QStar Archive Manager V6.1 Integrated With HP StoreEver Data Verification

QStar Technologies Inc announced the version 6.1 of Archive Manager NAS gateway software for archive storage technologies, which includes the option to create a self-managing, self-healing archive with LTO tape, through integration with HP StoreEver Data Verification software.

With this joint solution, customers’ data enjoys a new level of protection against loss as the technologies detect media-related issues and take pre-emptive action to copy affected data on new media.

QStar is an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) to integrate with StoreEver Data Verification, a napplication that utilises low-level information in the LTO tape drive to determine the health of a cartridge. An API interface allows QStar Archive Manager to schedule cartridge verification and automatically take action if it is identified as being suspect. The software then presents cartridge statistics through a GUI page, and offers the ability to schedule cartridge verification in one of three ways with LTO-6; a quick scan taking around five minutes, a moderate scan taking around an hour and a full scan which takes around five hours. Should any cartridge be detected as having a lower than expected level of read back confidence, Archive Manager would copy data from that cartridge to a new cartridge.

Archive Manager provides a NAS interface for users or applications that need a simple way to store data to tape/optical libraries, object storage or cloud. This software is installed on a Windows or Linux server and uses an ‘integral volume’ combining disk and archive storage. This approach allows files to be cached to disk for short-term retrieval with file metadata remaining there permanently, while files are moved to archive storage for long-term preservation.

A key requirement for long-term data preservation is to know when data or media is at risk of becoming unreadable. QStar recommends that archived data is protected by creating multiple copies of data, but in this case, unreadable data is only identified when the file is accessed and fails to read correctly; data must then be accessed from another copy, which is not ideal, as this copy could be offsite. Through media verification the retrieval of offline media to replace failed onsite media will never be necessary because of the preventative action. Delays in accessing data are therefore avoided and the number of reliable copies is always maintained.

“Verifying the quality of archived tape data over time has always been a challenge for customers,” said Chris Powers, VP, data centre development unit, storage, HP. “Today, customers can now preserve the integrity and access business-critical data stored on tape media using HP StoreEver Data Verification with the added automated capabilities provided by QStar Archive Manager throughout its lifecycle.“

Riccardo Finotti, CEO, Qstar, stated: “We are extremely proud to be the first ISV to integrate with HP’s StoreEver Data Verification API; together we are helping to preserve our joint customers’ valuable data assets for the long-term.“

QStar’s media verification is available for HP StoreEver ESL G3 enterprise tape libraries and will support HP StoreEver MSL6480 mid-range tape libraries in early 2015.