Government

Storage in a Petabyte World

Raise your expectations from your Digital Asset Management system

By Alan Gagliardotto
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Sony Storage Solutions

Government agencies are giant repositories of data that are pushing the limits of mass storage from a Terabyte environment to a Petabyte world. What's more, these organizations need to rely on mission-critical data more than ever. As a result, government agencies are placing a premium on data back up and recovery while, at the same time, their IT departments are faced with growing agency-wide demand to scale their infrastructure to meet organizational and budgetary needs.

This is often an expensive proposition, especially when considering hardware and software costs, environmental factors such as power consumption and space, and operation costs, all of which impact the ultimate arbiter of success in today's "e-Government" -- the best use of taxpayers dollars.

Sony understands these challenges, which is why we developed the Consolidated Storage Management (CSM) Series PetaSite® System, which is in widespread use throughout government agencies where it is involved in satellite reconnaissance imagery, health and disease research repository, Senate chamber proceedings, radio and television broadcasting, and IP camera-based surveillance.

Advancing the boundaries of automated tape solutions, the CSM Series PetaSite system is a scalable library that can easily expand as your storage requirements grow. Based on SAIT tape technology and specifically designed to address the growing high-speed and high-capacity demands of data intensive networks and enterprise-wide environments, the Sony CSM Series PetaSite System provides an overview of what features you should ask for and what technical considerations you should make while selecting your government agency's Digital Asset Management archiving solution.

Here are some questions to ask your IT department and DAM consultants:

What type of archive media should my Digital Asset Management accommodate?

Disk Raid and automated tape libraries continue to coexist as the preferred archiving media for mid- to enterprise-level archive systems. Contributing factors such as cost/GB, reliability, performance, portability, density, flexibility, scalability and WORM security are difficult to beat. Commercially available tape capacity is approaching 1TB on a single tape cartridge. The Sony SAIT1, meanwhile, is the first tape cartridge to hit the native/uncompressed 500GB capacity, with an 800 GB cartridge planned to be available in mid-2006.

Expect your DAM system to accommodate video as well, and stay ahead of the technology curve on this high-capacity data source. One video archive medium that is expected to grow in capacity and performance, while it becomes more prevalent in small to medium archive applications, is Blu-ray optical disc technology. Professional video acquisition systems like Sony's popular XDCAM™ tapeless recorders are expected to increase storage demands from 23GB to 50GB in 2006.

Is system performance the most critical DAM specification?

When designing a mid- to large-archive from Terabytes to Petabytes, system performance was once the leading consideration. However today, with HD RAID systems acting as data cache or buffering systems, ultra-high performance is no longer the leading factor when selecting a tape library system. DAM applications once requiring Super drives priced in the $20-40K range are being replaced by mid-high performance library tape drives priced in the $10-15K range. Reliable, cost effective, scalable, tiered storage systems that move data over the network from Disk2Disk with managed policy driven migration to a third tier such as tape and/or optical disc, allow for most often used files (e.g. low resolution proxies) to remain online while larger, less used higher resolution files remain on tape or on optical disc, a less expensive portable medium. This allows for digital file distribution, as well as advanced security and disaster recovery. In short, high performance is what you should expect. Dig into the details to determine the real differences between your system options.

Can I expect to find a system that that supports both IBM's LTO and Sony SAIT?

Today's data world is a mixed-media environment. So, expect your DAM system to support this operational reality. The CSM, for example, is a mixed-media library, supporting both IBM's LTO and Sony's SAIT most advanced 1/2-inch drive technology, based on AME media. Reliability was foremost when developing SAIT tape drives. To have a long-term reliable archive, the media and drive are co-dependent.

The SAIT tape drive and AME media product line were designed from the ground up to provide the highest level of data protection and reliability in the industry. Key advanced features include:

• a single tape pass to read or write a complete tape cartridge
• low tape tension
• a virtual clean room inside the drive transport area in conjunction with ultra-smooth, binder free AME media
• R-MIC (Sony's Remote Memory in Cassette), which reduces tape to head contact during high-speed search and rewind.

These features provide for extended drive head life of 50,000 hours and media durability for thousands of reliable file accesses, both based on Sony's testing, an important feature when considering a DAM archive.

What else should I know about system reliability?

Sony's CSM series PetaSite system is in its fourth generation design and has been developed with its robotics engineered for maximum uptime to meet a demanding 24x7x365 high-duty cycle. When evaluating a tape library for reliability, there are several areas of importance: the library structural frame and enclosure, bin position, robotics, redundancy and tape-drive technology each play a fundamental role. Maintaining a clean stable environment with optimum temperature and humidity is important to the long-term health of your archive.

Robotics's main components consist of the X, Y, and Z-drive motors (that position the elevator and tape carrier), power supplies, position and fault sensors, bins, tape I/O Port and library controller. Simplicity is important here to minimize the components needed and the mechanical movement. Look for a library that can expand without adding additional hardware such as pass-through ports and make sure you have a direct connection to the tape-drive interface. Also, expect a sturdy structural frame with synchronized upper and lower robotic elevator transfer axis for reliable fault-free positioning and alignment. (important for long term floor settling)

Also consider the following:

• direct motor attached tape carrier (picker) assembly (no ribbon cable)
• data center 19-inch compatible form factor library frame will integrate seamlessly in a data center layout with restrictive space requirements.
• vertically positioned tape drives and bins ideal for tape handling, simplified robotics, and long term tape storage.
• virtually no air movement in bin area, minimizing air born contaminants from circulating within library.
• internal library protrusion sensors continually monitor fault condition, helping to eliminate unsafe operating conditions.
• high robotic duty cycle ratings- MCBF: >2,000,000 exchanges and MTBF: 300,000 hours.
• redundant library and drive power supplies and drive interface

What factors affect the library's overall cost of ownership?

Consider all these factors when evaluating the total cost of your agency's DAM system: HVAC requirements, floor space, tape storage/disaster recovery costs, product warranties, service uplift costs, expansion, downtime, mixed media support and partitioning - all of which ultimately affect the library's total cost of ownership (TCO). Also, keep any eye out for any feature that can deliver an ongoing cost savings.

For example, the PetaSite CSM series library provides the ability to expand on demand via license keys and additional frames from 60 slots (30 TB) to several thousand (2.39PB with SAIT2-800 native capacity) without replacing your initial library system. Adding up to 12 drives per frame or 96 in total will meet the most demanding workflows for file transfer. Fast robotics and tape load will minimize times retrieving or writing files during peak usage. Partitioning a single physical library into multiple logical libraries allows applications to act independently in one library. Supporting a mixed-media environment (SAIT and LTO) in a single or portioned library is easily managed using barcode labels.

What about serviceability? Anything I should consider?

With pressure to reduce IT staff and provide agency-wide services at reduced costs, simple, easy, service administration with remote alert messaging is necessary for efficient system management. This feature reduces system down time and fault detection time. Look for:

• automated alert messaging with attached log retrieval responding in real time to degraded conditions via email or VPN for the service organization to diagnose.
• scheduled periodic reporting of library system information to identify key indicators including drive and library power on hours, drive head hours, tape exchanges.
• JAVA GUI for remote or local monitoring, control and administration.
• automatic WWN matching when replacing a tape drive.
• simplistic, easy access design for power supplies and drives.

When evaluating your DAM system, also look for 24x7x365 coverage options, your vendor'/s support experience with major operating systems, training services, IT/Audio/Video archiving applications. Robotics and e-VTR device experience are also essential to protect your growing archive.