likely to combine two of the most likely causes of data loss: viruses and non tech-savvy users (MS Outlook plus not knowing a VBS script from a Blue Mountain Arts card = strong need for VXA).

It costs between $2,000 - $8,000 per megabyte to recreate PC data. If you lose a 250 megabyte tape cartridge, it will cost you a minimum of $500,000 to replace it. (Source; Media Protection Products).

What's Causing your data loss? Are viruses one of the leading causes of data loss at your company? According to this study, it's still way behind employee mistakes, but we suspect the story may have changed a bit as the work force gets more computer literate and viruses become ever more prevalent. Let us know what your biggest causes of data loss are.

Veritas Merges With Seagate

Veritas Software is moving forward with their "straightforward merger" with Seagate Technologies. Take the time to parse through the merger FAQ -- it makes great reading. We'll cheerfully accept better answers from readers, but it looks like they'll end up valuing the tape and disk business at about $2 billion, and giving control of it to Silver Lake Partners, a group of investment bankers. What's next for Seagate now that it's privately-owned? Stay tuned!
 

PRODUCT NEWS

AutoPak -- The new library for VXA-1 tape drives and media.

Been looking for an automated solution that holds nearly a Terrabyte? Ecrix recently released the AutoPak: one or two drives, 15 cartridges, 990GB of capacity. At $4,995 it's about half the price of the competition. Get yours in our Web store, or find out more about it here.

Compatibility Testing

We've been working with an ever wider list of software vendors to ensure compatibility. These are just the latest additions: for a complete list of VXA compatibility, visit the Support section of our web site.

Linux	Backup Edge version 01.01.x
	Perfect backup version 6.2
Windows 2000	MS 2000 backup
	Backup Exec for Win 2000 Ver.8.0
	ArcServeIT version 6.61
Sun Microsystems	BRU 2000 version 15.0
SCO	BRU 2000 version 15.0
Free BSD	BRU 2000 version 15.0

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