Professional Services

Break through your data archiving challenges with Alliance's Professional Services!

Professional services are available for sustaining support assistance that might be needed outside of typical maintenance agreement coverage. Services available include: media cleaning and analysis, repair, and time and material support and more. As business needs increase, technical support personnel are at the ready to support onsite upgrades and expansions to existing highly configurable libraries.

Data migrations can be a time consuming and challenging process. Using Alliance’s professional services, data migrations can be planned with confidence. Highly skilled technicians will provide the support and expertise needed to ensure a smooth transition.

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Service Options

On-site Time and Materials Service

Need support and do not have an Alliance Storage Technologies, Inc (Alliance) service plan? No problem - Alliance can help get equipment operational again by providing an analysis of error logs and a repair estimate. A qualified field engineer will be sent out to the site to perform repairs needed to get equipment back online and operational. Billing will be based upon time and materials used for the corrective actions performed. Once the equipment is back operational take advantage of a full service maintenance plan with special rates and features.

Alliance field engineers can help with the following:

Equipment relocations
Quotes and estimates
Repairs
Emergency response outside of contractual parameters

Contact Alliance Sales to get a quote or estimate (719) 593-7900 or submit a Request for Quote.

Depot Repair

Equipment can be sent directly to the Alliance manufacturing repair facility where it will be repaired and shipped back recertified to standards. Billing will be based upon time and materials used for the corrective actions performed. Once equipment is back into production, take advantage of a full service maintenance plan – Click here to view plan benefits and details.

Any item that is sent into the Alliance repair facility requires a Return Material Authorization (RMA) number that facilitates tracking within the depot. Click here to access the online RMA Request Form. Once a RMA number is obtained, the items must be returned to Alliance within 30 days, with the RMA number clearly marked on the shipping label or outside carton. All items will be inspected and tested upon receipt.

Professional Services

Optical Media Cleaning, Analysis & Recovery

(Outside of regularly scheduled maintenance)

Alliance will perform analysis on the suspect media to determine whether the media is defective and if data is recoverable. If data recovery is possible all readable data will be copied from the defective media to a new piece of media.

Can be performed onsite or at the Alliance facility
Click here to view the Media Services page

Onsite Library Expansions

Alliance/Plasmon libraries are designed with expansion capabilities that enable companies to meet current and future data archiving requirements.

There are many benefits to the intrinsic scalability of libraries. Businesses and organizations can expand incrementally as data archiving requirements increase. Scalability minimizes initial impact on IT budgets by purchasing what is needed for initial capacity requirements while maintaining the potential for expansion. It allows IT departments to budget/plan for expansion and accommodate data growth without changing footprint size.

Support services available for expansions:

Add expansion cabinets to UDO Enterprise libraries
Add an extension library to an existing NAS installation
Increase current slot and media capacities

Contact Alliance Sales to learn more about library scalability

Library Upgrades

Upgrades are available for legacy libraries enabling companies to keep existing equipment in production as long as possible, minimizing the need for data migrations. Alliance continues to offer parts, services and upgrades for a variety of legacy libraries still in use.

Alliance can help support transitions from legacy jukeboxes to new Alliance UDO archive libraries
Increase current slot and media capacities
Upgrade to higher capacity drives – both optical (including UDO1 to UDO2) and SATA

Contact Alliance Sales to learn more about library upgrades

Data Migrations

Migrating data can be a time consuming and challenging process. Using Alliance’s professional services, data migrations can be planned with confidence. Alliance’s highly skilled technicians will provide the support and expertise needed to ensure a smooth transition.

Contact Alliance Sales to learn more about migrating data

Media Services

Optical Media Cleaning

Optical media is generally worry-free and since its inception, has been the media of choice for long-term archival storage. The media is extremely stable and unlike other archiving mediums, is not susceptible to magnetic interference, heat, humidity, water, EMP or solar flares, hardware failures, pollution, deletion, power surges, warping, active viruses and hackers. Additionally, optical media does not require special handling and can be stored offsite without the need for special environmental conditions.

Media does on occasion require cleaning as it can become contaminated by airborne particles or other elements depending upon environment. That is when Media Cleaning Services are needed. There are many reasons to keep media cleaned on a regular basis as follows:

Increase media efficiency - Media cleaning is a very important factor of system performance that is often over-looked by customers. This is due to multiple retries of the system hardware which recover many errors and appear transparent to the user. However, this is an essential part of proper system performance, reduction of errors and media efficiency.
How? A small particle of debris the size of a pen point, can cause many read / write errors, impact drive performance, cause a loss in media capacity, and in some cases cause failure to recover customer data. Debris can migrate to other areas of the media surface as well as to the optical lens of the drive. With proper media maintenance severe problems can be prevented.
Why? Media surface contamination can be caused by many sources and is largely dependent on the environmental conditions of where the system hardware is located. Printers and scanners are a large contributor to contamination and should not be located in the same room as optical disk drives. A clean computer room with filtered air can greatly extend the time between cleanings.
Interval - Media cleaning should be performed on a regular basis. To determine the proper interval start with a clean piece of media, note the date and the media serial number, insert media into system, then inspect the media every two weeks for surface contamination. When significant contamination is seen on the media surfaces note the date. The time between the start date and end date is the period in which media cleaning should be scheduled.

Alliance Storage Technologies, Inc. (ASTI) offers professional media cleaning service at your site, or at the ASTI technical lab where media is cleaned by factory trained, experienced media technicians. Media Cleaning is available for all UDO, MO, and 12 inch Optical Data Storage Media.

Click here to download the Optical Media Cleaning brochure.

Contact ASTI Sales: 719-593-7900 or submit a Request for Quote.

Media Analysis & Recovery Service
Drive Cleaning Cartridge

Media Analysis & Recovery Service

ASTI will perform analysis on the suspect media to determine if the media is defective and whether customer data can be recovered. If data recovery is possible, ASTI will copy all readable data from the defective media to a new piece of media.

Contact technical support for Media Analysis and Recovery

Drive Cleaning Cartridge

Occasionally, the lens on a UDO drive can become contaminated with airborne dust and debris. As a result, ASTI recommends performing

drive cleaning annually as preventive maintenance. To simplify the cleaning process, ASTI has developed a Drive Cleaning Cartridge.

The Drive Cleaning Cartridge is automatic and easy to use - simply follow the directions in the self-guided tutorial. The Cleaning Cartridge is good for 50 uses and provides a convenient label with a check off list for each use.

Click here to view UDO Drive Cleaning Tutorial

Order the Drive Cleaning Cartridge – Contact ASTI Sales at 719-593-7900