Index Engines introduces appliance

Index Engines has introduced what it claims is the first enterprise search appliance that indexes data in line with the existing backup process. The Index Engines Appliance sits in the path of the data backup and transparently indexes data as it flows through the storage network.

Index Engines says its new appliance re-architects enterprise search by shifting the indexing of unstructured data off the data network and onto the storage network, where file and e-mail are collected and archived using existing backup procedures. The average performance specifications of the appliance are as follows:

Indexing speed--3.5 million words per second (Microsoft Office documents are processed at 70 MB per second. Index size--As unstructured data is indexed, an index consisting of 8percent is stored on the appliance (as an example, for every terabyte of unstructured data, the appliance requires 80 gigabytes of storage).

Backup latency--The appliance was designed to not significantly delay the backup window (average latency resulting from insertion of the appliance into the backup process is 5 percent or three minutes for every hour of backup).

Query speed--The appliance supports up to 500 queries per second.

File capacity--The ES-100 model indexes up to 4 million documents, and the ES-200 model indexes 8 million documents (appliances can be clustered for multi-tape drive environments, and up to 64 appliances can be clustered providing fully integrated search results).

The Index Engines Appliance is available in two models. The ES-100 model supports the indexing of 4 million files and sells for $29,500. The ES-200 model supports 8 million documents and sells for $34,500.