IBM Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition V1.2

IBM Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition V1.2 with multi-library and LTO Gen 7 drive support.

IBM Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition (Spectrum Archive EE) combines the ease of use of LTFS with the scalability, manageability, and performance of IBM Spectrum Scale, leader in HA and high input/output (I/O) capabilities.

Spectrum Archive EE extends the abilities of Spectrum Scale with simplified tape administration and relieves the complexity of transferring data from tiered disk storage to tape. The ability to move beyond simply adding storage to optimize and streamline data management and reduce storage infrastructure costs are excellent benefits for businesses of any size.

As needs for capacity, I/O, and data availability grow, Spectrum Archive EE enables easy expansion of the tape tier of Spectrum Scale. The ability to add media and provision it in the tape pool enables expanded archive capacity with minimal downtime and without impacting the availability of data already in the pool. Performance of the tape drives and of the Spectrum Archive EE servers are load balanced by Spectrum Archive EE to ensure the highest possible data rate and data availability.

Spectrum Archive EE V1.2 delivers the following benefits:

• Lower total cost of retaining infrequently accessed data over a long retention period
• Cost-effective archiving of digital assets that can be referenced and monetized for years to come
• The ability to create storage tiers with inexpensive tape rather than costly disk storage
• A reduction in the high power, cooling, floor space, and administration costs associated with disk storage
• Support for attaching up to two tape libraries to a single Spectrum Scale cluster
• Expanded storage capacity through LTO-7 support
• Data recording on WORM tape cartridges
• Flexibility in pool-based data management

The infusion of technology into all aspects of our lives has created a world that is generating billions of gigabytes of data every day. This explosion of unstructured data requires a new approach to support traditional and new workloads, one that is driven by a software-defined strategy.

The IBM Spectrum Storage family builds upon traditional, IBM FlashSystem, and private and public cloud storage environments to deliver new ways to enhance data economics, including the use of commodity hardware. IBM Spectrum Archive EE is based on IBM LTFS and enables fast and easy data retention that reduces the TCO for active archive storage.

IBM Spectrum Archive EE combines the ease of use of LTFS with the scalability, manageability, and performance of IBM Spectrum Scale,leader in HA and high I/O capabilities. Spectrum Archive EE extends the abilities of Spectrum Scale with simplified tape administration and relieves the complexity of transferring data from tiered disk storage to tape. The ability to move beyond simply adding storage to optimize and streamline data management and reduce storage infrastructure costs are benefits for businesses. As needs for capacity, I/O, and data availability grow, Spectrum Archive EE enables easy expansion of the tape tier of Spectrum Scale. The ability to add media and provision it in the LTFS pool of General Parallel File System (GPFS) (Spectrum Scale) enables expanded archive capacity with minimal downtime and without impacting the availability of data already in the pool.

Spectrum Archive EE is designed to enable policy management of tape as a storage tier in a Spectrum Scale environment, helping encourage the use of tape as a critical tier in the storage environment.

It can be used as an operational storage tier accessible by disk-based applications. Using IBM Spectrum Archive EE to replace disks with tape in tier 2 and tier 3 storage can improve data access over other storage solutions as it increases efficiency and streamlines management of files on tape.

Spectrum Archive EE can play a major role in reducing the cost of storage for data that does not need the access performance of primary disk. By replacing tier 2 and tier 3 disk storage with tape, organizations can achieve a new operational efficiency and cost effectiveness compared to the cost of equivalent disk-based environments. It simplifies the use of tape by making it transparent to the user and manageable by the administrator under a single infrastructure.

IBM Spectrum Archive EE supports IBM LTO Ultrium 7, 6, and 5 tape drives, as well as IBM TS1140 and TS1150 tape drives installed in TS3500 and TS4500 tape libraries.

Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition improves capacity
and management flexibility for large scale cloud storage:

• Support for second library attachment to Spectrum Scale cluster
• Increased capacity by 2.4 times with support for LTO7 drives
• Support for WORM cartridges
• Improved data management with automatic recovery process on failure

In addition, IBM Spectrum Archive EE can now be ordered through the Passport Advantage (PPA) ordering system.

Orderable per node
For the installation of the first node, purchase one per-install license. For the installation of additional nodes for meeting the scale-out requirement, purchase one per-secondary-node license for each additional node in the same Spectrum Archive EE cluster.

Key prerequisites

• Spectrum Archive EE software is generally supported with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.1 OS.
• Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition software V1.2 requires:
• Spectrum Scale Version 4.1.1 (Standard Edition or Advanced Edition)
• Java VMs
• IBM TS3500, TS4500, or TS3310 tape library

Spectrum Archive EE supports mixed environments  and any combination
of these drive types can be used in an Spectrum Archive EE environment
and the supported media respectively:

• LTO Ultrium Gen 7
• LTO Ultrium Gen 6
• LTO Ultrium Gen 5
• TS1140 and TS1150 Tape Drives

Planned availability date

• For PPA: December 11, 2015
• For AAS: December 18, 2015