The new year is a time of personal renewal that often brings to light wishes for the future, new perspectives, and resolutions for change. Business operations and IT architectures can benefit from this same spirit. When it comes to data management and storage, a new year is ripe for reviewing past performance and renewing goals and objectives. Optimizing the use of data management software and data storage hardware are two components crucial to extracting the most value from your data in 2023.
Leveraging data where it meets performance goals at the optimal cost
Centralizing data management with distributed multi-cloud software like Spectra Vail® can help organizations extract more value from their data. Vail unlocks access to cloud services by combining cloud storage and on-premises infrastructure into a single name space to allow modern applications to take advantage of cloud services, no matter where the data resides. By automating data placement across multiple clouds and sites, Spectra Vail can ensure that data resides in the location where it brings the most value and at optimal cost. Customer-defined policies automate the placement of data while assigning data retention rules that best meet corporate service levels.
The software has been recently recognized by a number of industry awards, including being shortlisted for Best Cloud Data Management for the 2022-2023 Cloud Awards, winning the 2022 Digital Media World Awards and the IABM BaM Awards for the Storage and Store categories respectively, and being named Best of Show at IBC 2022 by TVB Europe. In total, Vail has earned eight awards since its introduction.
Learn more about Spectra Vail here.
Seamless data migration to a modern platform
Often data lasts longer than the media it’s written on. That means that most companies managing data will have to contend with moving their information from the original technology that it was stored on to a newer technology. Migration frequently includes moving from older to newer media as well as moving data from one asset management system to another (off proprietary systems), or moving from tape to disk and/or cloud. Spectra’s BlackPearl® platform provides the perfect tools to automate the migration process whether on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid model.
BlackPearl’s migration capabilities allow users to transparently, seamlessly and automatically migrate data into a modern, object-based hybrid storage platform with the push of a button. By leveraging Spectra’s RioBroker, a tightly integrated software that acts as a data mover to speed file transfers, the BlackPearl platform can automatically migrate data in the background, allowing users to continue to store and recall files without disrupting workflows. The solution offers many tools to help ease and automate migration non-intrusively, while remaining in production. Capabilities include: automated, intelligent and transparent transfer of proprietary data; size and performance scalability to meet customer timelines; continuous access to legacy, migrated and new data; direct import of LTFS tape with no data migration, and more.
Learn more about the BlackPearl platform here.
Refreshing tape technology while protecting existing investments
As discussed, even long-lasting media like tape requires organizations to migrate data over the years as new technology is made available that enables faster performance and higher capacities. Migration offers the opportunity to re-evaluate size needs in a tape library, assure the new system is “migration friendly” for future migrations, and determine whether the solutions partner you selected still aligns with the business goals, ethics and direction of your own organization. Significant migrations from an existing technology require a clear plan and hands-on support from the new manufacturer you’ve selected to replace the older technology. Spectra offers unique benefits for tape users looking to take advantage of the latest in tape drives and media or migrate their data into a modern tape library designed for reliability, density, speed and ransomware resiliency.
- For organizations using LTO tape technology: Spectra MigrationPass is a service unique in allowing LTO drives to be moved from a non-Spectra library into the Spectra Stack Tape Library. The ability to repurpose your existing tape drives offers tremendous investment protection for users, and greater versatility and migration benefits. Click here to download a white paper to learn about migrating existing LTO tapes and drives to Spectra’s Stack Tape Library.
- For organizations looking to divest from Oracle tape systems: The only task more daunting than a full or even partial migration of any large data repository, and its associated library systems, is the task of maintaining a system which is coming to the end of its development life. As the associated costs for parts and service increase, and the quality of support decreases, it’s difficult to justify isolating data management from the cost savings and technological improvements of modern tape automation. Click here to download a white paper on migrating off Oracle tape libraries.
Finally, when it comes to flexibility in meeting tape storage requirements, Spectra takes the lead as the only manufacturer of tape libraries capable of utilizing all three major tape technologies available today: LTO, IBM® TS11X0 enterprise tape technology and Oracle® T10000x enterprise tape technology, enabling all three in the same library. This exclusive tri-media configuration, offered in the Spectra TFinity ExaScale Tape Library, eliminates vendor lock-in and enables organizations to migrate or integrate tape technologies that offer the lowest cost per gigabyte.
