Digistore Solutions Prototypes NAS

Digistore Solutions (S) Pty Ltd, supplier of data and information management products and solutions, announced the construction of a next-generation hybrid NAS, Centurion iServe, that is able to connect with optical technology for keeping frequently accessed data such as documents, images and media files always accessible on the network and automatically transfer aging content to Blu-ray optical media as archives – for future reference or to satisfy compliance regulations.

It protects important archived information from accidental erasure, unauthorized modification, data corruption, or viruses – for 50 years or more.

Current Issues
Many companies have long wrestled with the issues of rapid increase of data and the challenges that come with storing and managing it. The answer for most businesses is to buy more servers or more hard disk – which is not economically feasible. An explosive volume of crucial data, less frequently accessed data and aging content are stored on the servers or on hard disk. As a result, it affects the performance of the servers and lifespan of the hard disk.

Leading analysts estimate up to 80 percent of enterprise data is fixed content and corporations are holding onto that data for longer retention periods; accordance to corporate policies for litigation and regulatory compliance.

As a rule, newer data, and data that must be accessed more frequently, is stored on faster, but more expensive storage, while less critical data is stored on less expensive albeit safer and more reliable media.

Newly-Developed Technology
Digistore Solutions has developed a NAS that has capability to connect with Blu-ray storage library, Centurion iHub. This marked success in building next-generation NAS prototype that can be configured either as a standard NAS or as a NAS host system with Blu-ray optical storage capabilities.

By pooling high-capacity Blu-ray (BDXL) storage, the Centurion iHub creates reliable storage up to 10TB per system. The Centurion iHub incorporates features and enterprise scalability – for corporation struggling to find a cost effective, long-term storage solution for growing volumes of persistent data. By leveraging on a distributed processing architecture that sales both capacity and performance, the Centurion iHub uses less than 10 percent of the power consumption required for a disk-based archive solution.

"Optical has the advantage over tape of random versus sequential access. That is very important in retrieving information that is indexed," said Victor Foo, Chief Executive Officer of Digistore Solutions.

"Optical has the advantages over disk in that it can be natively WORM (which means that you have hardware-based immutability rather than software or firmware-based immutability of disk) and can be removable (in case you wish to move optical media to another site). Blu-ray including other optical storage might survive a flood, like in Thailand, whereas water will damage magnetic tape and disk. Optical is still the best form of storage for preserving valuable records and historical data. It provides best protection against virus threats," added Victor Foo.

Availability
Digistore Solutions anticipates to commercially launching the Centurion iServe and Centurion iHub during fiscal 2012.