XenData Supports Sony Optical Disc Archive …

XenData Ltd, a provider of LTO archive solutions to the media and entertainment industry, announces its SX-520 Series of Archive Servers will now support Sony’s Optical Disc Archive products.

The new combined offering gives customers a robust storage alternative that can scale to multiple petabyte of nearline optical storage with a 50 years archival life.

Optical Disc Archive is a new-generation high capacity storage system for video and data archiving. It was developed by Sony to provide stable long-term data retention. At the core  is a cartridge housing 12 optical discs and a specialized drive unit. Each cartridge has a native capacity up to 1.5TB and is designed for long term archiving. The Sony’s library range starts with a rackmount 30-cartridge unit which provides up to 45TB of near-line optical capacity. It may be scaled by adding expansion units, taking the capacity of a single library up to over 800TB.

SX-520 Series Archive Servers now provide greater flexibility by managing LTO or optical disc robotic libraries or both simultaneously. An SX-520 Server includes up to 90TB of RAID which acts as a performance buffer. This means that the SX-520 and Optical Disc Archive combination has the archive speed of RAID and the long term robustness of optical disc technology. A single SX-520 Server can manage multiple libraries providing scaling to multiple petabyte.

“We expect the XenData-Sony archive solution to be attractive, as it blends performance and the robustness offered by Optical Disc Archive cartridges,” said Phil Storey, XenData CEO. “By collaborating with Sony, we are giving our customers another way to store content while still providing the compatibility, reliability, and affordability they expect with XenData.”

Other benefits include:

• Native Compatibility with Most Applications: The XenData-Sony system has a file / folder interface which is compatible with a wide range of applications used in the media industry including most media asset management systems.
• Optimized for Networks: The solution has a NAS architecture which makes it easy to deploy. It supports CIFS/SMB and FTP network protocols over 1GbE or 10GbE.
• Natively Supports Windows, Mac and FTP Clients: Windows, Apple OS X and FTP clients are supported without need to install any software on the client computer.
• Fast Archiving: Files are written at RAID speed and may be concurrently archived to multiple optical disc archive drives.
• Fast Restores: The system restores a queue of files in short time. The restore requests are processed in an order that minimizes unnecessary optical disc swapping within the optical disc archive cartridge.
• Industry Standard File Security: The archive server integrates with the Windows security model based on Active Directory with no need to configure proprietary user access.
• Manages Unlimited Externalized Cartridges: The system manages any number of externalized cartridges, providing an unlimited total capacity.

The SX-520 Servers which supports Sony’s Optical Disc Archive will be available by the end of the year.