Spectra Logic Attacks Big Data With ‘Deep Storage’

This week, storage-solutions developer Spectra Logic shifted gears to introduce a new concept to the asset-management community: “deep storage.”

spectraSpectra outlines a vision for a low-cost, massively scalable deep-storage tier that can store data virtually forever. As part of the announcement this week, the company unveiled the industry’s first native RESTful interface to robotic tape storage systems, Deep Simple Storage Service (DS3), as well as its first product to support this interface, BlackPearl.

“What deep storage is a new tier of storage that we are developing that has been driven by the request of some of our really big customers,” said Molly Rector, EVP, product management and worldwide marketing, at Spectra Logic, during a conference-call presentation of the company’s strategy on Thursday. “Deep storage is extremely low-cost, power-efficient storage that has high density and [is] designed for data that doesn’t need immediate access.”

By leveraging RESTful protocols, the DS3 interface enables modern architecture frameworks to easily and efficiently communicate with massively scalable deep-storage technologies. The DS3 interface allows data-intensive organizations to use the highest-density, most cost-efficient storage for long-term data retention and accessibility.

“Our vision and roadmap for delivering deep-storage solutions is designed to meet the new, evolving storage requirements of modern data centers and use cases,” said Nathan Thompson, founder/CEO, Spectra Logic, in a company release. “There is a transformation occurring in how organizations amass, use, and store long-term data that necessitates a new tier of storage — deep storage — that delivers extreme low cost, power efficiency, high density, and massive scalability. This tier must be designed to manage large, bulk quantities of data for extended and possibly indefinite periods of time while meeting the needs of newer data-center architectures that leverage storage in the form of data objects and utilize RESTful interfaces.”

BlackPearl is the first product to support the new DS3 interface, Spectra Logic's new approach to "deep storage."

BlackPearl is the first product to support the DS3 interface, Spectra Logic’s new approach to deep storage.

On Thursday, Spectra announced the BlackPearl Deep Storage Appliance, which enables a new tier of storage to manage massive amounts of data indefinitely at a low cost.

Spectra Logic also announced multiple ways data can move into a BlackPearl deep-storage tier: a software client written specifically for Hadoop and big-data environments, the Spectra Logic Developer Program for end users and ISVs that want to create their own clients, and the ability to export from nTier Verde NAS disk directly to deep storage in the future.

The BlackPearl Deep Storage Appliance provides intelligent data management and delivers low cost, ease of use, and scalability advantages. It enables data-intensive, long-term–storage users — including those in Web 2.0, cloud services, big data, media and entertainment, oil and gas exploration, life sciences, federal and state government, social media, and finance, among others — to save time and money by incorporating low-cost, high-density, scalable tape-library–based deep storage into their fast-growth data environments.

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