Spectra Logic nTier Verde Archival System Tested by DeepStorage

Spectra Logic Corporation announced the nTier Verde received high marks in a third-party performance validation by independent test lab, DeepStorage,LLC.

nTier Verde appliance

The review and analysis found that nTier Verde can ensure a high level of data integrity with low overhead, and ease of use with system reliability that is 100 times over RAID-6 double parity configurations.

“It’s estimated that the world will soon store 44ZB of data. Our current archival storage systems must rise to the occasion to reliably store data for decades without sinking organizations with cost,” said Howard Marks, founder and chief scientist, DeepStorage. “Spectra Logic has designed their product specifically to address the new challenges of archival storage and I’m impressed that Spectra nTier Verde can ensure a high level of integrity with a surprisingly low amount of overhead.“

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nTier Verde provides affordable, long-term archival storage with simple installation, easy management and architecture that assures the highest level of data integrity. Available in two models, Verde 2U and Verde 4U, the nTier Verde ranges in size from 24TB up to 3.4 PB of raw data. It is used by organizations with long-term archival storage needs, particularly in the media and entertainment, HPC, federal and video surveillance industries. Current users include, Joyce Meyer Ministries, Community Health Choice and several national federal and media and entertainment organizations.

“The Spectra nTier Verde handled sequential workloads well,” said Marks. “The heart of the product, the ZFS file system, includes features that ensure reliability and data integrity.“

Lab review by DeepStorage found that nTier Verde delivers:

• 122TB of useable capacity, with just 25% overhead

• Archive-class storage, ensuring data integrity through

• Triple parity RAID to protect against drive failures at the highest level

• Block checksums to detect silent data corruption

• Background data scrubbing to correct errors proactively on even idle data

• A web interface that makes it simple to perform the basic storage administration tasks, including creating storage pools

• Quick handling of sequential workloads, ingestion of data at over 500MB/s (4Gbps) and delivery at almost 1GBps

• A RAID-Z3 core, which uses triple parity, in addition to the single and double parity (RAID-6) schemes supported by many storage systems to raise system reliability by about 100 times over RAID-6 double parity configurations.

“Large industries are faced with the question of how to easily, reliably store ever-growing data pools for longer periods of time – without breaking the bank,” said Matt T. Starr, CTO, Spectra Logic. “We designed the Spectra nTier product line to meet these needs and exceed expectations and we’re thrilled to see our customers and reviewers are in agreement.“

Spectra Logic provided DeepStorage.net with 4UnTier Verde with 35 4TB disk drives and 10GbpE for testing. DeepStorage.net connected it to the lab’s Brocade 8000 10GbEt switch and vSphere 5.5 cluster. Using triple-parity RAID configured for capacity, our test system, which had 35 4TB disk drives, delivered 122TB of useable capacity, or just 25% overhead, however max capacity has just grown with the release of the 8TB drives.

Complete test results of the Spectra nTier (registration needed)