 "IBM To Help Protect And Retain "Big Data"")
IBM has announced new tape storage and enhanced archiving, deduplication offerings designed to help clients efficiently store and extract intelligence from massive amounts of data.
IBM continues to invest in the development of tape storage as an inexpensive, efficient way to store massive volumes of data. IBM is detailing seven significant improvements to its portfolio of tape and other storage archiving products, including the industry’s first tape library system to provide over 2.7 exabytes of automated, low cost storage (an exabyte is 1 followed by 18 zeroes). IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library is enabled by a new, IBM-developed shuttle technology- a mechanical attachment that connects up to 15 tape libraries to create a single, high capacity library complex at a lower cost.
IBM has announced the IBM System Storage TS1140 Tape Drive, which holds 2 million times more data than IBM’s first tape drive and employs fewer and more efficient components developed with IBM Research.
IBM has also announced file system access to select IBM tape libraries with the IBM Linear Tape File System Library Edition (LTFS LE), invented by IBM Research to provide a simple, cost efficient way to access and manage massive archives of data and digital assets. LTFS clients can now more efficiently index, search, retrieve and share data stored on Generation 5 LTO tape, an open tape storage format.
IBM has also announced enhancements to SONAS, which scales to over 14 petabytes of clustered storage and is based on technology invented by IBM Research. SONAS now offers double the throughput of its predecessor and faster response times. The technology, which will provide support for commonly used anti-virus applications, is designed to offer protection from viruses and malware threats with the ability to scan archived data and isolate or delete compromised files. In addition, SONAS will now support an open standard protocol called NDMP, enabling clients to backup and protect large amounts of data in SONAS using ISV applications that support NDMP.
IBM is also improving the IBM Information Archive for Email, Files and eDiscovery, a pre-installed, pre-configured archiving solution. With integrated hardware, software and services, the technology can reduce the cost of installing and implementing a storage archive by up to 70% compared to starting with piece parts and can be deployed in a few days, according to IBM’s internal measurements.
Finally, IBM has announced new or enhanced tape virtualisation offerings for mainframe or open storage environments to provide clients improved access to and protection for their data in the virtualised datacentre. These include the addition of a many-to-many replication feature to IBM System Storage TS7650 ProtecTIER Deduplication Solutions that will allow enterprises with multiple data centers to automatically replicate backup data between locations so multiple copies of critical data can be stored and quickly restored if needed. By stripping out duplicate data before it’s replicated, ProtecTIER customers have experienced a reduction in bandwidth needed to send the data of up to 95% or more, reducing the amount of storage needed to archive and protect data. It also includes enhancements to the TS7700 Virtual Tape Library family include doubling the number of virtual tape cartridges it contains to 2 million and leveraging IBM POWER7 technology to significantly improve performance.
“As part of its $6 billion annual investment in R&D, IBM continues to develop innovative storage technologies for smarter computing” said Brian Truskowski, General Manager, IBM System Storage and Networking. “The data protection and retention solutions IBM is announcing today provide clients with a comprehensive approach to protecting and accessing their most valuable asset – their data”