While Fibre Channel continues to be fully available across all Spectra tape libraries, it is frequently being obsoleted in modern data centres. 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 utilising a backbone 40GbE [Ethernet] RoCE or iSCSI connection that is then locally switched to multiple SAS-connected LTO drives.
Spectra Swarm Benefits
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 petabytes) of compressed* data, making Spectra’s TFinity ExaScale Tape Library the largest single data storage machine in the world.