Hitachi-LG Data Storage, a joint venture between technology giants Hitachi and LG Electronics, unveiled the company’s Optical Archiving Library System, known as model HL100.
The product, boasting long-term data archiving capabilities, is targeted at the enterprise market and will be on sale globally this month.
The platform takes advantage of Blu-ray media, a format designed to improved data density and overall quality, to preserve data for 50 years or more, offering enterprise-level clients the longevity and survivability that is required to manage data archiving needs.
“The HL100 is a fantastic system,” Kenichi Takamoto, president of enterprise storage business unit at Hitachi-LG Data Storage, said in a statement. “In this era of big data, it’s a very intelligent solution to the challenges posed by exponentially expanding unstructured digital data. The enterprise quality Blu-ray media facilitates 50 years or more of data longevity, enabling customers to secure their valuable data for the long term with higher reliability. It also increases the utilization of storage resources while scaling cold storage needs at lower costs.”
Each library has 50TB of raw capacity, and with nine libraries per rack, a single rack can hold 450TB. Despite the imposing numbers, the HL100’s power consumption of full rack is a scant 810W in idle mode, a company release claimed.
“Overall, this is optimized archiving that can be easily implemented in a wide range of organizations,” Takamoto said. “Companies in disparate fields have a myriad of different archiving needs with respect to factors like data longevity, migration costs and energy consumption. The HL100 satisfies all of these needs.”
The company also boasted about the platform’s eco-friendly attributes, which it said provides lower power consumption as well as lower CO2 emissions compared to hard disk drive (HDD) or tape-based solutions.
Other features include a 4U rack mount form factor housing two media cartridges, 500 discs with 50TB in raw capacity and scalability up to 450TB per 42U rack, with a maximum of nine libraries per 42U rack.
Rounding out the package is an easy cartridge replacement architecture, redundant robotic components and idle power consumption of only 90 watts, and energy passive offline storage to facilitate a lower operating expenditure.
In addition, the platform’s error correcting code (ECC) capabilities make it more reliable than tape-based systems and ideal for the enterprise market, and since it is intended to facilitate long-term storage, there is less need for data migration, a company release noted.
“We’re committed to bringing out the best archiving systems possible, particularly with respect to long-term reliability. This is why we’ve initiated partnerships with leading media manufacturers that can help us supply cutting-edge systems,” Takamoto said. “We expect these partnerships to be very productive, and the big winner in the end will be our business partners and clients.”