Lawrence Livermore Computing Debuts New Spectra Tape Library for Preserving Invaluable Data

Spectra Logic is a leader in delivering innovative and economical data storage and data management solutions for the modern data center. The company’s technology portfolio meets the needs of customers in government, scientific research, high performance computing, media and entertainment and cloud environments. Among its offerings is the Spectra® TFinity® ExaScale Tape Library, the largest single data storage machine in the world. The TFinity will store and allow access to more than two exabytes (2,000 petabytes) of data when fully populated with IBM® TS1160 tape drives and media. With unsurpassed storage density packaged in the smallest footprint of any enterprise library in the market, the TFinity has become a staple at many of the world’s most recognized supercomputing and data-driven research institutions – one of which is the world-famous Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

Lawrence Livermore is now home to the world’s largest Spectra TFinity system. LLNL’s high-performance computing users produce massive quantities of data that must be kept indefinitely. The Spectra libraries take up significantly less floor space than their previous solution and allows them to grow the system by simply adding more frames. Another unique feature of the library is its ability to allow customers to showcase custom graphic skins or panels that often convey dramatic images of their organizations and their missions.

This physically denser storage solution is much better for LC,” says Todd Heer, LLNL computer scientist and Data Storage Group deployment team leader. “The Spectra libraries take up significantly less floor space than our previous libraries, which allows us to be more efficient and agile as the big computers come and go.”

Read more on LLNL blog

Get the full story on how the Spectra TFinity ExaScale Tape Library upgraded the LLNL data archives to position the lab for the exascale era in their blog here.