Cache-A Archiving Appliances With LTO-6

Cache-A Corporation has launched a new generation of LTO-6 archive appliances.

Available, these appliances meet the media and entertainment industry need to safeguard ever-increasing volumes of priceless assets at minimal cost, while delivering art tools and performance for reliable and future-proof archiving.

LTO-6 technology is now available across Cache-A’s Pro-Cache6, high-performance Power-Cache, and Library 24/48 automation systems, with an anticipated release for the desktop Prime-Cache6 appliance around NAB 2013.

These new appliances deliver faster throughput and close to 70% greater storage capacity over LTO-5 appliances. They combine Cache-A’s advanced LTFS capabilities with a web-based user interface, while maintaining identical space-saving desktop and rackmount form factors as previous products. They can be network-attached to deploy in professional digital media workflows.

"The arrival of LTO-6 is great news for companies in the media and entertainment industries, as you can store more, and archive faster," said Phil Ritti, president and CEO of Cache-A. "With the advent 3D, and trends towards the adoption of 4K and high frame rates, media projects just keep getting bigger, and can easily run into the hundreds ofTB of data. Cache-A’s new LTO-6 archive appliances keep pace with the hunger for secure, long-term storage. For a minimal cost, Cache-A provides what are simply the most complete, future-proof archiving appliances available today."

LTO-6 cartridges can hold up to 2.5TB of data natively – an increase of 67% over LTO-5, which holds 1.5TB natively. Drives offer a performance hike to 160MB/s native transfer rate, whereas LTO-5 drives work at 140MB/s. To accommodate the extra capacity, Cache-A has increased the internal disk cache storage in its appliances – from 4TB to 6TB in Pro-Cache6, while Power-Cache has been upgraded from 8TB to 12TB. Internal disk storage on Pro-Cache models can be configured for either RAID-0 or RAID-1, while Power-Cache systems can be configured for either RAID-0 or RAID-5.

With the introduction of LTO-6 to its product portfolio, Cache-A has carried its LTFS (Linear Tape File System) capabilities into its new LTO-6 appliances, along with the industry standard tar format. LTFS implementation enables cartridge-spanning of large projects and speed dubbing for additional copies. Each appliance has Cache-A’s built-in catalog database making it easy for users to track, search and retrieve content across every tape it has ever seen. The appliances can be used in a variety of professional digital media workflows – from on-set cart systems to SAN and NAS storage systems in post production. As they can manage large archives with quick access to any asset, the new Pro-Cache6 and Power-Cache archive appliances are for archiving production source masters or entire projects for post-production.

LTO-6 is the sixth generation of LTO technology. LTO was launched in 2000, and LTO tape has a shelf life of at least 30 years. With four million tape drives in use, plus more the 200 million cartridges sold worldwide, it has proven an economical and safe long-term storage technology for the IT and media and entertainment industries.

As with previous generations of LTO technology, Cache-A’s LTO-6 systems provide backward compatibility with previous generations of LTO tape. The new appliances can read/write LTO-5 and LTO-6 cartridges and read LTO-4 cartridges, helping to preserve media investments and ease implementation.

Pro-Cache6 and LTO-6 models of Power-Cache and Library 24/48 are available from resellers worldwide.