BlueScale 10.6 by Spectra Logic

Spectra Logic Corp. announced the availability of its latest storage management software. BlueScale 10.6 offers high availability features for the enterprise that were previously only available on disk.

Integrated into Spectra T-Series tape libraries, BlueScale 10.6 delivers the first ‘hot spare’ drive available for tape libraries, proactive notification of potential hardware failure with Hardware Lifecycle Management (HLM) and auto-discovery of new media through its Media Lifecycle Management (MLM) enhancements. The intelligent remote management capabilities allow customers to monitor the health of media and hardware, alleviate unscheduled site visits, and reduce costs and resource requirements.

“We have a number of customers who remotely manage ‘lights-out’ sites that collect and store data on their libraries. Spectra’s continuous innovation and focus on lifecycle management enables our customers to replace tape drives and keep data readily available,” said Dave Hiechel, president of EAGLE Software, a SpectraEDGE channel partner. “With affordable tape libraries that deliver the same reliability and availability as disk arrays, our customers are able to reap the full benefits of faster speeds, lower power and cooling costs and increased space efficiency, without any trade-offs.”

Spectra Logic’s BlueScale 10.6 includes robust features
that provide high data availability
and proactive issue identification and resolution:

• Global Spare Tape Drive – The first ‘hot-spare’ drive for tape libraries enables easy, remote failover for a failed tape drive, and keeps all devices available during the backup window. The Global Spare drive can be shared across multiple virtual library partitions, enabling a single spare drive to be available to any library partition.
• Hardware Lifecycle Management (HLM) – The new management capability tracks usage of high-use library components such as tape drives and robotics. It automatically recovers or proactively notifies administrators of components that are approaching expected usage thresholds, and enables the component to be replaced before unexpected downtime occurs.
• Media Lifecycle Management (MLM) – The expanded MLM enhancements include auto-discovery and cataloging capabilities that ease the import of new media into the MLM database. Introduced in 2008, MLM provides lifetime reporting on media, ensuring that overused or damaged media is identified and replaced — increasing data reliability and availability.
• Secure Power Shutdown – The power shutdown feature increases security by restricting library shut-down requests through controlled-access. It also includes a verification step to ensure that the library should be powered-down.

To boost tape reliability and availability, Spectra Logic’s unique and proactive lifecycle management tools identify, quickly resolve and alert administrators to pending media or component issues. With HLM and MLM, reliability issues that stemmed from overuse of tape media and component wear can be easily prevented.

“Our latest BlueScale release delivers on our goal of continuing to provide highly available and reliable tape libraries for the enterprise,” said Molly Rector, Spectra Logic’s vice president of product management and marketing. “Spectra’s proactive lifecycle management tools along with continued advancements in LTO technologies provide customers with dependable, easy to manage data protection solutions. Our goal is to deliver Tape Without Pain to the Data Protection Market.”

BlueScale 10.6 is available on the T-Series tape library product line including the Spectra T50e, T120, T200, T380, T680 and T950 libraries. Spectra T-series libraries contain 10 to 10,050 tape media slots to accommodate data sets from the smallest business up to the largest enterprise. BlueScale 10.6 is available as a free upgrade to existing customers with current support contracts.