Copan and Quantum team up on persistent storage

Quantum has teamed up with Copan Systems to develop a solution that combines Quantum's backup and recovery software with Copan's innovative mass-storage systems.

This tie-in will allow organisations to archive up to 896TB of file-based, persistent (non-changing, fixed or static) data in a cabinet that has a footprint of under one square metre. The combined system consists of Quantum's StorNext Data Management Software and Copan Systems's Enterprise Maid (Massive Array of Idle Disks) disk-based storage.

"We have been working closely with Quantum for the last two months and will launch the new system in September and roll it out the next month," Rod Evans, Copan's business development and partners' manager told ZDNet.co.uk.

Quantum's StorNext provides an online repository with for optimised performance through drive spin-up and spin-down control, automatic replication and backup/recovery and storage scalability to multiple petabytes, as well as data sharing with Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS systems.

Quantum will be using Copan's Maid storage, which the company says can save enormous amounts of power — although it uses thousands of disks, the disks spend most of the time powered down with no more than 20 percent, on average, being used at one time. In contrast, conventional disks use power, spinning most of the time. By using hundreds of low-capacity drives, rather than a few high-capacity ones, Copan can decrease the chances of a particular disk being used at any particular time. This helps in saving power and increasing reliability by reducing wear and tear on the disks.

A standard rack has 896TB of storage on 112 disks, with eight such racks in a cabinet. The high density could be a problem on some storage arrays but not on the Copan array, as Evans explained. "Because they only use power as needed and not all the time as other arrays will, heat is not a problem," he said.

Although Copan has been selling systems in the US for some time, the company officially launched in Europe last year. "We have around 250 installations worldwide with 60 new ones in the last 12 months, with growth around 100 percent," said Evans.