Spectra Logic Earns Top Rankings in DCIG 2012 Big Data Tape Library Buyer’s Guide

Spectra Logic’s Spectra T-Finity and T950 tape libraries achieved the highest rankings and were named the market’s “Best in Class” products in the Data Center Infrastructure Group (DCIG) 2012 Big Data Tape Library Buyer’s Guide.

According to DCIG’s independent research study, the Spectra Logic T-Finity and T950 models attained the top, ‘Best in Class” rankings for the dual robot and single robot classes of libraries respectively due to their comprehensive support for both the traditional and cutting-edge features users need to meet today’s demanding requirements for active archive and backup of rapidly growing quantities of data.

“As enterprise organizations come to grips with their Big Data requirements, tape technology is getting new consideration as a preferred data storage medium,” said Jerome Wendt, president and lead analyst, DCIG, Inc. “Our research indicates many organizations are increasing their tape-based storage or reintroducing tape as a key element of their backup and archival strategy. The Big Data Tape Library Buyer’s Guide will help end users quickly discern the tape library solution most appropriate for their storage needs.”

The Big Data Tape Library Buyer’s Guide provides an objective, third party evaluation of tape libraries that weights, scores and ranks their features from an end user’s viewpoint. DCIG evaluated 140 features on 66 tape libraries from eight storage vendors to develop the extensive buyer’s guide. Tape library vendors included Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle, Overland, Qualstar, Quantum and Spectra Logic.

The Spectra Logic T-Finity and T950 achieved the highest scores of all tape libraries in the DCIG Tape Library Buyer’s Guide dual and single robotics categories, respectively. The guide notes that Spectra’s full-featured T-Finity and T950 libraries meet tomorrow’s data management demands and offer the “best mix of next generation tape library features”. In addition to supporting all major backup software offerings, the T-Finity was one of the few tape libraries that scaled to hold petabytes of data, included redundant robotics, and offered comprehensive software for managing tape media. Spectra’s midrange tape libraries scored well with the T680, T380, T200 and T120 each achieving “Excellent” rankings.

Further, the study found that tape’s renewed popularity is due to a number of factors, including its inherently low power consumption and superior space efficiency vis-à-vis disk options, as well as innovative data reliability and accessibility features. With new feature sets available on today’s top tape libraries, coupled with the reality that 95 percent of unstructured data is accessed infrequently or never, tape libraries are a smart choice for storing large data sets.

“Modern tape storage solutions offer robust functionality and features such as LTFS support, proactive media health alerts and automated data integrity verification. Customers are increasingly choosing tape libraries as they implement active archives in addition to their traditional tape backup strategies,” said Molly Rector, executive vice president of product management and worldwide marketing, Spectra Logic. “The DCIG Buyer’s Guide is an excellent tool and highlights what matters most to end users tasked with meeting challenging data storage demands, including high performance, availability, density, and scalable capacity.”