Spectra Logic Corporation is a
computer data storage
Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers.
The central processing unit (CPU) of a comput ...
company based in
Boulder, Colorado in the United States. The company builds
backup and archive technology for
secondary storage
Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers.
The central processing unit (CPU) of a comput ...
to protect data after it migrates from primary disk. Spectra Logic's primary product is
tape libraries. The company was founded in 1979, and is a
privately held company
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...
.
History
Nathan C. Thompson founded Spectra Logic in his apartment in 1979 while he was an engineering student at the
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado s ...
. Thompson is the chairman and CEO of the company.
The company became the first to automate
Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) magnetic tape in a robotic autoloader (
tape library
In computer storage, a tape library, sometimes called a tape silo, tape robot or tape jukebox, is a storage device that contains one or more tape drives, a number of slots to hold tape cartridges, a barcode reader to identify tape cartridges a ...
), and was also the first tape-library vendor to implement the
iSCSI
Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/I ...
networking protocol in its products. Spectra Logic produced another first when it released a tape library with integrated hardware-based
data encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...
.
Spectra introduced its TFinity tape library in November 2009, offering 99.9% reliability and scaling to 180
petabyte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
s of storage capacity in an
LTO-5 configuration.
In December 2010 Spectra's tape-library product line won first place in all 14 categories of ''Storage'' magazine/SearchStorage.com's 2010 Quality Awards for enterprise and midrange tape libraries. Spectra Logic again earned top honors in the 2012 ''Storage'' magazine/SearchStorage.com's Quality Awards, winning both the enterprise and midrange tape library categories.
In May 2012,
DCIG, LLC released a "Tape Library Buyer's Guide", which evaluated over 60 tape libraries from 8 storage vendors. Only the Spectra Logic TFinity and T950 received the highest "Best-in-Class" ranking. Also that month, Spectra Logic announced that it would provide Spectra TFinity tape libraries to the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale computer infrastructure that advances research, science and engineering based in the United States. NCSA operates as a ...
(NCSA) for their
Blue Waters supercomputing system. The TFinity tape libraries will be able to store hundreds of petabytes of data and will be one of the world's largest active file repositories.
Spectra Logic is a founding member of the
Active Archive Alliance. Active archive is a method of tiered storage which gives users access to data across a virtualized file-system that migrates data between multiple storage systems.
Spectra T950
The Spectra T950 tape library stores media tapes in the tape library bundled in trays called TeraPacks. A TeraPack holds ten tapes, which increases the density of the tape storage, which the company claims simplifies the loading and unloading of the tapes from the library.
There are Spectra T950 installations in several
high performance computing
High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems.
Overview
HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into a multi ...
(HPC) facilities, including the NASA
Ames Research Center
The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labora ...
,
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facility is located in Lemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and is the lar ...
, and
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, i ...
.
On 20 April 2009, NASA Ames announced that it would replace ten of their 20-year-old silo tape libraries with two Spectra Logic T950 tape libraries. This allowed the center to reclaim of floor space and increase its storage capacity from 12 petabytes to 32 petabytes. The new tape libraries used 20,000 tape cartridge slots and
Linear Tape-Open
Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship ('' function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear ...
(LTO-7) drives.
See also
*
Tape library
In computer storage, a tape library, sometimes called a tape silo, tape robot or tape jukebox, is a storage device that contains one or more tape drives, a number of slots to hold tape cartridges, a barcode reader to identify tape cartridges a ...
*
Tape drive
A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and a long archival stability.
...
*
Computer data storage
Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers.
The central processing unit (CPU) of a comput ...
External links
Spectra Logic
References
{{Reflist
Computer hardware companies
Computer storage companies
Computer companies of the United States