Enhancements to LTO Tape Libraries From Spectra Logic

Spectra Logic Corp. announced several updates to its enterprise tape libraries.

TFinity ExaScale
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The enhancements benefit customers in government, scientific research, HPC, media and entertainment, and public cloud environments who must preserve massive amounts of data long term.

For capturing and safeguarding large data sets, the company’s family of enterprise tape libraries now offers the following enhancements designed to improve performance, increase uptime and lower storage costs.

• TAOS or Time-Based Access Ordering System – Speeds up recall times for the TFinity ExaScale and T950 tape libraries by intelligently reordering recalls from LTO tapes to optimize the time required to perform a recall. TAOS also reduces wear on tapes and drives. Until now, no such functionality has existed for LTO tape-drive-based systems.

• Zoning – Allocates a library territory for each robot in the dual-robot TFinity ExaScale. The tape library achieves greater performance without partitions as the two robots move media freely within the tape library (using both LTO and IBM’s TS tape technology).

TeraPack

• TeraPack Affinity – Loads up to ten drives from a single TeraPack with intelligent move queues, optimizing performance in the TFinity ExaScale. Capable of holding up to ten LTO or nine IBM TS tapes, TeraPacks also make it easy to bulk load tapes into Spectra tape libraries.

• ASM Platinum (Assisted Self Maintenance) – Allows customers to sustain uptime by self-repairing TFinity ExaScale and T950 Tape Libraries. With it, customers receive custom maintenance plans, extra spare parts onsite, technical account managers and personalized repair training for IT staff.

• Spectra certified media – Assures data integrity and includes a Spectra Certified Media lifetime guarantee that warrants the firm’s tapes (LTO and IBM’s TS tape) to be free from defects in materials and workmanship for the life of the media.

“In today’s world, organizations that extract more value from their data gain a competitive edge,” said Nathan Thompson, CEO, Spectra Logic. “Advancements in tape library functionality benefit organizations with large-scale computing platforms, enabling them to use, retain and, in some cases, retrieve enormous amounts of data quickly, securely and affordably for the long term.“

To learn more about tape performance benefits, read Scaling the Performance Wall (registration required), a white paper by Fred Moore, president and founder of Horison Information Strategies, a storage consulting firm based in Boulder, CO.

Spectra Stack

Tape library offerings
Earlier this year, Spectra announced two new additions to its tape family, including the new Spectra Stack, a scalable, modular and affordable tape library that allows users to start with a single tape drive and ten tape slots, growing incrementally as their data needs increase, and the Spectra T950v tape library, an affordable, entry-level model of the high-end Spectra T950 tape library family. The new tape libraries provide both value and functionality for organizations wrestling with growing data sets and shrinking budgets.

BlackPearl converged storage system

Object storage enhancements
The company also recently announced object storage updates to its family of BlackPearl converged storage systems.

These enhancements include:

• Intelligent object management

  • • Self-healing – Allows files to self-heal all copies across all media if a problem is detected

    • Tape consolidation – Provides automatic consolidation of data on fragmented tapes, reclaiming deleted tape storage capacity

    • Media migration – Allows data to be migrated from one storage type to another quickly and transparently, which ensures data integrity while reducing costs

• S3 object versioning – Allows multiple versions of the same file to be uploaded and saved on BlackPearl, ensuring customers do not lose data.

• Data staging – Allows pre-staging of data from tape to disk, reducing wait times to use assets while taking advantage of tape’s cost savings.

• Intelligent chunk aggregation – Reduces tape mounts and improves tape throughput.

Resources:
White Paper on Tape Performance
Spectra HPT video
TFinity ExaScale brochure
Spectra BlackPearl brochure