Storage virtualization vendor FalconStor Software this week announced two appliances -- one that emulates a virtual tape library and a box that does disk vaulting for disaster recovery.

The appliances are part of FalconStor's Network Storage Server family, which runs the company's IPStor virtualization software. The VirtualTape Library Appliance and DataVault Appliance allow data retention and retrieval. Designed for small and mid-sized businesses, as well as departments in the enterprise, the devices provide near-instant restore capability and constant data access.

FalconStor has partnered with Dynamic Network Factory, ION Computer Systems and the Storage Server Group to manufacture the devices.

The VirtualTape Library Appliance connects to ether a storage area network via Fibre Channel or to a Gigabit Ethernet network via iSCSI and appears to backup software as a normal tape library.

The VTL Appliance provides up to four virtual tape drives and accommodates 16 hot-swappable Serial ATA drives. It comes preloaded with 1 terabyte of disk space. The appliance is based in an Intel Xeon-processor-based server, configured with a gigabyte of RAM.

The VTL appliance works with backup software from Atempo, Veritas, CA, IBM Tivoli, Bakbone, Legato and HP, as well as Linux, Windows and Solaris hosts.

The DiskVault Appliance is available in server and workstation editions. The DiskVault Appliance -- Server Edition uses policies and collaborates with FalconStor's DiskSafe and Snapshot Agent technology residing on a Microsoft SQL, Exchange or IBM Lotus Notes server. It takes real-time snapshots of changes to data and can provision selected disks if errors occur.

The DiskVault Appliance supports up to eight snapshots per iSCSI connection. It ships preloaded with a terabyte of Serial ATA disk and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The appliance is available in a tower configuration and uses an Intel Pentium 4 processor running at 2.8 GHz.