Spectra Logic Expands Support of TS1140 Tape Drive Technology with T-Series Tape Libraries and BlackPearl

Spectra Logic announced the expanded availability of drives based on the design of the IBM TS1140 Tape Drive within its T-Series tape library family.

In addition to its enterprise class T-Finity, Spectra will now offer TS1140-based drives with its T950 enterprise tape library and its T-Series T380 mid-range tape library. Spectra’s BlackPearl Deep Storage Appliance also supports the TS1140 tape drive technology. The high capacity TS1140 tape drive technology provides organizations of all sizes the ability to leverage higher speed tape drive throughput, utilize a higher capacity tape media cartridge, and reuse their media when migrating to future drive generations, while managing burgeoning data growth and data center space constraints.

“As the only vendor to offer TS1140 technology with a mid-range tape library, Spectra is enabling a broader set of companies to benefit from the exceptional storage density, energy efficiency, and high performance of Enterprise tape drive technology,” said Molly Rector, executive vice president product management and worldwide marketing, Spectra Logic. “Today’s announcement also expands our deep storage offering as the BlackPearl Deep Storage Appliance, which enables tape-based object storage, supports the TS1140 and the high value, cost-effective IBM LTO tape drives equally well.  Our customers of all sizes like the choice of the open standard LTO technology and the high capacity TS1140 technology for their long-term data storage.”

Spectra Logic is currently the only tape library vendor offering the TS1140 technology in a mid-range library and is the only tape library vendor aside from IBM offering them with their highest capacity tape libraries. The TS1140 provides 4.0 TB native capacity (12.0 TB 3:1 compression) per cartridge and native sustained data transfer rates of 250 MB/s native (650 MB/s compressed). The TS1140 can support connectivity to high speed 8 Gb fibre channel environments.

“Spectra Logic’s TS1140 technology high-capacity tape drives in a mid-range tape library address a growing demand from small and mid-sized organizations that use high performance computing,” said Steve Conway,  IDC research vice president, high performance computing. “This part of the market is expanding, especially the oil and gas, life sciences, financial services, and data analytics segments. Flexible tape storage is an important requirement for these organizations.”

Spectra Logic Receives Honors in HPCwire Readers’ and Editor’s Choice Awards
Spectra Logic received top honors in the 2013 HPCwire Readers’ and Editor’s Choice Awards. HPCwire announced the winners at the start of the Opening Reception at the 2013 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC13), in Denver, Colorado. A complete list of award winners is available on the HPCwire.com website.

Spectra Logic’s BlackPearl Deep Storage Appliance received the Editor’s Choice Award and was recognized as one of the Top 5 New Products or Technologies.

“Spectra Logic is gratified that our BlackPearl Deep Storage Appliance has been recognized as a Top New Product by HPCwire and its editors,” said Rector, Spectra Logic’s executive vice president of product management and worldwide marketing. “BlackPearl and our newly launched DS3 interface to our tape libraries enable long term storage users with very large data sets, including those in HPC markets such as oil and gas exploration, life sciences, and government and universities, among others, to save time and money by incorporating low cost, high density, scalable deep storage for just pennies per gigabyte into their fast-growth data environments.”