Crossroads
Crossroads Systems Inc., provider of data protection solutions, and Spectra Logic, vendor of data recovery and archive solutions, announced a partnership to offer a solution that can provide an 81 percent reduction in high-performance video storage costs. As storage alone can consume up to 50 percent of a video surveillance project, video surveillance professionals must find alternatives that solve the dilemma of balancing storage costs with the need for more capacity.
The joint solution decreases costs by combining Crossroads' StrongBox network attached storage (NAS) solution with the Spectra Logic T950 tape library.
StrongBox is a NAS archive solution that leverages the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) as its volume storage medium. It serves as an online all-the-time, non-proprietary and fully portable data vault for long-term video data storage, while Spectra Logic's T950 tape library provides truly cost-effective volume storage. The combined solution incorporates disk for fast file storage and retrieval, and physical tape for cost-effective, reliable and long-term storage.
The most advantageous aspect of a digital tape-based approach is the cost-savings associated with a move from an all disk-based environment to a NAS storage solution based on LTFS technology. For example, the savings in TCO for storing 1 petabyte of video files (2 copies) over a 10-year period utilizing Crossroads StrongBox LTFS NAS and Spectra T950 is nearly $6.5 million and an 81 percent reduction.
To ensure minimal total cost of ownership, the Spectra T950 tape library offers an effortless growth path to meet short and long-term capacity requirements. As a less expensive alternative to costly storage mediums, LTO tape provides the principal storage medium within the T950 library. The StrongBox/T950 solution grows to fit an organization's needs with scalable augmentations for both disk and tape layers. Store millions of hours of content as the video network expands. A single StrongBox can hold up to 5 billion files, and the Spectra T950 seamlessly scales up to ten thousand LTO slots in a single library system.
StrongBox/T950 functions as NAS, giving flexible file access to multiple simultaneous users, anywhere in the world. File access on a Spectra LTO library is similar to hard disk, CD/DVD disc or USB media in that there is full drag and drop capability. StrongBox never modifies data. Instead, LTFS and LTO media ensure that files are universally accessible. LTFS technology refers to the open-nature, self-describing format of LTO-5 tape media. Because of the open standard of LTFS, data written to StrongBox can be read by any LTFS enabled drive. Data protection is self-contained within StrongBox through flexible user-generated policies such as multi-copy, WAN replication and self-healing. The built-in System Monitor proactively assesses the health of the disks, tape cartridges, drives and libraries to provide a cohesive view into system health, alerting users to potential risks before an issue occurs. For added security, the StrongBox/T950 solution offers a free encryption key management option that protects content.
StrongBox, combined with Spectra Logic's library, provides customers a new file-based solution that can scale from terabytes to petabytes to support any long-term data retention requirements. StrongBox connects to the network via GbE or 10GbE and plugs into the Spectra Logic T950 via SAN (8Gb Fibre Channel) or directly with SAS. Through the use of StrongBox data management policies, video data is seamlessly served back to the application, while simultaneously retrieving archived data from tape, providing the application or client extremely high performing data read rates.
"The demand for storage capacity to retain video surveillance images is growing at an unprecedented rate driven in part by increasing high resolution digital cameras and longer data retention polices," said Nathan Thompson, CEO of Spectra Logic. "We are delighted to team with Crossroads Systems to provide customers with storage solutions that enable them to preserve surveillance video while meeting their long-term retention and accessibility requirements."
"We are pleased to announce our partnership with Spectra Logic, a company that boasts more than 30 years of data storage innovation," said Rob Sims, president and CEO of Crossroads Systems. "Partnerships with companies such as Spectra Logic underscore the unique capabilities that StrongBox brings to the video surveillance community. StrongBox serves as an ideal companion for existing archive solutions, as it brings unprecedented cost savings and data portability through the use of LTFS."
