PoINT Provides Software Support for 100GB BDXL Technology

In parallel to the availability of the first 100 GB BDXL storage systems in Europe, PoINT Software & Systems GmbH provides a new version of its software products supporting the relevant hardware (jukeboxes, autoloader and single drives).
 
BDXL is a new multi-layer format that has been specified by the Blu-ray Disc Association in June 2010. BDXL means a three-layer 100 GB Blu-ray disc for recordable (write-once) and rewritable discs (BD-R and BD-RE) as well as a four-layer 128 GB disc for BD-R.
 
The new 100 GB BDXL technology doubles the capacity of the 50 GB blu-ray discs which are already established in the storage market. Thereby, especially Blu-ray disc based jukebox systems are increasingly used for archiving purposes in professional IT environments. Due to legal requirements regarding archiving (compliance) more and more companies are forced to realize the subject matter in their IT infrastructure. Using the new BDXL technology offers advantages, for example reduced energy cost and supplemental data loss protection.
 
The new version 7.1 of PoINT Jukebox Manager supports the new BDXL technology. Customers intending to purchase a BD jukebox system or to upgrade a present system to BDXL drives are hence enabled to use this technology. PoINT Jukebox Manager provides users and applications a standardized CIFS interface for BD jukeboxes. A reverse compatibility to 25 and 50 GB Blu-ray discs as well as to CD and DVD is thereby as a matter of course assured.
 
Also PoINT Storage Manager supporting the BDXL format will be released shortly so that integration of this technology in a tiered storage concept will be achieved. PoINT Storage Manager combines fast primary storage (performance tier), capacity-oriented secondary storage (capacity tier) and ‘revision-proof’ archiving storage (archive tier) to a uniform three-stage architecture. In the process, inactive data in the performance tier, which is usually built by FC/SAS based hard disk systems, will be migrated to the capacity tier (e.g. realized by SATA RAID) in an automated manner. PoINT Storage Manager automatically stores data to be archived in the archiving tier, which could for example be realized by a jukebox capable for BDXL-technology.