StorCycle by Spectra Logic

Spectra Logic Corp. introduced StorCycle, a new storage management software solution designed for data-driven organizations that need a modern storage lifecycle management workflow.

It allows organizations to create a new Perpetual Tier of storage, reducing the overall cost of storing data by up to 70%, while giving users full access to their data. It can be implemented as standalone software using public cloud storage or existing NAS, or combined with Spectra storage hardware to create a complete storage solution.

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Most organizations have large amounts of data that are growing and are critical to their businesses. Typically, most of this data is stored on an expensive primary tier of storage. However, up to 80% of this data is inactive, costing both space and money, and should be moved to more cost-effective storage. Spectra’s StorCycle software does that.

“The well-proven 2-tier paradigm for managing, manipulating and preserving data is upon us and propagating to markets beyond high performance computing,” said Nathan Thompson, CEO. “IT professionals know they can’t keep adding costly flash and disk drives to their storage architectures when capacities are maxed out. The storage industry hasn’t delivered the right tools that can easily and optimally manage data. StorCycle’s unique ability to scan and migrate inactive and project data from a costly primary tier of storage to a Perpetual Tier, consisting of less expensive storage targets, benefits data creators, IT professionals and organizations at large.”

StorCycle software was developed to address the problem of managing and storing large data sets. It automatically scans primary storage data for inactive files and migrates them to a secure Perpetual Tier, which can include any combination of cloud storage, object storage disk, NAS and tape, ensuring the data is protected, while making it easily available to end users. A smaller primary storage tier shrinks backup and recovery windows, reduces costs and increases overall performance.

With StorCycle’s Project Archive feature, users can tag and move entire project data sets to a Perpetual Storage tier. This allows the project to be accessed for further analysis, categorization, and comparison, all while being securely preserved for as long as needed.

This makes StorCycle for preserving data in fields such as computational and seismic research, oil and gas studies, semiconductor designs, genomics, M&E, weather forecasting, autonomous vehicle research, and other fields where large amounts of machine-generated data are created.

“While the concept of data lifecycle management has been around for years, StorCycle’s ability to identify infrequently accessed files or entire projects and seamlessly move them from the primary tier to the Perpetual Tier, makes StorCycle very relevant for today’s architectures that are overburdened with this data still residing on the most expensive tier of storage,” said Mark Peters, principal analyst and practice director, Enterprise Strategy Group. “The fact that StorCycle leaves a user’s access to primary storage unchanged so they can retrieve their data in the same location as before, even though it has moved, is a very valuable feature.“

StorCycle Software is Built on Four Tenets:
• Identify inactive files on primary tier storage
• Migrate and store inactive data to one or more Perpetual Tier storage targets (cloud, disk and/or tape)
• Protect files so they remain safe on the Perpetual Tier for long-term storage
• Access and Retrieve migrated files from the Perpetual Tier

About StorCycle
With a simple software installation, it is available to automatically identify and migrate data based on age and size. Its users can also manually choose project-based directories to archive. By removing inactive data from the primary tier of storage and moving it to the more economical Perpetual Tier, administrators can prevent their primary storage from filling up, reducing the need to add additional primary storage.

With the use of HTML Links or Symbolic Links, and a web-based search, data in the Perpetual Tier is accessible by users in a semi-transparent or transparent manner. StorCycle stores data in open formats, such as CIFS or NFS file systems, LTFS tape or native cloud formats, so that data is always accessible. Data can also be migrated to the cloud for sharing and collaboration and to enable cloud workflows. For best practices in storage, it can also automatically make additional copies of data for DR purposes, including on tape for physically separated air-gapped copies that protect data from ransomware and other types of malware.