Data storage company Quantum Corp. today introduced two new solutions that it says will enable organizations to store archived information up to 80% more cost-efficiently than before.

Publicly traded Quantum is a major supplier of data center storage equipment. For about 20 years, the San Jose, California-based company ranked as one of the industry’s top hard drive manufacturers. The company sold its hard drive business in the early 2000s and now focuses on other parts of the market.

Quantum provides, among other products, equipment for storing cold data, or information that enterprises don’t use on a regular basis but nevertheless retain because of regulatory requirements or other considerations. The company is one of the market’s leading players. Quantum says its systems are used by several major cloud providers to power their cold data storage services.

The first new offering the company debuted today is called ActiveScale Cold Storage. It’s based on the Quantum Scalar data archiving system, which uses magnetic tape to store information.

Magnetic tape has been in use since the mainframe era and continues to be fairly popular. The technology is slower than disk and flash storage, but costs significantly less, which makes it suitable for storing infrequently used archived data. The technology is also durable, a valuable feature in scenarios where a company is looking to retain archived data for years or decades.

ActiveScale Cold Storage combines Quantum Scalar tape hardware with a number of new software capabilities. The software enables organizations to keep archived information in the form of objects, a popular data format, rather than files or blocks. Storing information as objects makes it easier to manage in certain respects.

Also included in ActiveScale Cold Storage is a technology that Quantum dubs two-dimensional erasure coding. The technology reduces the risk of data loss by enabling companies to distribute their records across multiple tape systems, different parts of the same data center or even multiple data centers. If some of the hardware becomes unavailable, ActiveScale Cold Storage can restore records using the new two-dimensional erasure coding capability.

“ActiveScale is now the industry’s first and only on-premises object store system with an integrated cold storage class based on tape technology. In short, this means it dramatically lowers costs, consumes little power, and reliably stores data for decades,” said Bruno Hald, general manager of Quantum’s Secondary Storage unit. 

The other offering that Quantum detailed today is called Object Storage Services. It enables companies to purchase tape storage, as well as higher-performance hardware for storing frequently used data, on an as-a-service basis. Quantum manages the equipment for customers, which can choose to deploy it in their own data centers or the facilities of colocation providers.

“We now provide solutions to many of the world’s biggest hyperscale cloud providers that are on the forefront of building ‘forever’ cold data archives,” said Quantum Chief Executive Officer Jamie Lerner. “The innovations announced today enable us to combine Quantum hyperscale tape architectures with Quantum software, package all of this technology as a cloud service that can be deployed anywhere and offer it to enterprises and cloud providers who are facing the same challenges as hyperscalers.”

Photo: Quantum