Quantum releases StorNext 6 for Advanced Data Management

Quantum Corp.  announced StorNext 6, a new release of its StorNext file system. StorNext 6 adds new advanced data management features to the industry-leading streaming performance of the company’s scale-out tiered storage solutions portfolio, which includes flash, disk, tape and public and private cloud storage offerings. With this unique combination of performance and management, Quantum continues to extend the power of StorNext in not only media and entertainment but also other highly data-intensive environments such as genomics, academic research, video surveillance, oil and gas, and government security.

StorNext 6 addresses the needs of enterprises grappling with using their existing NAS solutions to store large, rapidly growing data sets and drive business value from that data. These enterprises are quickly realizing that traditional NAS is too difficult to upgrade, cannot deliver sufficient performance and is unable to handle parallel workloads. StorNext 6 not only overcomes these limitations but also provides more efficient and cost-effective ways to share and access files across geographically distributed teams, to manage and protect archived data, and to audit changes to data throughout its lifecycle. Quantum delivers all these benefits in an integrated, multi-tier storage solution that maintains optimized performance levels, visibility and access at every tier.

Multi-Site File Replication and Sharing for Easier Collaboration

In today’s world, the ability of geographically dispersed teams to work together using a common data set for creative, analytical or other purposes can be a key competitive differentiator. StorNext 6 facilitates greater collaboration with the introduction of FlexSync and FlexSpace:

• FlexSync is a powerful new capability in StorNext 6 that provides a fast, flexible and simple way to synchronize data between multiple StorNext systems in a highly manageable and automated fashion. FlexSync supports one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-one file replication scenarios and can be configured to operate at almost any level: specific files, specific folders or entire file systems. By leveraging enhancements in file system metadata monitoring, FlexSync recognizes changes instantly and can immediately begin reflecting those changes on another system. This approach avoids the need to lock the file systems to identify changes, reducing synchronization time from hours or days to minutes, or even seconds. As a result, users can also set policies that automatically trigger copies of files so that they are available at multiple sites, enabling different teams to access data quickly and easily whenever it’s needed. In addition, by providing automatic replication across sites, FlexSync offers increased data protection.
• FlexSpace allows multiple instances of StorNext ― and geographically distributed teams ― located anywhere in the world to share a single archive repository and easily access the same data set. Users at different sites can store files in the shared archive, as well as browse and pull data from the repository. Shared archive options include both public cloud storage ― Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud via StorNext’s existing FlexTier capability ― and private cloud storage based on Quantum’s Lattus object storage or, through FlexTier, third-party object storage such as NetApp StorageGRID, IBM Cleversafe and Scality RING. Also, as with FlexSync, FlexSpace provides fully automated movement of files according to policies, thereby increasing efficiency and enhancing data protection through off-site storage.

Enhanced StorNext-Client Functionality for Greater Agility

With StorNext 6, Quantum delivers a new quality of service (QoS) feature that empowers users to further tune and optimize performance across all client workstations, and on a machine-by-machine basis. Using QoS to specify the appropriate bandwidth allocation to individual workstations, an administrator can ensure that storage resources are optimized based on business priorities ― e.g., providing more bandwidth to demanding applications on urgent projects ― and adjust quickly as priorities change.

StorNext 6 also enables client platforms to browse archive directories that contain offline files ― which can number in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions ― without having to retrieve the entire directory. As a result, this feature significantly streamlines the archive retrieval process, enabling users to get the files they need more quickly.

File Copy Expiration for Increased ROI and File Auditing for Deeper Insights

As the foundation for a single, integrated solution that can span a single namespace across flash, spinning disk, object storage, tape and the cloud, StorNext has long reduced overall storage costs through tiering. StorNext 6 adds a new copy expiration feature, enabling automated removal of file copies from more expensive storage tiers, thereby freeing up space and increasing the overall return on investment. In addition, when one of several copies of a file is removed from storage, a complementary selectable retrieve function in StorNext 6 allows users to dictate the order of retrieval of the remaining copies. This functionality ensures that the file is retrieved from the most appropriate storage tier based on business or organizational needs.

StorNext 6 also can now efficiently track changes in files across the data lifecycle and provide reports on who changed a file, when the changes were made, what was changed and whether and to where a file was moved. In addition to providing administrators with greater file management granularity and insight into usage patterns, this new auditing feature helps support compliance requirements.