회사 소식 TapeArk moves tape libraries to public cloud VTLs for lower cost and higher speed

Old tape archives can be migrated to a public-cloud virtual tape library via TapeArk for faster data access and reduced costs.

TapeArk states this unlocks decades of tape-held data for AI analysis and processing: “Your archive is a longitudinal dataset waiting for liberation.” It cites use cases in pharmaceutical firms: Almirall held 50 years of research data, including 400,000 offline R&D documents on tape; moving this content to Azure made it searchable online. Ontario-based Ontada migrated 150 million oncology documents into Azure.

Legacy tape challenges are well documented. Reading old tapes often requires obsolete tape hardware and outdated software. The latest LTO‑10 tape format lacks backward compatibility. Tapes degrade over time and require recopying to fresh media, a process known as re‑silvering. Migrating large, long‑lived tape archives to newer formats poses major challenges. TapeArk’s alternative is to bypass these headaches entirely by migrating data to public‑cloud virtual tape libraries (VTLs) and virtual drives.

TapeArk offers an audit at no charge. Customers ship full tape archives to one of its data centers; teams identify each reel, ingest content into local cache, build metadata and tags, then perform bulk upload to the public cloud. Clients may choose to have original tapes returned or disposed of. Its Nexus product is a cloud-native platform for legacy tape data management, enabling viewing, analysis and restoration from old tape environments without maintaining physical tape storage, legacy hardware, software or on-premises data center space.

Organizations can free up data center floor space previously occupied by tape libraries, reallocating power and cooling resources for other workloads.

TapeArk connects customers’ existing backup tape applications to cloud virtual tapes. The service uses a SaaS pricing model, eliminating capital expenditure for hardware and software, plus ongoing operational costs to run legacy tape infrastructure. Nexus SaaS pricing depends on the physical tape count, total data volume and number of supported environments. Entry fees are low or zero, with customizable multi-year contracts available.

TapeArk notes one year of LTO‑1 tape vault storage ($0.40+/tape/month) can fund roughly four years of equivalent Azure storage at $0.00099/GB, delivering around 75% cost savings.

TapeArk’s services operate globally, with bulk ingest facilities in Perth (Australia), New Delhi (India), Exeter (UK), Dallas (USA) and Toronto (Canada). The firm also offers on‑site data ingestion at customer premises, subject to connectivity requirements.

Bootnote
Guy C. Holmes founded TapeArk in 2017. This came after his Perth-based SpectrumData’s oil and gas data management division was acquired by Katalyst Data Management in 2015. SpectrumData was an Australian specialist in data storage, tape transcription, scanning, migration and recovery, serving geoscience, oil & gas and government clients across Asia-Pacific.

TapeArk copies an organization’s tape inventory into public cloud storage, writing data as virtual tapes paired with cloud-hosted virtual tape drives. Restores are completed via the TapeArk access portal, which loads virtual tapes into virtual drives. No physical tape hardware, legacy software licenses or offsite physical media storage is required.

The platform supports AWS and Azure, and also works with Google Cloud, Wasabi, Backblaze and other cloud providers. Its Nexus SaaS and tape migration/virtualization services can run on the customer’s preferred cloud, with dedicated VTL options for AWS and Azure. TapeArk reports it has migrated over 1.3 exabytes of tape data to public clouds across 380 tape-to-cloud projects.

Other vendors also offer public cloud VTL products including AWS Tape Gateway, FalconStor, OpenVTL, plus Spectra Logic’s TAPAS with Geyser Data.

Beijing Qianxing Jietong Technology Co., Ltd.
Sandy Yang/Global Strategy Director
WhatsApp / WeChat: +86 13426366826
Email: yangyd@qianxingdata.com
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