NAB Show: QStar Global ArchiveSpace

QStar Technologies Inc. announces Global ArchiveSpace, a multi-node gateway software solution that cost-effectively supports the massive archive needs of HPC, AI/ML, hyperscalers, M&E and video surveillance environments, looking to simplify, store and protect data for the long-term using the largest tape libraries.

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Global ArchiveSpace creates a multi-node Windows or Linux based archive solution using Global Namespaces for SMB shares, NFS mounts or S3 buckets. Installing on Windows or Linux allows users to take advantage of their preferred security model, using Active Directory or LDAP. Users can choose, based on desired capacity and performance, from 3 to 64 nodes. Global ArchiveSpace is an extension of QStar Archive Manager, so users can upgrade their existing licenses to take advantage of the improved resilience and performance this solution provides.

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“QStar has seen the rise in demand for extremely large tape libraries with tens or hundreds of tape drives over the last few years and has worked diligently to enhance our flagship product, Archive Manager, to support exabytes of data archived to tape for today’s high-performance computing and AI/ML projects, and the growing digital video archive needs of M&E and large-scale video surveillance environments,” said Riccardo Finotti, CEO. “Modern tape is an ideal storage solution for these massive data sets when they are not currently being actively used, due to tapes high performance, high reliability and low cost”.

Global ArchiveSpace is designed to support all tape libraries from all vendors but particularly the largest tape libraries available on the market today, using any version of LTO or proprietary tape drive technology. It is for use with IBM TS4500, Oracle SL8500, Quantum Scalar i6000 and Spectra Logic TFinity Exascale supporting hundreds of tape drives and an unlimited media count allowing hundreds of petabytes or exabytes.

Key features include:

Global namespace facilitates multi-nodes to RW in parallel, so any node can access any media through any tape drive.
Multi-node architecture enables HA.
Multi-write option groups tape drives together for higher performance by allowing a single stream to be written to multiple tape drives based on policies.
Mirroring and replication options protect content by automatically creating copies of data within the library, to another tape library, or to private / public cloud.
Tape library does not need to be partitioned, reducing administration complexity.
Supports hundreds of LTO or proprietary tape drives and unlimited number of media.
Web Services support fastest retrieval of sequentially stored data by presorting in the order they appear on tape media to minimize media loads and eliminate ‘shoe-shining’.

QStar currently showcases its latest innovations along with Hammerspace at NAB Show 2024, Las Vegas, NV, April 14-17, 2024. The firm will also be at ISC High Performance, the HPC event, Hamburg, Germany, May 13-15, 2024.

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Founded in 1987, QStar is a reference in the domain with more than 19,000 installations. Profitable for quite a long time, the pioneer has recognized the need to adapt its architecture to modern needs and challenges.

Introduced as a preview during the last SuperComputing 2023 show on the Hammerspace booth last November, QStar took advantage of the last IT Press Tour last week in Rome, Italy, to officially announced Global ArchiveSpace, its new scalable archiving engine. The team currently promotes at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV.

The idea is to address large environments with tons of files and big files and thus also support large tape libraries with dozens of tape drives and thousands of tapes. The new design offers a cluster mode from 3 to 64 nodes able to offer parallelism data absorption and exchange with multiple or very large tape libraries.

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RAIT is not supported, a file has to belong to one tape even if organization and balancing model are possible such as distribution of directories and associated files to distinct tapes. All nodes see all tape and tape drives and share a global namespace regarding all files managed and controlled by the archiving engine.

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The secondary storage space is exposed with multiple access methods like NFS, SMB or S3, thus the product could be seen as a gateway in front of tape libraries or cloud. It also implements a S3-to-Tape model explaining why it was chosen by Hammerspace but also by data protection players such as Cohesity, HYCU or Rubrik.

We'll see how the product will be received by the market and how the competition in place will react as well.