Advancements in technology now make it possible for businesses of all sizes to store large amounts of data for compliance or analysis purposes. But the speed of data growth has had a direct impact on storage management.

With static, non-changing data taking up precious storage space, storage costs are rapidly increasing to exorbitant amounts each month.  Businesses are therefore seeking the benefits of archive storage solutions to lower costs, optimize storage and improve data access.

QStar Technologies provides the software, and infrastructure you need to implement active archive storage solutions for your enterprise. With the use of LTO (Linear Tape Open) and either LTFS (Linear Tape File System) or TDO (Tape Disk Object) technologies, we can provide scalable, cost-effective solutions for any archive storage need.

LTO is an inexpensive magnetic tape solution that allows you to store and archive vast quantities of data while TDO can combine physical magnetic tape storage and the Cloud (local, hybrid or remote) to create a cohesive data storage system. LTFS provides an industry standard tape format for sharing archive data.

An active archive storage solution is designed to protect and preserve your archived data while providing seamless access to multiple storage devices when necessary. Data archives serve as repositories for non-mission-critical data that must be stored for long periods of time e.g. to meet data retention requirements or to significantly reduce total cost of storage.

Active Archive can use several tiers of storage including SSD, HDD, tape, and cloud storage to provide secure, reliable storage at much lower costs than flash-based architectures and traditional NAS based, magnetic storage.

It also supports file and object storage systems and can use policy-based data management software that automates archive of infrequently accessed data while end-users seamlessly access archived data regardless of the device that it is now stored on.

Active Archive gateway software solutions utilize low-cost servers and storage and can be designed to allow access to archived content via the cloud or easily accessible tape libraries.

QStar manages several types of archive devices including network attached (disk) storage (NAS), tape and optical libraries, object storage, and cloud storage, individually or collectively.

A high-performance cache, often using relatively small amounts of NVMe flash or fast RAID, are used to form the “landing zone” for any data moving into or out of the archive. Recently written or recently archived files are maintained in Disk Cache for read or re-read purposes. Data can be archived using standard communication protocols such as SMB (Server Message Block), NFS (Network File System) or S3 (Simple Storage Service).

A Disk Cache is mainly under 10 terabyte (TB), supporting petabyte (PB) levels of archive storage and uses a “first-in, first-out” algorithm to move the files in and out of the cache, while preserving all file metadata, for convenient searches.

QStar was a founding partner of the Active Archive Alliance which has now been in operation for over 10 years. The Alliance is a vendor-neutral, trusted source for information on modern day archive solutions that solve data growth challenges. It was formed in February 2010 and includes both hardware and software vendors in various vertical and geographical markets. Active Archive Alliance produces white papers, blogs and research data, which are freely available to any registered individual or organization.