QStar Technologies, the provider of “active archive” software for tape libraries, is expanding the reach of stored data with the launch of its QStar Global ArchiveSpace offering.
The technology is a multi-node gateway solution that supports the massive archive needs of high performance computing (HPC), AI/ML, hyperscalers, media and entertainment, and video surveillance environments. It creates a multi-node Windows or Linux-based archive using Global Namespaces for SMB shares, NFS mounts or S3 buckets.
Installing on Windows or Linux allows users to take advantage of their preferred security model, using either Active Directory or LDAP. Users can run between three and 64 nodes.
Every node can access any tape media and use any tape drive to read or write data. Global ArchiveSpace can replicate content for data protection to same or different archive technologies, and present a unified view of the archived data through SMB or NFS file systems and/or S3 cloud interfaces.
At the IT Press Tour in Rome last week, Riccardo Finotti, CEO of QStar Technologies, said: “With this solution, you have availability across all locations, automated data orchestration, and a very high capacity archive with reduced running costs.”
ArchiveSpace is an extension of QStar Archive Manager, which is one solution already offered by the likes of Cohesity, Rubrik, HYCU and Hammerspace, to help serve the cloud data management needs of their end customers.
Users can upgrade their existing QStar licenses to take advantage of the “improved resilience and performance” ArchiveSpace promises. It is designed to support all tape libraries from all vendors, but particularly the largest tape libraries available on the market today, using any version of LTO or proprietary tape drive technology.
It can be used with the IBM TS4500, Oracle SL8500, Quantum Scalar i6000 and Spectra Logic TFinity Exascale platforms, supporting hundreds of tape drives and an unlimited media count, allowing hundreds of Petabytes or Exabytes.
A multi-write option groups tape drives together for higher performance by allowing a single stream to be written to multiple tape drives based on policies. In addition, mirroring and replication options protect content by automatically creating copies of data within the library, to another tape library, or to private/public clouds. As tape libraries under management do not need to be partitioned, administration complexity is reduced.
Hammerspace added archival tape system support to its Global Data Environment (GDE) earlier this year []. Its parallel file system covers data in globally distributed and disparate sites, and enables it to be located, orchestrated, and accessed as if it were local.
Hammerspace is working with three active archive suppliers as part of its tape effort, including Grau Data, PoINT Software & Systems and QStar Technologies.
Dave Thomson, SVP of sales and marketing at QStar Technologies, said at the time: “QStar software makes archived data on tape quickly and easily accessible through an S3 interface/bucket. Together with Hammerspace, we can help our current and future customers manage their data across multiple storage platforms, including tape as an active archive.”
QStar Technologies was founded in 1987, and has main offices in Denver, Colorado and Milan, Italy. Its customers include the University of Cambridge, Raytheon, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Turner, Fox, Walmart, and Deutsche Bank.
