45PB Library From Spectra Logic

Spectra Logic Corp. announced an advanced enterprise tape library that meets demanding archive and backup requirements while saving customers up to 30 percent on initial capital investments and 15 to 20 percent on annual recurring operational expenses.  

The Spectra T-Finity library offers multiple, redundant robots, scaling to more than 45 petabytes in a single library and to more than 180 petabytes in a single, unified library complex.(1) The T-Finity is targeted for use in data-intensive environments such as large enterprise IT, federal, high performance computing (HPC) and media/entertainment.  

"With escalating data volumes and retention requirements, organizations need large archive and backup solutions that ensure long-term data access. The Spectra T-Finity provides superior capacity and stored data access, and its modern design resets expectations on the economic savings achievable with tape storage solutions," said Nathan Thompson, Spectra Logic’s CEO and founder. "The T-Finity library enables customers to consolidate multiple legacy libraries, reduce initial capital investments, control ongoing operational expense, and ensure investment protection with scalability to meet long-term data growth requirements."

The Spectra T-Finity provides high availability for 24x7x365 operations – the highest storage density available on the market – and high-speed performance to handle sustained high transaction volumes. These capabilities meet the needs of demanding backup environments, and are key for the growing number of organisations archiving high volume, media-rich data such as research, bio-tech, oil and gas, seismic imaging, surveillance video, media and entertainment, video content and financial applications. And with support for industry-leading LTO open tape technology and IBM System Storage(tm) TS1130 tape drives, the Spectra T-Finity enables customers to select their preferred enterprise tape option.  

"Sites with large data sets and data-intensive environments require intelligent, high¬-performance and high-capacity backup and archive storage solutions," said Steve Conway, IDC’s research vice president of technical computing, and HPC User Forum steering committee member. "Spectra Logic’s new T-Finity tape library addresses the demanding storage and productivity requirements of HPC and enterprise markets. It supplies multiple redundant components and unique features, while requiring only a single management interface, thus raising the bar on management simplicity within data-intensive environments."

Spectra T-Finity delivers enterprise tape library advancements based on a modern design that saves cost while increasing confidence in data integrity and availability on tape:

• Highest Density: At 72 terabytes per square foot, the T-Finity provides up to 70 percent higher density than competitive offerings.(2) 
• Most Scalable: Almost 200 percent more capacity and slots in a single library than leading competitors,(3) the T-Finity scales to more than 30,000 slots in a single library and 120,000 slots in a single library complex. It scales capacity by adding frames non-disruptively, requiring no library downtime.  
• High Availability Hardware: Delivers up to four nines (99.99%) availability through dual robotics, redundant control and communication paths, and multiple redundant components that increase uptime and support high exchange rate workloads.  
• Confidence in Data Availability: Spectra’s Lifecycle Management includes proactive library, tape drive and media lifecycle management and reporting to ensure high availability and data integrity. Additionally, Spectra’s ScanTape functionality verifies the health of tapes before writing data to them, and then verifies the data was successfully written to the tape. No other library on the market offers this complete environmental and data health intelligence.
• Most Power Efficient: Extremely efficient, the T-Finity tape library uses half or less of the power per unit of data stored as competitive offerings,(4) minimizing power and cooling costs.
• Integrated Data Encryption and Key Management: Spectra’s data encryption enables organisations to secure data and reduce the cost of regulatory compliance.     
• Unified Management: As the only enterprise-class library with a single management interface, the T-Finity uses Spectra’s BlueScale software to simplify administration, configuration, hot upgrades, security and local and remote reporting.

The Spectra T-Finity’s many ‘built-in’ features include:

• integrated data encryption;
• library virtualization and partitioning; and
• hardware, media and library management software – all included at no additional cost. 

Competitive offerings charge extra for these capabilities and require separate servers – increasing hardware, space, power, cooling, support contract and personnel management costs.

T-Finity is compatible with all major archive and backup software applications including but not limited to: BakBone NetVault, CA ArcServe, and BrightStor, CommVault Sympana, Filetek StorHouse, FrontPorch DIVArchive, IBM HPSS and TSM, Legato DiskExtender and Networker, MassTech MassStore, QStar, Quantum StorNext, SGI DMF, SGL FlashNet, Symantec Backup Exec and NetBackup, Syncsort Backup Express and XenData.  

The Spectra T-Finity will be on display at Super Computing 2009 (SC09) at the Portland Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, November 16-19.  

Pricing and availability
The Spectra T-Finity tape library is currently in beta and will be available in limited quantities starting in December 2009. List pricing for the Spectra T-Finity, including two LTO4 fibre channel drives, two robots, encryption, Spectra library lifecycle management and BlueScale management software, begins at $218,500.

Notes:                                                                 
(1) Based on LTO-5 native capacity
(2) The T-Finity library delivers 72 TB/sq ft, and is 40 to 70 percent more dense than competing libraries, which store 40 to 42 TB/sq ft.
(3) A single T-Finity library unit scales to more than 30,000 slots, more than twice the size of the next largest library-the Sun/STK SL8500-at 10,088 slots in a single library.  
(4) The typical power usage of the T-Finity is 873 watts or 0.35 watts/TB, at least half that of competing libraries, which utilize 1,273 to 1,798 watts; or, 0.81 to 2 watts/TB. Assumes maximum slot configurations with twelve drives.