Spectra Logic Vision for ‘Deep Storage’ Tier

Spectra Logic Corp. unveiled its vision for a low-cost, massively scalable ‘deep storage’ tier that can store data virtually forever.

The company also introduced a native RESTful interface to robotic tape storage systems, Deep Simple Storage Service (DS3), which enables simple to use, cost-effective storage of large amounts of data. The DS3 interface is the cornerstone of Spectra’s vision for delivering deep storage solutions for customers grappling with cost-effective ways to store massive volumes of long term data.

More and more organizations discover new ways to extract value from their data. This movement envelops numerous markets including Web 2.0, cloud services, big data, media and entertainment, oil and gas exploration, life sciences, federal and state government, social media, and finance, among others. The desire to collect and analyze information for the sake of improving everything from business decisions to overall life experiences has driven data repositories to grow to sizes that were once inconceivable. Once reserved for federal government and supercomputing environments, online data repositories of multiple petabytes, and even exabytes, are starting to become common place in the enterprise. These modern use cases are driving new requirements for long term mass storage aimed at increasing efficiency, lowering costs and improving access.

“Our vision and roadmap for delivering deep storage solutions is designed to meet the new, evolving storage requirements of modern data centres and use cases,” said Nathan Thompson, founder and CEO, Spectra Logic. “There is a transformation occurring in how organizations amass, use and store long term data that necessitates a new tier of storage – deep storage – that delivers extreme low cost, power efficiency, high density and massive scalability. This tier must be designed to manage large, bulk quantities of data for extended and possibly indefinite periods of time while meeting the needs of newer data centre architectures that leverage storage in the form of data objects and utilize RESTful interfaces.”

Until now, modern applications using RESTful, object-based architectures could not directly access tape storage and thereby receive the associated benefits (lowest cost, highest density, most power efficient, best longevity, designed for portability) because tape did not have the ability to communicate using RESTful protocols. At the same time, RESTful interfaces have gained acceptance as a simpler, easier-to-use interface design, as evidenced by the adoption of REST by mainstream Web 2.0 service providers-including Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook, as well as organizations that use RESTful interfaces as their preference to move data around the cloud.

“The whole concept of ‘deep storage’ is on target with the trends and requirements ESG is seeing in the market,” said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “More organizations are recognizing the long term value that lies within their data, so data volumes and retention periods are increasing. Pair this trend with the market’s desire to use RESTful interfaces and Spectra Logic seems to be exactly in the right place to take advantage. It’s a good idea all around.”

Interface to Deep Storage – DS3
In support of its vision, Spectra Logic has introduced the DS3 interface, a RESTful interface supported by all of its T-Series tape library storage systems. By leveraging RESTful protocols, the DS3 interface enables modern architecture frameworks to easily and efficiently communicate with massively scalable deep storage technologies. The DS3 interface allows data-intensive organizations to utilize the highest density, most cost-efficient storage for long term data retention and accessibility.

DS3 interface is available and provides:

• Ease-of-Use. ISV partners and end user developers can leverage software clients that Spectra is making available or easily write their own clients. The interface is easy to use, even for those with no previous tape storage experience.
• Efficiency. The DS3 interface allows applications to move large quantities of data with minimal effort, and is for accessing the lowest cost storage media for large data objects. It reduces cost and simplifies management by providing intelligent data object reads/writes, which optimizes tape drive and tape media utilization and performance.
• Scalability. By providing easy access to high density, extensible tape storage systems, DS3 enables organizations to achieve massive scalability. DS3 supports deep storage in a wide capacity range with configurations as small as 15TB and scales into multiple exabytes in a single tape storage system.

“The new interface announced is the first in a series of innovative technologies and solutions we will be introducing to support deep storage,” added Thompson. “Adopting DS3 has been made easy for our current customers, as well as new customers. It’s supported by all of our T-Series tape libraries as a standalone, deep storage solution or a current customer’s library can be partitioned to add on a deep storage partition.”