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Quantum Redefines Long-Term Data Archiving

Innovations bring hyperscale cloud technology and experience to wherever data lives, enable enterprises to maintain data sovereignty and control, and deliver low TCO, reducing cold storage costs "by 80%."

Quantum Corporation announced 2 innovations aimed at organizations generating, storing, and managing huge amounts of data.

It is introducing ActiveScale Cold Storage, a new class of storage that combines object store software with hyperscale tape technology to provide secure, durable, and low-cost storage for archiving cold data.

In addition, Quantum is offering a new line of fully managed Object Storage Services to bring the cloud experience to wherever data lives and accelerate digital transformation.

These new offerings reduce cold storage costs by 80%, enable organizations to maintain control of their most valuable data assets, and unlock value in cold data over years and decades without expensive access fees.

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With the introduction of ActiveScale Cold Storage Class, ActiveScale provides durability, affordability, and accessibility, allowing organizations to preserve data for years and decades and unlock the inherent and potential value of their growing data assets.

“Quantum is fast becoming the world leader in hyperscale cold data storage solutions. We now provide solutions to many of the world’s biggest hyperscale cloud providers that are on the forefront of building ‘forever’ cold data archives,” said Jamie Lerner, chairman and CEO. “The innovations announced here enable us to combine Quantum hyperscale tape architectures with Quantum software, package all of this technology as a cloud service that can be deployed anywhere and offer it to enterprises and cloud providers who are facing the same challenges as hyperscalers.”

Massive data growth drives need for cold storage strategy

The world has entered a new era of data, as the quantity of unstructured data generated globally continues to grow exponentially. The gap between data growth and storage budgets is widening, and it is estimated that 60%1 of the data generated will be “cold” – inactive data that must be stored, protected, and remain accessible for years or decades because of compliance requirements and the immense value it contains. With traditional storage architectures, most organizations don’t have the budget, footprint or resources to handle this data explosion, forcing them to make operational or budget tradeoffs.

“Storage capacity in the enterprise is expected to grow by 30%1 annually, driven by increased digitization and data-driven business initiatives,” said Andrew Smith, research manager, cloud infrastructure services, IDC. “It is estimated that 60%1 of this data will be cold, which is why we are seeing growing adoption of cold storage solutions and services. The right cold storage strategy can help enterprises manage the gap between data growth and infrastructure budgets, while addressing concerns around security and compliance.”

Introducing ActiveScale Cold Storage: New class of object storage designed for cold data

To address this challenge, Quantum is introducing ActiveScale Cold Storage – a new class of object storage designed for cold data, built on hyperscale architectures, and offered as-a-service from Quantum. ActiveScale Cold Storage combines object storage software with 2-dimensional erasure coding and firm’s Scalar tape storage to create a new class of storage that is secure, durable, and low-cost.

Two-tier pricing model

Highlights of ActiveScale Cold Storage include:

  • Advanced cold storage archive with new levels of performance, durability, and storage efficiency: It introduces a series of technical advantages that are not available in other solutions today, including patent-pending 2-dimensional erasure coding (2D EC) software and the highly available, scale-up and -out Quantum RAIL Architecture (Redundant Array of Independent Libraries). 2D EC encodes data within and across tapes, tape drives, tape libraries, and geo-dispersed data centers, simultaneously maximizing data access performance, data durability, and storage efficiency. It uses local reconstruction codes with tape drives so the system only requires a single tape to recover from nearly all types of tape and drive errors and requires fewer hardware resources to write objects to tape. Writes are managed without impacting other object store tasks, delivering better performance and availability than all other tape-based solutions. Further, 2D EC technology delivers better data durability with less overhead – archives can be designed so customers can lose 3 tapes without losing data, with overhead as low as 15%. In contrast, other solutions either offer only 2-copy protection or very limited erasure coding policies that have greater risk of data loss and require more storage hardware.
  • Brings cloud archive services to wherever data lives; on-premises, third-party data centers, or hosted environments with multi-geo dispersed storage and hybrid-cloud capabilities: ActiveScale Cold Storage can be deployed as a fully managed service at the customer’s data center, at a third-party data center, or at a combination of the two to build geo-dispersed, hybrid cloud archive storage. ActiveScale’s architecture enables both active and cold storage infrastructures to be deployed at a single-site, two-sites using data replication, or three sites using 3GEO Dynamic Data Placement (DDP). Data buckets can also be migrated and replicated between ActiveScale and public cloud environments in support of hybrid cloud environments.
  • Uses S3 Standard and S3 Glacier Storage Classes for Broad ISV Application Compatibility: ActiveScale Cold Storage uses AWS S3 APIs, the Glacier Storage Class, and Lifecycle Policies to store, migrate, and restore objects to and from the cold data archive. Applications and services that use the AWS S3 Glacier Storage Class can leverage the same API to read and write data to ActiveScale Cold Storage. These include applications such as the Quantum StorNext File System, Quantum CatDV Asset Management Software, backup applications, many data management and archiving applications, and more. This new offering builds on the robust ecosystem of applications certified with ActiveScale today to provide many options for customers to move data to cold storage.
  • Unlimited, independent scalability of both active and cold data classes: ActiveScale Cold Storage is based on ActiveScale object storage software, which provides unlimited scalability of both active and cold data classes in a single namespace, at consistent levels of availability and performance at scale with no rebalancing. No other object store system on the market provides the levels of scale, durability, and flexibility now offered by this solution.
  • Reduces cold data costs by 80% by bringing hyperscale tape technology to enterprise: ActiveScale Cold Storage is based on low-cost, high-density company’s Scalar tape storage, leveraging the same technology used by leading cloud storage providers as the basis for their cold storage services. Tape is less expensive than disk and requires less power and cooling in a datacenter, which is why it is the preferred technology for long-term data archiving. ActiveScale Cold Storage combines object storage software with 2-D erasure coding and high-density rack-based tape storage hardware that includes many innovations born out of large hyperscale tape archives. These tape storage systems include advancements in serviceability for all system components, can be deployed quickly in modular configurations, and monitored 24×7 using the same AIOps software used to manage over 30EB of tape storage in hundreds of data centers around the world.

