Crossroads Systems, Spectra Logic Team to Offer a Joint Solution

Provider of data protection solutions Crossroads Systems and Spectra Logic, an innovator in data recovery and archive, have announced a partnership to offer a unique solution that can provide an 81 percent reduction in high-performance video storage costs.

Nathan Thompson, CEO of Spectra Logic, said that the company is teaming with Crossroads Systems to provide customers with storage solutions that enable them to preserve surveillance video while meeting their long-term retention and accessibility requirements.

The joint solution decreases costs by combining Crossroads’ StrongBox network attached storage (NAS) solution with the Spectra Logic T950 tape library.

Said to be the first NAS archive solution, StrongBox leverages the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) as its volume storage medium. Company officials said that it serves as an online all-the-time, non-proprietary and fully portable data vault for long-term video data storage.

Spectra Logic's T950 tape library provides “cost-effective” volume storage. For long-term storage, the combined solution incorporates disk for fast file storage and retrieval, and physical tape.

To the video surveillance professionals, the new solution offers cost-savings. Company officials said that the Spectra T950 tape library offers an effortless growth path to meet short and long-term capacity requirements, while LTO tape provides the principal storage medium within the T950 library.

In addition, it also offers seamless scalability; complete accessibility; reliability and security; and vendor neutral through LTFS. Company officials said that the StrongBox/T950 solution grows to fit an organization's needs with scalable augmentations for both disk and tape layers. Store millions of hours of content as the video network expands.

A single StrongBox can hold up to five billion files, and the Spectra T950 seamlessly scales up to ten thousand LTO slots in a single library system. Moreover, StrongBox/T950 functions as standard networ attached storage (NAS), which provides flexible file access to multiple simultaneous users, anywhere in the world.

The file access on a Spectra LTO library is similar to hard disk, CD/DVD disc or USB media in that there is full drag and drop capability, said company officials.

As StrongBox never modifies data, LTFS and LTO media ensure that files are universally accessible. LTFS technology refers to the open-nature, self describing format of LTO-5 tape media. Plus, according to company officials, data protection is self-contained within StrongBox through flexible user-generated policies such as multi-copy, WAN replication and self-healing.

The built-in System Monitor proactively assesses the health of the disks, tape cartridges, drives and libraries, providing a cohesive view into system health, alerting users to potential risks before an issue occurs. And, for added security, the StrongBox/T950 solution offers a free encryption key management option that protects content.

“Partnerships with companies such as Spectra Logic underscore the unique capabilities that StrongBox brings to the video surveillance community. StrongBox serves as an ideal companion for existing archive solutions, as it brings unprecedented cost savings and data portability through the use of LTFS,” said Rob Sims, president and CEO at Crossroads Systems.