Better Reliability through Lifecycle Management
To help ensure your library is operating 24×7, the Spectra T950 library offers a toolset to ensure the continuous operation of your library, drives and tape media.
Media Lifecycle Management (MLM) removes the question of media reliability and data integrity, ensuring the safety of your data by providing continuous assessments on more than 40 different metrics throughout the life of each tape.
MLM Data Stored in Tape Memory
| Data Tracked by MLM | Benefit |
| Media born-on date | Notifies you when to discontinue using old tapes for critical information. |
| Read and write error rates | Detects degraded media prior to data loss. |
| Last four tape drives that wrote to or read the tape | Isolates drive from tape problems. |
| Encryption moniker, written to tapes storing encrypted data | Identifies, quickly and securely, the keys to use to decrypt and restore data. |
| Last read/write date | Shows the age of the data on the cartridge. |
| Remaining capacity on the tape | Displays the tape’s available storage. |
| The name of the library and partition in which the tape is used | Ties off-site media to host and application. |
| Encryption flag | Indicates whether tape is encrypted and therefore safe to transport. |
| Number of uses (for cleaning tapes) | Prevents overuse of cleaning tapes. |
| Media quality | Ensures your library has enough healthy media to ensure safe data storage. |
Data Integrity
Drive Lifecycle Management (DLM) helps you monitor drives by integrating tape drive analysis, diagnostics and reporting within the library’s easy-to-manage, color-coded icons that help you quickly identify the health status of a drive. Library Lifecycle Management (LLM) manages the health of your library’s critical components. By delivering utilization metrics relative to the expected useful life of library robotics, filters and other critical components; you are able to service your library before issues occur.
Data Integrity Verification
To give you data integrity verification, Spectra offers a sophisticated suite of standard features that allow you to actively check data already written to tape.
PreScan checks each imported tape and verifies that the tape can be written to, scanning the tape for potential issues including broken or dislodged leader and write-protected status.
QuickScan scans a tape uni-directionally by reading the length of one wrap of the tape to provide a rapid indicator of integrity of data written.
FullScan confirms that there are no media errors on the tape by reading the entire length of the tape up to the end of the recorded data. To ensure that the data is valid, you can set triggers to check the health of tapes over an interval of time or verify a specific tape’s data integrity on request. This process allows for checks of data integrity.
Auto Drive Cleaning
The Spectra T950 improves reliability by automating the tracking and cleaning of drives. Auto Drive Clean provides library-based cleaning of drives without user intervention. Automated drive cleaning results in fewer failed tape read/write operations and is the recommended method for cleaning drives. The Spectra T950 Auto Drive Clean feature uses a dedicated cleaning partition for storing cleaning cartridges. The cleaning partition can be shared by multiple storage partitions and is used by the library to automatically clean drives whenever necessary. The Spectra T950 library will send an email to users if a drive hasn’t been cleaned recently. This will help to prolong the life of the drive, by ensuring all drives are being cleaned on a regular basis.
Spectra Power Distribution Unit
Spectra PDU allows one power drop for the whole library, acting like a giant power strip for use with 3-phase power systems and allowing each frame to plug into the PDU rather than requiring a separate power drop. The PDU also features an optional web-enabled power meter that consolidates cords for a clean look.
Spectra Dual AC
The Dual AC 2 power unit enables data centers that wish to provide AC power redundancy to their TFinity ExaScale library to do so using out of phase power. This enhancement provides installation flexibility, reduces installation costs, speeds up installation time, and provides power redundancy.
Spectra SKLM Encryption
For organizations with more complex and robust requirements, Spectra SKLM Encryption Key Management is available for an extra charge as a standalone, centralized key manager that is time tested and proven across enterprise-level customers requiring the highest standard of encryption security. With optional Spectra SKLM encryption you can deploy a clean, simple key management solution that meets the complex requirements your organization faces. Spectra SKLM is a robust encryption key manager that delivers a unified key management strategy to streamline your encryption deployment.
- Delivers a unified key management strategy to streamline encryption implementation
- Uses the AES-256 bit encryption algorithm
- Standalone server
- Secure Initialization mode
- Key and Device Grouping
- Configuration, policies and key store backup
- Certificates of authority
- Centrally manage encryption keys across multiple libraries and data center locations
- Enable strong authentication and strong security
- Leverage flexible implementation options to meet your unique requirements
- Enable secure, third-party data exchange
- Simplify configuration and management tasks for keys and certificates of authority
- Facilitate security audits and track key lifecycle from creation to destruction
Certified Media
Tape is the most cost-effective storage media available. Our commitment to you is delivering tape without pain through Spectra® Certified Media. From manufacturer selection to testing and customer shipment, every step of the Spectra Certified Media process is designed to ensure you have the most reliable and automated tape storage available. No other supplier places as much emphasis on reliability, continual enhancements, and features that simplify all aspects of the media management process.
LTO Technology
LTO Tape Technology is an open format tape technology that is the low-cost, high-performance storage standard. LTO-9 is the current generation with the ability to store 18TB native (45TB compressed) on a single tape cartridge, and the LTO roadmap extends to generation 12 and beyond.IBM TS1160 Technology
TS1160 Tape Technology offers the most reliable tape technology ever developed. Designed to provide enterprise-class reliability with 24 x 7 usage, the TS1160 tape drives provide 100 times more data integrity than an LTO tape drive. In addition to robust reliability and data integrity, the TS1160 Technology provides the highest capacity per tape and the fastest native data transfer rate of any tape technology. TS1160 reaches 20TB native capacity and store 50TB per tape with compression.
Roving TeraPack Architecture
The Spectra T950 brings an elegant solution to the challenge of managing large quantities of tapes. That solution is the Spectra TeraPack. Each sleek case holds up to 10 LTO tapes or nine TS11XX tapes. Each TeraPack container provides a more efficient way to import tape media into the library and offers a clean, secure and stackable case for staging and storing media outside of the library. Using TeraPack containers reduces handling time by 90%. The TeraPack architecture reduces floor space requirements by as much as 80 percent compared to competing libraries. When the TeraPack is fully operational within the library, this “Roving TeraPack” reduces cycle and tape mount time, further enhancing library efficiency
Bulk Load/Unload
The Spectra T950 also offers a unique bulk load/unload system that provides superior import and export performance. An optional feature at the left end of a multi-frame library, this unit allows for the import or export of 14 TeraPacks within minutes.
Spectra Global Spare Drive
The global spare drive, unique to Spectra Logic tape libraries, keeps storage operations running even if a drive fails and no one is there to replace it. To use the global spare drive option, install a spare drive in the library and configure the spare so that it is associated with some or all of the library partitions. If a drive in a designated partition fails, you can immediately switch to the global spare, so operations continue unimpeded.