“Tape is rightly the preferred cold storage technology used in hyperscale environments because it is low cost, secure, and environmentally friendly. Until now, using it as part of an on-premises object storage system was impossible,” said Bruno Hald, general manager, ssecondary Storage, Quantum. “ActiveScale is now the industry’s first and only on-premises object store system with an integrated cold storage class based on tape technology. In short, this means it dramatically lowers costs, consumes little power, and reliably stores data for decades.”

Object Storage Services are delivered efficiently with advanced technology such as Quantum Cloud-Based Analytics (CBA) AIOps software

New Object Storage Services: Bringing the cloud experience to wherever data lives and accelerating digital transformation

To deliver this technology easily and affordably as a managed service, the vendor is introducing a new line of Object Storage Services that provide scalable private and hybrid cloud storage solutions for active and archived data sets, from petabytes to exabytes. The firm is introducing 2 classes of service – for active and cold data – with a simple all-inclusive two-tier pricing model as shown below.

These services are delivered efficiently using a combination of Quantum expertise and technology like AIOps software, Cloud-Based Analytics (CBA), and the recently introduced Service Delivery Platform, MyQuantum. CBA software is used today to monitor thousands of systems worldwide, capture telemetry data, and use predictive analytics to assist in system maintenance and to reduce downtime. It will be used by the Quantum services organization to help deliver these services and can be made accessible to partners and customers to monitor their environment as well.  

Customers can access the AIOps software by logging into MyQuantum. This online portal is designed with the customer in mind, making it easy to interact with company’s products and services now and in the future. This one-stop portal enables customers to easily manage their products and contracts end-to-end including product registration, updating to latest product versions, requesting support and managing cases, downloading trials, demos, and purchases, and renewing contracts. Customers subscribing to fully managed services such as these Object Storage Services will access their Customer Dashboard summarizing account activity and system statistics.  

“Large enterprises and web-based service providers are looking for greater agility, more financial flexibility, and greater leverage from outsourced services to accelerate transformative digital initiatives,” said Rick Valentine, SVP and chief customer officer, Quantum. “Quantum Object Storage Services is the industry’s first and only as-a-service solution for on-prem and hybrid active archiving and cold storage. Customers will realize lower costs and greater control of their data, and can pursue data enrichment, monetization, and value creation projects that were previously not possible due to cost constraints.”

“We continue to see a huge uptick in demand for infrastructure, a move from legacy systems to innovative technology, a journey ViON began over two decades ago when we introduced ViON Storage Services,” says Ray McCay, VP, solution sales, ViON Corp. “Adopting this new offering from Quantum is the next logical step in that journey, and we’re delighted to now be able to offer cold storage services to our clients. With Quantum, our customers benefit from both best in-class-technology and an unbeatable ViON industry and implementation expertise.”

ActiveScale Cold Storage and Quantum’s new Object Storage Services will be generally available in 1Q22.

