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Overland Storage Joins The Green Grid

March 24, 2008

Four Steps for Building Greener Data Centers with Sustainable Storage Feature Overland's Tiered Data Protection Solutions

SAN DIEGO, March 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Overland Storage, Inc. (Nasdaq: OVRL) today announced its membership in The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The move is part of Overland's overarching goal to collaborate with fellow industry stakeholders as well as share insight on how to reduce storage and data center energy consumption and costs.

The Green Grid seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data center and business computing energy efficiencies. According to Vern LoForti, president and CEO of Overland Storage, improving storage efficiency while optimizing power consumption is an ever-increasing data center priority worldwide. "Organizations are seeking more effective and economical solutions to mitigate the impact of continually rising data storage," he says. "Overland's membership in The Green Grid underscores our continuing commitment to help our customers take advantage of the latest in energy-efficient technologies and power-management strategies to drive down energy costs and conserve data storage usage."

To that end, Overland has developed four steps for building eco-efficient, greener data centers with tiered data protection solutions that leverage compact form factors, cutting-edge data deduplication and compression capabilities as well as other sustainable data storage advantages. The steps include:

    1. Exercise Data Discipline -- Scale disk-based backup and recovery
       appliances as additional capacity is needed to reduce power consumption
       and operational costs.
       * REO SERIES(R) of disk-based backup, recovery and VTL solutions scale
         from 3TBs to nearly 300TBs of usable capacity.


    2. Migrate Rarely Accessed Data to Tape -- Move data that doesn't need to
       be accessed frequently to tape libraries, instead of paying for data to
       actively reside on disk appliances.
       * NEO SERIES(R) and ARCvault(TM) tape libraries securely store data in
         a longer-life format so organizations don't have to pay for rarely
         accessed data to sit on disks, which are actively spinning and
         consuming energy. Overland's tape drive technology and robotic
         mechanisms only operate when needed, reducing the amount of power
         consumed and heat generated.


    3. Balance Power Efficiency with Performance -- Combine both
       high-performance and high-capacity data protection solutions to address
       a broad range of applications while increasing energy efficiencies.
       * ULTAMUS(R) RAID 4800 includes the latest energy-conscious hardware
         components and power-saving software technology that allows idle
         drives to spin-down in effort to further reduce energy consumption.
         Unlike most MAID implementations, however, ULTAMUS RAID uses
         standards-based drive power saving settings, enabling organizations
         to save up to 40 percent in power consumption without impacting I/O,
         application uptime or performance.


    4. Increase Storage Utilization -- Leading-edge disk technologies,
       including compression and data deduplication, can dramatically expand
       physical disk storage capacity for greatly increased disk utilization.
       * REO VTLs include Dynamic Virtual Tape, basically thin provisioning
         for virtual tape, to maximize the utilization of available disk
         space. Any unused VTL space can be used for nearline storage. Also,
         optional data compression and data deduplication can dramatically
         increase physical storage capacity while reducing data volume.
       * ULTAMUS RAID features the ability to use the same RAID set to store
         multiple LUNs per RAID set within a storage network, increasing
         utilization by minimizing the number of parity drives needed to
         maintain data availability -- ultimately increasing utilization of
         the entire storage array.

The 451 Group and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimate that around 1.5 percent of all electricity in the U.S. is consumed by IT data centers. The Uptime Institute indicates that for every $1,000 spent on servers in 2000, businesses bought eight watts of power. This figure reached 109 watts in 2006 and is expected to rise to 1,650 watts by 2012. Equivalent annual electricity costs grow from $95 per year (at $0.10/kwH) to $1,455 per year in 2012. Sustainable green storage solutions featuring energy-efficient hardware can lower consumption and reduce operating costs while ensuring the highest levels of business continuity, compliance and data security.

Additional information on Overland's sustainable green data storage strategies can be found at http://www.overlandstorage.com/green.

About Overland Storage

Now in its 27th year, Overland Storage is a market leader and innovative provider of smart, affordable data protection appliances that help midrange and distributed enterprises ensure business-critical data is constantly protected, readily available and always there. Overland's award-winning products include NEO SERIES(R) and ARCvault(TM) tape libraries, REO SERIES(R) disk-based appliances with Virtual Tape Library (VTL) capabilities and ULTAMUS(TM) RAID high-performance, high-density storage. Overland sells its products through leading OEMs, commercial distributors, storage integrators and value-added resellers. For more information, visit Overland's web site at http://www.overlandstorage.com

Overland, Overland Storage, REO Series, REO, NEO Series, NEO, ARCvault Series, ARCvault and ULTAMUS are trademarks of Overland Storage, Inc.

SOURCE Overland Storage, Inc.

CONTACT: Sue Hetzel of HetzelMeade Communications, +1-760-434-9927, sue@hetzelmeade.com, for Overland Storage, Inc.
Web site: http://www.overlandstorage.com
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