Blog

Archive Massive Amounts of Data in This Era of Object Storage

Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Kevin Benitez

Data is quickly becoming a critical asset to more and more companies, and now those companies are looking for ways to store massive amounts of data for long periods of time at a low cost for digital preservation or archiving.

Today, large amounts of archived data are being stored in object storage at an ever-increasing rate, both on-premise and in remote data centers such as the cloud.  Object storage has been particularly attractive for storing large amounts of digital information because of its flat architecture and easy access to metadata that allows for easy indexing, finding, and using of digital content. Additionally, object stores can scale to hundreds of petabytes in a single namespace without any performance degradation.

With those needs in mind, Fujifilm has developed the FUJIFILM Object Archive, which allows object storage to be written and read to and from data tape instead of mainstream HDDs, thereby significantly reducing costs. FUJIFILM Object Archive uses OTFormat to leverage object storage and modern tape. The software uses an industry-standard S3-compatible API so that on-premises object storage can be used at a lower cost while maintaining the same operability as cloud storage.

Read more

Read More

Whiteboard Video: Using Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity

Reading Time: < 1 minute

April 29, 2020

Ransomware continues to threaten the security of enterprise IT infrastructures. In this Fujifilm Summit video, storage analyst George Crump talks to IBM’s Chris Bontempo about how artificial intelligence and machine learning are helping improve cybersecurity by identifying and stopping potential threats.

Watch the video here:

Read More

Whiteboard Video: Data – Use It or Lose It

Reading Time: < 1 minute

April 15, 2020

According to IDC, data growth will reach 175 Zettabytes by 2025. Among that data, approximately 7.5 ZB will be archived or stored.

In this Fujifilm Summit video, storage analyst George Crump talks to IBM’s Shawn Brume about the importance of getting the right data and making sure it is being stored in the right way.

Watch the video here.

 

Read More

LTO-8 Delivers!

Reading Time: 2 minutes

By Rich Gadomski

March 19, 2020

As LTO-8 drives and media are increasingly deployed and widely available, the value proposition of LTO-8 is being confirmed by customers and it’s a pretty impressive story.

In the case of a major high-performance computing (HPC) customer who had been using LTO-6 previously for their archive, the jump to LTO-8 has done wonders for their available capacity. With approximately 7,000 slots in their library, fully loaded with LTO-6 media at 2.5TB each yielded a total native storage capacity of 17.5 PB. Migrating to LTO-8 drives and eventually converting those slots to LTO-8 media at 12.0 TB gives them up to a massive 84 PBs, almost a 5X increase. That’s lots of room to scale as needed!

Performance also gets a big boost as LTO-6 drives are rated at 160 MB per second transfer rate compared to LTO-8 drives at 360 MB per second. This means fewer drives are required to meet the same performance objectives. As a result, TCO also gets a major boost as fewer drives, fewer pieces of media and no additional floor space or library frames are required to manage the same amount of data.

Read more

Read More

Whiteboard Video: The Advantages of Migrating Tape Technologies

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Migrating from one generation to another generation of tape technology may seem like a difficult task. In practice, though, tape migration is relatively straightforward and provides tremendous ROI thanks to each generation’s increase in performance and capacity.

In this video, George Crump of Storage Switzerland talks to Alan Hall of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about the advantages of migrating to tape.

Read More

Tape Storage Council: Tape Takes Aim on Unprecedented Data Growth

Reading Time: < 1 minute
The Tape Storage Council has released its State of the Tape Industry report, which highlights the current trends, use cases, and technology innovations occurring within the tape storage industry.
With its unique benefits, tape has the greatest potential to address today’s soaring capacity demands. The role tape serves in modern data centers is quickly expanding into new markets as compelling technological advancements have made tape the most economical, highest capacity, and the most reliable and secure storage medium available.

Highlights of the report include:

  • New enterprise tape drive
  • Tape Roadmaps – LTO roadmap extended to Generation 12
  • Tape TCO calculators
  • Active Archives – addressing complexity with an intelligent data management layer
  • Growing tape capacities and data rates
  • RAIT improvements to throughput; Fault tolerance
  • RAO and TAOS – improving tape file access times
  • Key applications and demand drivers
  • Tape use cases and compelling value proposition
To access the full report, click here.
Read More

Part 2: Video Series on Unstructured Data

Reading Time: < 1 minute
In this video Brendan Sullivan, Fred Moore and Chris Dale discuss the challenges of managing unstructured data in today’s off-site storage vaults. This includes proposed and developing solutions that have been created to finally resolve the issues of remediation of data from un-cataloged environments, and how modern tape technologies can play a part in housing legacy data.
Watch the full video here.
Read More

Part 1: Video Series on Unstructured Data

Reading Time: < 1 minute
In this video Brendan Sullivan, Fred Moore and Chris Dale discuss the IT environments that have existed over the past 30 years that have resulted in the mountains of unstructured data being backed up or archived on a plethora of different tape and data formats, and the reasons why the vaulting strategies created at the time do not serve the legacy data issues of today.

Watch the full video here.
Read More

Busting Myths and Taking Names: Fujifilm, Spectra Logic and Iron Mountain Kick Off Series on Reintroducing Tape to the Modern Data Center

Reading Time: < 1 minute
Modern tape libraries are part of an overall data management lifecycle strategy that offer many benefits including lower cost, energy savings, increased security and long-term shelf life.
We’re excited to partner with Spectra Logic and Iron Mountain on this new Storage Switzerland eBook: Reintroducing Tape to the Modern Data Center. The first chapter debunks some of the common myths of tape storage around reliability, access and operations. Read more about it here.
Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we reveal the next four chapters covering topics such as disaster recovery and backup, performance, cost, and offsite storage.
Interested in learning more on this topic? Register for our webinar 5 Reasons Modern Data Centers Need Tape on September 26th at 11:00 am EDT.
Read More

When it Comes to Data Storage Spending, Knowing Your Total Cost of Ownership is Key

Reading Time: < 1 minute
Ever wonder if you are getting the best deal on your data storage? Understanding the total cost of ownership (TCO) is critically important to any data storage purchase decision.
Today we introduced our new TCO Calculator, an updated version of our online tool that helps IT professionals assess and compare TCO for automated tape storage, disk-based storage, and cloud-based archive storage. The new TCO Calculator raises the maximum user storage baseline from 10PB to 100PB, integrating the IBM TS4500 enterprise library using LTO-8 drives and media for initial capacities over 10PB. Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive and bulk retrieval service is now also included in cloud storage cost comparisons.
After entering data into the TCO Calculator, users can download a customizable results report which includes an executive summary, key cost assumptions, and TCO by cost category and type (e.g., energy costs, offsite costs, service fees, labor, bandwidth, etc.).
Find out how you can start saving on your data storage costs now. Access the free TCO Calculator here.
Read More

LET’S DISCUSS YOUR NEEDS

We can help you reduce cost, decrease vendor lock-in, and increase productivity of storage staff while ensuring accessibility and longevity of data.

Contact Us >