1Source:  IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Quantum, Data Deluge: Why Every Enterprise Needs a Cold Storage Strategy, Doc. #US48119821, August 2021

Comments

Quantum, one of the 2 leaders in end-users mind of secondary storage with Spectra Logic according to a survey by Coldago Research, continues its long journey to rebuild its image. In fact, it was essentially some damage on the financial side and not on the technology and product side. The company maintains for a long time an image of trusted vendor thanks to a rich portfolio, strategic acquisitions and key human recruitments.

First, in the press release, it's surprising that tape and object can't be connected until now, it means before this announcement. But what about Fujifilm with Object Archive, Spectra Logic with BlackPearl today, Atempo, Cohesity, Grau Data, Komprise, Nodeum, Point Software and Systems, QStar, StrongBox or Versity to name a few?

This announcement represents a key strategic direction for Quantum. The company finally delivers a new glue to several elements of its line and this time it addresses a clear need from the market. How to answer the demand of cold data storage while maintaining transparency, easy access and strong resiliency?

This new offering capitalizes on ActiveScale software, an acquisition made from Western Digital in 2020. It's important to mention that Quantum has made some past investments in Amplidata, the original software developer of the object storage technology, in the last decade. Amplidata was acquired by HGST in 2015 and became ActiveScale. HGST was a business entity of Western Digital. Then Quantum who already identified this need signed a partnership with Western Digital to distribute ActiveScale as their Lattus product line. We also later saw a total absence of this line in Quantum portfolio that surprised the market. At that time, market observers wonder how and why a key secondary storage player could ignore such solutions. And a few months later, Quantum signed an agreement with WDC to acquire the ActiveScale business and we know the rest of the story. The product is now strongly attached to Quantum, developed and controlled by the team and plays a key role in the secondary storage strategy, this one about cold data illustrates that aspect. If you're interested by the timeline of this domain, please refer to this page.

We have a question as using the term long-term could mean more than a few decade and we know that these technologies need technology refreshes at various period of time to tolerate media, format... jump. We insist on that as we visited recently the Arctic World Archive where you can store data for a very long period of time based on radical different media, completely passive. developed by Piql. The nanofilm they use can survive more than 500 years. So this definition of long-term has to be defined carefully in each context.

Quantum has made a clear effort to articulate its point products into a large line gluing them with new software developed specifically to support that initiative. ActiveScale software is already well deployed, respected and adopted by the market with some advanced features.

This time the engineering team has added some new intelligent functionalities:

  • Beyond S3 and S3 Glacier API exposed by the system, a lifecycle mechanism is offered to move data between these 2 entities ie. between an active level to a cold level. Under the cover, ActiveScale continues to leverage the erasure coding initially developed in Belgium to reach 15 x9s of durability. These 2 zones are exposed via a single namespace that hides the complexity of this data movement.

  • A bucket can be copied to the public cloud and we expect more develop in this area.
  • The cold data zone is also connected to massively scalable tape farm based on Scalar product line organized in RAIL (Redundant Array of Independent Libraries). It reminds us what we know for many years with the RAIT acronym, L here is replaced by T meaning tape. RAIL delivers a new level of protection with an erasure coding technique spanning tapes and libraries. Quantum names this 2D EC to reflect a new level of durability reaching 19 x9s. As you can see in the image below, you just need one tape to read/restore the object addressing the potential limited number of drives available at the time of the request.

  • This is offered as a cloud service to make things easy to deploy, use and maintain, and
  • This is offered with an attractive pricing model.

We just regret that the diversity of data centers is a bit ignored in this announcement as not all users have only Quantum products. What happened with Spectra, HPE, IBM tape libraries? What about the cloud integration? In term of data access, the wide access to the content relies on S3 and the geo dispersed of the devices thanks to erasure coding on the object storage layer and on the tape libraries level. We anticipate some new developments to address these open points.

Also there was no information regarding content indexing, a key core function that changes radically users' experience. If for each data ingest, this indexation is triggered and later updated with placement or location of that content, it delivers an even better quality of service limiting the impact of the size of the configuration.

Quantum confirms that at scale the economy comes from 3 key contributors: erasure coding, data reduction with compression and deduplication and energy efficiency. Each of these elements contributes to reduce the electricity bill especially again over a long period of time. Not all of these techniques are used here giving space for more developments. We used to say that users at least expect to not run 10PB of disk archive storage over 10 years fully powered without any of these optimization. And you get it, 100PB or 20 years...

Once again, the company confirms that U3 - Universal, Unified and Ubiquitous - storage is the modern way to qualify solutions with subtle differences between products and vendors.

This initiative and key announcement from the vendor gives a new example of the new battle on the cold storage market segment. It is a very dynamic sector with several companies announcing new capabilities fueled by new end-users demands, projects and wishes. Definitely a segment to monitor carefully.

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