NAB 2019: Spectra Logic Announces New Data Mover for BlackPearl, Enhances Tape Libraries

Spectra Logic (Booth SL11516) has enhanced its popular BlackPearl converged storage platform with the addition of Spectra RioBroker version 1.01, which acts as a data mover to speed file transfers, streamline workflows and scale out BlackPearl in both performance and capacity to accommodate growing amounts of digital assets. The company has announced enhancements designed to help users of its family of tape libraries simplify and enhance their workflows: Spectra Swarm adds Ethernet connectivity to Spectra LTO tape libraries.

BlackPearl and Spectra RioBroker
As a software frontend to Spectra’s BlackPearl, an object-storage platform that moves content seamlessly and economically to disk, tape, and cloud, Spectra RioBroker offloads the data-transfer job from the application to the Spectra RioBroker system. This brings greater performance, parallelism, scalability, ease of implementation. and consistency to the entire platform. Spectra RioBroker also simplifies the integration process to popular asset-management software applications by providing Partial File Recall and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) capabilities. Spectra’s RioBroker software is available now.

Spectra RioBroker Benefits

• Enables easier client development for partners with a simple abstraction layer over BlackPearl interface
• Allows more clients and applications to share BlackPearl object storage resources in parallel at ever higher performance
• Provides remote input/output capabilities to multiple Spectra BlackPearl Converged Storage servers
• Brokers data stream input and output between multiple sources and destinations
• Provides for enterprise-level high availability*
• Delivers ultra-high performance with clustering capabilities*
• Facilitates seamless content migration from legacy storage software to a modern solution

Expanding Certified Client Portfolio
The BlackPearl ecosystem grew with new certified clients, including Imagine Communications’ Nexio Motion and Tiger Technology’s Tiger Bridge. Additional integrations are completed for axle ai, GLOOKAST, and Marquis Postflux for Adobe Premiere. Spectra also has expanded its broad Avid environment support to include integration with Avid’s MediaCentral Cloud UX platform, which has greatly increased performance for all Avid integrations. Through key partnerships and its Developer Program, Spectra Logic continues to deliver modern storage solutions that help media and entertainment customers accelerate production and optimize digital content for the long term.

“The increasing number of certified clients for Spectra’s BlackPearl is evidence that the solution has gained remarkable traction, especially in complex media and entertainment environments,” said David Feller, VP, product management, Spectra. “We’re pleased to work hand in hand with media-production organizations to help them modernize their oftentimes multifaceted media workflows.”

Said Bob Vassar, VP, worldwide technical sales and services, Tiger Technology, “The partnership with Spectra reiterates Tiger’s mission to provide customers with a complete storage solution that seamlessly brings tiers of storage under one intelligent platform that balances cost and performance and supplies them with perpetual protection. As the certified solution with Tiger Bridge and Spectra BlackPearl has evolved, we firmly believe that delivering our totally integrated storage solution that spans from production to nearline to archive will help end users create, protect and monetize their valuable digital assets.”

Said axle ai CEO Sam Bogoch, “With Spectra’s BlackPearl rapidly becoming a standard-setter for a modern archival platform in the market, it’s a great time for us to provide this integration for an overall solution that’s simple yet sophisticated to help manage and preserve customers’ growing content archives. With the power of our AI search capabilities on managed assets, we expect to help our mutual customers almost immediately.”​

Spectra LTO Tape Libraries and Spectra Swarm
Spectra Swarm makes tape connectivity easier and adds a modern interface to LTO tape libraries by leveraging all the same infrastructure and networking capabilities as the rest of the equipment in a modern data center. Spectra Swarm is tested and qualified to work with Spectra LTO tape libraries: Spectra Stack through Spectra T950.

Spectra Stack tape library

While Fibre Channel continues to be fully available across all Spectra tape libraries, it is frequently being obsoleted in modern data centers. SAS tape drives, and in particular half-height SAS drives, provide a significant cost savings, allowing the addition of more drives for the same price, but SAS is not normally viable for connections beyond a single rack. Spectra Swarm solves that problem by utilizing a backbone 40GbE [Ethernet] RoCE or iSCSI connection that is then locally switched to multiple SAS-connected LTO drives.

Spectra Swarm Benefits

• Enables cost savings due to the ability to use lower-cost SAS half-height tape drives
• Eliminates the need for Fibre Channel with the conversion to a standard Ethernet backbone
• Delivers faster tape library performance with the addition of more tape drives for the price

For users needing extra data security, the Spectra Stack Tape Library now provides end users with even more protection with built-in BlueScale encryption and key management. The new encryption feature enables Spectra Stack customers to protect their data through the same robust key management as Spectra’s other enterprise-class tape libraries. All Spectra Stack Tape Libraries come with standard encryption, which allows all tapes in a library to be encrypted automatically. This feature can be added to any existing Spectra Stack library with a free code upgrade. Tapes that were encrypted on any other Spectra tape library using BlueScale standard encryption can also be imported into a Spectra Stack and used seamlessly.

For users with immense data storage needs, Spectra now provides the IBM TS1160 drive and new JE media, for use in Spectra’s TFinity ExaScale tape library. When fully populated with the TS1160 tape drives and media, a TFinity ExaScale will store and allow access to more than 2 exabytes (2,000 PB) of compressed data, making Spectra’s TFinity ExaScale tape library the largest single data-storage machine in the world.

Spectra Swarm will be available in July.

“With the unprecedented growth of data and the need to keep it indefinitely, Spectra continues to invest in tape technology, including making tape connectivity easy,” said Matt Ninesling, director, tape engineering, Spectra Logic. “The world’s use of data continues to evolve and we’re working to ensure that tape storage, with all of its economic, capacity and performance benefits, advances with it.”