Quantum Scalar i6H Hyperscale Archive Availability of Tape Storage System

Helping hyperscalers and cloud service providers to build and manage exabyte-scale cloud infrastructure

Quantum Corporation announced the availability of a tape storage system designed for hyperscale archive environments, the Scalar i6H.

The Scalar i6H is a modular tape storage system that was designed in collaboration with large hyperscalers and is being made available to web scale companies and enterprises looking to build private clouds. It offers storage density and sets a standard for tape ease-of-use. It can be shipped assembled in a rack, everything is customer-serviceable and replaceable, and technicians with no tape expertise can manage many systems at large scale. In addition, it offers anti-ransomware features like Scalar Ransom Block for building cyber-resilient private clouds. It is an innovation that advances the company’s competitive position in building and managing hyperscale cloud infrastucture for data archiving, cold storage, and data protection.

“Several years ago, we set out to develop tape solutions that are market leaders both technically and commercially in the hyperscale market,” says Bruno Hald, VP and GM, secondary storage. “We now have seven hyperscale and web scale accounts globally that have collectively deployed over 35EB of capacity in hundreds of Quantum tape systems around the world, including many Scalar i6H systems that are already deployed in some of the world’s largest data archives.“ He continued, “The Scalar i6H is our latest gen tape library platform designed to be deployed in hyperscale archive environments as part of a Quantum Redundant Array of Independent Library, or RAIL, architecture. The combination of this architecture with the density, serviceability, and other unique Scalar i6H features make it the leading choice for exabyte-scale private clouds.“

Scalar i6H brings improved density, serviceability, additional features to address hyperscale needs It was designed for hyperscale archives, with features and benefits including:

• Storage density: It offers storage density to minimize tape physical footprint, minimize data center floor space used, and to deliver low TCO.
• Standard for tape ease-of-use: It improves SLAs through its simplified design and service model where all components are customer replaceable. Components like the robotics system can be replaced with the push of a button.
• Modular, flexible deployment options, including ship-in-rack: It is deployed one rack at a time, making it easier and faster to deploy tape capacity as large archives grow, and offering hyperscalers and enterprises more flexible options about how and where to deploy tape. The goal is to move from shipping dock to installed and operational in under an hour. In addition, the rack can accommodate additional servers to run software which can provide new ways to access tape for large-scale private cloud storage and archiving.
• Efficient, green design: Including 80 PLUS certified power supplies to reduce power and cooling costs.

In addition to the features of Scalar i6H, it also includes software features that are available on other firm’s Scalar systems including:

• Features for Ransomware Protection and Building Cyber-Resilient Archives: Including Active Vault, logical tape blocking, and Scalar Ransom Block, the feature that creates a physical barrier between data tapes and the robotic tape system to provide the ultimate layer of security
• Monitor hundreds of tape systems continuously with connection to the company’s Cloud-Based Analytics (CBA) software
• Additional security features like multi-factor authentication, data encryption and key management, all part of a security framework
• Periodically check tape integrity with Scalar Extended Data Lifecycle Management (EDLM) policy-based tape scanning
• Proactive system monitoring and diagnostics
• Suite of RESTful web services for system management

Quantum RAIL offers more modular, more highly available architecture for private clouds

Scalar i6H systems are deployed one rack at a time, which makes it faster and easier to deploy new tape capacity as archives grow. A firm’s RAIL, architecture is a more modular way to build large private clouds. Rather than store tens of thousands of tapes in a single tape system, organizations can build tape archives in a ‘scale out’ manner, adding modular tape systems one at a time, which makes it faster to deploy new tape capacity as archives grow.

This also means that tape capacity can be deployed in a non-contiguous fashion, allowing hyperscalers and other large organizations to be more flexible about where tape is deployed for secure, cold storage. Combined with erasure coding software that can write objects to multiple tape systems, such as patented 2-dimensional erasure coding software introduced with ActiveScale Cold Storage, RAIL allows these large storage services to provide secure, durable, and low-cost storage for cold data archiving.