Quantum Drive Draws On Sun-Oracle StorageTek Fears

Quantum is making no bones about which market it’s raiding with the new archive conversation feature it unveiled on 25 October for the latest StorNext system: All those companies who invested in Sun-StorageTek (now Oracle) tape archives one upon a time during the last two decades.

StorNext 4.1, coming out in December, includes the archive conversion feature designed to simplify migration from legacy archive platforms. The first product line Quantum wants to replace are the tape systems – many of them 15 years old or more – built and serviced by Oracle’s StorageTek division.

Oracle conversion support

Chris Duffy, Quantum’s product marketing manager, told eWEEK that the first release of this conversion tool supports the conversion of data from Oracle/Sun’s SAM-FS and QFS software platform.

Many of those old digital tape machines work just fine, and their owners generally aren’t inclined to make a change unless the system shows signs of failure. But Quantum wants to be there with an alternative that works, if and when something does happen.

“There’s been a lot of uncertainty in the market [since Oracle acquired Sun in January 2010]. People don’t know if Oracle will continue to support STK [StorageTek, which had been acquired by Sun for $4.1 billion (£26bn) in 2005],” Chris Duffy, Quantum’s product marketing manager, told eWEEK.

Oracle has said little publicly about a roadmap for StorageTek, its Colorado-based tape storage franchise, which has a loyal installed base.

Legacy media

StorNext’s new Archive Conversion Utility scans terabytes or petabytes of archived data on tape media and can access it within hours – instead of weeks or months – to start a data migration to StorNext, Duffy said.

Quantum enables storage admins to transfer only file system structure and metadata information about the associated data files to the StorNext Storage Manager file server. Once the transfer completes, normally within a matter of hours, all non-StorNext files on original media can be accessed and modified from the StorNext File System, Duffy said.

This allows administrators to control data movement over time from the legacy media to StorNext Storage Manager without disrupting an organisation’s business operations, Duffy said.

Earlier this year, Quantum added LTO-5 tape technology support to StorNext software.

StorNext’s ACU with support for SAM-FS/QFS migration will be available from Quantum’s worldwide distributors and partners in December 2010, Duffy said.