Visit Archive Data at Booth #1143

Not an Afcom Member Yet?
AFCOM, the leading association of data center management professionals, is a dynamic community providing a forum for discussion, learning and problem-solving. With more than 4,500 members worldwide, you will find no better place to build relationships with your peers.
We think that AFCOM is a great resource for Data Center professionals. Actually — we KNOW it is because so many of our customers have told us so. Do yourself a favor and check out your local AFCOM chapter. Local chapter meetings offer a great opportunity to network with your peers, share best practices or challenges, and the group offers a number of resources that can save you a lot of time and frustration!

Well, This Might Cause Some Headaches…

On Sept 22nd, The New York Times released the first in a series of articles entitled The Cloud Factories, which blasted the data center industry for its inefficient use of energy. The article was based on a yearlong study conducted by The New York Times and focused primarily on the vast amount of energy used world-wide by data centers. Special notice was paid towards the inefficiency involved in maintaining redundant power supplies within data centers.

Washington Reacts

Rather than spending time to question any specific points raised in the article, the more pressing concern for all of us in the industry is the fact that this article is getting some attention on Capitol Hill. Several of the leading Democrats in the US House of Representatives have already asked the Department of Energy (DoE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin considering what steps can or should be done to ensure that the data center industry is using the US electric grid responsibly.

So How Will This Affect You?

No one can really be sure yet. It obviously depends on your location and your specific industry.

But all signs point to some level of pressure for federal involvement in how YOU run YOUR data center. You’ve got plenty of time to deal with that, right?

What Can You Do?

Ideally, you’d have the time, resources, and budget to ensure that your data center is using power in the most efficient manner available. I don’t think any of us dispute this. However, most of us deal with constant budget pressure and/or a consistent lack of talented resources. And considering that new trends or options for increased power efficiency are evolving rapidly, it’s tough to stay on top of the latest and greatest processes or products.

Washington (Platts): House Democrats question data centers’ power demands
The New York Times: The Cloud Factories – Power, Pollution, and the Internet

Introducing the Silent Cube – Long Term Archiving with ‘Zero’ Power

The Silent Cube by Fast LTA is one of the more intriguing products we’ve encountered. An amazing solution for your second and third tier storage – the Silent Cube combines unparalleled reliability with impressive cost savings.

Reduce your overall storage costs by moving your archive data sets onto Silent Cubes – save your more expensive primary storage for your most frequently retrieved data, reduce energy costs dramatically, and have the option to expand your storage capacity incrementally as needed.

Silent Cubes help to free up your valuable online storage (SAN). Using archiving or HSM software, you then store less frequently accessed data on your specialized Silent Cubes long-term storage unit. This allows you to cut your costs by up to 80%.

A Simple Network Share Connection

Regardless of which archiving, DMS or HSM solution you use, and whether your archiving needs encompass medical PACS data, emails or other documents, Silent Cubes integrate seamlessly into your infrastructure.

The Silent Cubes storage system consists of a Head Unit (also available as a version for VMware® in virtual server environments) serving as the interface to your network, plus up to 128 Silent Cube storage units. Individually configurable volumes (reserved storage areas) and network shares (with variable access rights) ensure problem-free interoperability with software solutions.

Visit us at Booth # 1400!

Not an AFCOM member yet?

AFCOM, the leading association of data center management professionals, is a dynamic community providing a forum for discussion, learning and problem-solving. With more than 4,500 members worldwide, you will find no better place to build relationships with your peers.

We think that AFCOM is a great resource for Data Center professionals. Actually — we KNOW it is because so many of our customers have told us so. Do yourself a favor and check out your local AFCOM chapter. Local chapter meetings offer a great opportunity to network with your peers, share best practices or challenges, and the group offers a number of resources that can save you a lot of time and frustration!

What’s LTFS?

LTFS (Linear Tape File System) is a self-describing tape format that defines the organization of data and metadata on an LTO-6 or LTO-5 tape. Data written in the LTFS format can be directly accessed from the tape – independent of a storage system or external database.

And for the rest of us that aren’t tape library engineers…

LTFS allows you to read an LTO-6 or LTO-5 tape just like a a disk. That’s right – the LTO tape that you once used only for backup can NOW become an incredibly cost-effective way to scale the capacity of your storage network.

Think of it – you would have the ability to increase your capacity at an unprecedented low cost. Simply add additional tapes (at up to 6.25TB each) to your LTO system and STILL have the ability to access and modify the data contained on them just as though the data resided on disk. With data transfer rates of up to 400 MB/s, you could make a SERIOUS capacity upgrade with very little effect on speed or your budget! Tape is once again a viable, if not preferred, option for your archival data as well as the standard for backup data sets.

But it’s a tape – how does that work?

The key is that the tape maintains a stub file. Think of this as a table of contents for the data and files on that tape. Once a tape is mounted, the metadata of each cartridge is stored on your server’s cache. Users can then perform metadata operations (such as a search or browsing the file contents) without requiring the tape to even be mounted in a drive. It can then start giving you information about that requested file as the tape spins up to locate that file. Much like being able to see a thumbnail of files on your hard disk without actually opening the files.

So why haven’t I heard much about LTFS yet?

LTFS was introduced with LTO-5 in 2010. The problem was that there weren’t any applications or appliances ready to incorporate this game-changing file system yet. Just this year, we’ve started to finally see a wave of appliances introduced to use this technology to absolutely revolutionize that way you look at your storage area network. The cost savings can be tremendous when you consider that ability to leverage storing certain data on disk and other data on tape, not to mention the energy savings of having data reside on a tape that doesn’t need to spin all day to offer online availability.